Explore every episode of the podcast Action Packed Travel
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cat's Car-Free Travel | 31 oct. 2026 | 00:38:57 | |
Cat Jones loves trains, avoids planes, and lived car-free until this year. Yet her company, Byway, has sent over 25,000 people on holidays across the UK and Europe. | |||
| Getting the Right Fit | 30 sept. 2026 | 00:27:04 | |
Taking another look at ski and boot rental in time for an Alpine winter.
Music: © Barney and Izzi Hardy | |||
| Greek Island Odyssey | 31 août 2026 | 00:30:09 | |
Noel Josephides of Sunvil talks about his long career in travel and tells us how the Hollywood blockbuster could spell trouble for the region. It must now be the destinations' responsibility to control mass tourism.
Music: Barney and Izzi Hardy | |||
| Travelling Alone | 29 juil. 2026 | 00:21:36 | |
It has its challenges, particularly if you're a woman, says Anna Bowkis.
Music: Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Exile in Pas-du-Calais | 10 juin 2026 | 00:30:50 | |
Freelance public relations consultant, Paddy Daly, took the plunge and moved his family and his business to the other side of the English Channel. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Meet The World's Most Travelled Man | 30 mai 2026 | 00:31:53 | |
We're re-running this popular episode about Harry Mitsidis, who has travelled to every country in the world...at least twice. He's the founder of a website called NomadMania. | |||
| Lacock: The Birth Place of Photography | 26 avr. 2026 | 00:16:49 | |
The quaint medieval community of Lacock might seem familiar.
Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| An Unusual Destination in Equatorial Africa | 31 mars 2026 | 00:35:16 | |
Alice Gully of Aardvark Safaris takes a journey back in time to São Tomé and Príncipe.
Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Safety on the Slopes Starts in the Shop | 23 févr. 2026 | 00:27:58 | |
This week we're in Val d'Isère in the French Alps, exploring the complicated subject of ski and boot rental. Music © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| The Disappearance of Dick's Tea Bar | 16 déc. 2025 | 00:26:33 | |
Dick's Tea Bar in Val d'Isère once captured the imagination of generations of visitors. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy
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| Minty Clinch: Age Is No Barrier To Adventure | 13 nov. 2025 | 00:30:14 | |
Minty Clinch, who died this month, was a good friend of ours for more years than we can remember. She was a fine writer and witty to the very end. We have decided to re-release an interview we did with her five years ago. The episode is about her adventures on horseback to some of the wildest corners of the world. To Minty's many friends: we hope you enjoy listening. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Cycling From Antarctic To Arctic | 31 oct. 2025 | 00:32:17 | |
We're giving this episode another airing. It's what might best be described as a rather long bike ride. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| The Ski Tour Operator Revolution | 15 sept. 2025 | 00:26:17 | |
One of the first tour operators to give away the company to their staff. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Final Battle of the Countryside | 14 août 2025 | 00:20:51 | |
Because this means so much to us, we've repeated the episode! The Somerset town of Frome has seen many battles in its history, from the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685 to a campaign to win Packsaddle Community Fields in 2025. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Is Japan The New Ski Capital? | 30 juil. 2025 | 00:41:55 | |
This week we're talking to Jay Stevens, CEO of Wayfairer Travel, whose passion is snowboarding in Japan. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Midlifing on the South West Coast Path | 22 juin 2025 | 00:33:29 | |
Zoe Langley-Wathen walked 630 miles around the coastline of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset – and then she wrote a book about it. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Battle of the Countryside | 11 mai 2025 | 00:20:51 | |
The Somerset town of Frome has seen many battles in its history, from the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685 to a campaign to win Packsaddle Community Fields in 2025. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Walking Across Africa | 28 avr. 2025 | 00:45:43 | |
Forty years ago, Patrick Nash took a ten-month walk through the heart of Africa. We talked to him about the journey that inspired his latest book, Shots Across the Water. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Writing Around The World | 19 mars 2025 | 00:33:28 | |
Jean McNeill, author of Latitudes: Encounters with a Changing Planet, is an award-winning Canadian-born writer, the first-ever female director of creative writing at the University of East Anglia, and a professionally qualified safari guide. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Alice's Journey Through Saudi Arabia | 28 févr. 2025 | 00:30:35 | |
Scottish explorer and Arabist Alice Morrison decided to take a long hike to talk to the ordinary people, particularly the women who live there. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Valentine Warner's Wild Kitchen | 30 janv. 2025 | 00:30:37 | |
Valentine Warner is a celebrity chef who's made no less nine TV series, and has written five books. He likes to cook in remote and beautiful corners of the world. His new venture, Kitchen in the Wild, is set in a private safari lodge with views of Mount Kenya.
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| Wild About Croatia | 20 déc. 2024 | 00:34:28 | |
Travel writer and author of My Family and Other Enemies, Mary Novakovich, explores her homeland, including the hinterland of Croatia most foreigners never visit. | |||
| Joanna Penn's Pilgrimage | 13 nov. 2024 | 00:35:28 | |
Author, podcaster, and creative entrepreneur Joanna Penn is a best-selling and award-winning writer of horror, thrillers, dark fantasy and travel memoirs. She's also taken up going on pilgrimages. | |||
| A Ride Across America | 23 oct. 2024 | 00:36:44 | |
Simon Parker has cycled in this election year across the whole of America, from the northwest coast of Washington state, all the way to the most south easterly tip of Florida. He's written a book about it. | |||
| Ride Like A Gaucho | 29 sept. 2024 | 00:35:11 | |
Sophia Ashe, hooked on ponies and horses since childhood, joined a team of gauchos at a ranch in Argentina and wrote a book about her experiences. | |||
| Bletchley Park Revisited | 27 août 2024 | 00:22:17 | |
Bletchley Park is a country mansion 35 minutes by train northwest of London, where Alan Turing and his team of cryptanalysts cracked the complicated codes of the German Enigma machine. | |||
| Loneliness of a Long-Distance Sailor | 30 juil. 2024 | 00:36:00 | |
How do you survive on your own for days on end? So far, seven women have completed the Vendée Globe, the toughest round-the-world race. Joan Mulloy, a brand ambassador for Helly Hansen and a mother of two from the west coast of Ireland, is determined to become the eighth woman to compete and the first to win it. | |||
| The Whale in the Living Room | 30 juin 2024 | 00:25:28 | |
Veteran underwater cameraman, John Ruthven, talks to us about his book and a lifetime of exploring the deep. He is also a producer of Sir David Attenborough's The Blue Planet, a zoologist, film director, writer, editor and stylist. | |||
| A Century of Cottar's Safaris | 22 mai 2024 | 00:31:37 | |
This week we're in Kenya talking to safari camp owner, Calvin Cotter, whose family came here from the Great Plains of the Midwest in the years before World War One. | |||
| The Ultimate Childcare for Skiers | 29 avr. 2024 | 00:29:00 | |
This week, we're exploring the fraught subject of taking small children skiing for the very first time. We're going to start and end with a warning to listeners: If you want to book a nanny service-inclusive holiday for the coming winter, there is really no time to waste. You need to book right now. | |||
| The Secret Resort of Le Grand-Bornand | 24 mars 2024 | 00:23:42 | |
Le Grand-Bornand is not a name like Morzine or Chamonix that trips easily off the tongue when we mention skiing, but it's typically and traditionally French. | |||
| North American Dream in the French Alps | 06 févr. 2024 | 00:19:37 | |
It's the twentieth anniversary of Arc 1950. The resort began as the idea of Canadian resort developer, Intrawest, creator of Mont-Tremblant in Quebec and manager of some 20 other resorts in North America – from Whistler to Mammoth. | |||
| Wild Travels In Africa and Asia | 02 janv. 2024 | 00:21:08 | |
This week we're talking to someone who specialises in creating holidays that are entirely different – taking you to places you probably thought were out of bounds to all tourists. | |||
| From Fjord to Snowfield | 02 déc. 2023 | 00:21:43 | |
We caught up with Rory Dixon who organises skiing-touring trips off a boat in Norway and Greenland, life-changing adventures to distant corners of the world. | |||
| Jess the Horse Nomad | 27 nov. 2023 | 00:17:10 | |
Jess Isbrecht is a digital nomad who travels full time with her horses. | |||
| The World's Most Travelled Man | 05 nov. 2023 | 00:31:52 | |
Harry Mitsidis has travelled to every country in the world, at least twice. He's the founder of a website called NomadMania. | |||
| Walking to the South Pole | 27 oct. 2023 | 00:23:04 | |
To discover a little of what former Royal Marine, Sam Cox, will experience living alone at -30°C, podcaster Peter Hardy spends time in an industrial freezer. | |||
| An American in Paris | 28 sept. 2023 | 00:33:16 | |
No, not the 1951 movie starring Gene Kelly and Lesley Caron... Jay Swanson moved from the USA and now lives in Paris where he calls himself: 'a YouTuber, writer, and puppy wrangler.' He publishes a guide to the city called Paris in my Pocket. | |||
| The Van Life Revisited | 09 sept. 2023 | 00:25:44 | |
We're on the road exploring a thriving sector of the travel industry that continues to explode in popularity across Europe. | |||
| Wild Skiing in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan | 27 août 2023 | 00:28:32 | |
Untamed Borders sets out to satisfy the hunger of that rare breed of traveller who's already been to the far corners of the earth, got the T-shirt but still wants more. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy | |||
| Chefs, Cars and Skiing | 15 août 2023 | 00:27:16 | |
This week, we're talking to travel guru, Amin Momen, whose London-based company Momentum Ski organises bespoke holidays. | |||
| Extreme Travel Dreams | 17 juil. 2023 | 00:31:20 | |
Turn your wildest travel dreams into reality, with superyacht voyages to the end of the earth, intrepid journeys to deserts, jungles, polar regions and the oceans. | |||
| The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis | 01 juil. 2023 | 00:27:34 | |
We're in Vienna for an unusual episode of Action Packed Travel – unusual because our principal guest is Felice herself. She's just published a book about her grandparents' dramatic escape from Vienna to London on the eve of World War II. | |||
| Cycling From Antarctic To Arctic | 21 juin 2023 | 00:32:17 | |
Chris and his girlfriend Phoebe are in the saddle, for what you might describe by any standards as a rather long bike ride. | |||
| Thermae Bath Spa – A Fusion Of Old And New | 28 mai 2023 | 00:21:29 | |
With the sunny weather outside, we felt it was time to republish this episode about Bath Thermae Spa. Bath in the southwest of England is famous for its Roman baths. In its Regency heyday, the supposedly curative waters attracted the cream of British society…and of course, Jane Austen. 2,000 years later, the waters were re-harnessed in the magnificent thermal spa located just a soap bath's throw away from the original. | |||
| Travels With The Hungry Cyclist | 19 mai 2023 | 00:28:26 | |
Tom Kevill-Davies has managed to carve a highly successful career for himself out of his twin passions, cycling and eating. | |||
| The Future Of European Skiing | 09 mai 2023 | 00:26:34 | |
Only a handful of ski resorts in the Alps will in future offer reliable snow cover throughout the season. These include Val d'Isere, Tignes and Val Thorens in France, Cervinia in Italy, and Zermatt in Switzerland – not forgetting the Austrian glaciers. | |||
| The Ultimate Ski Chalets | 24 avr. 2023 | 00:28:04 | |
Globally, there's just a handful of specialist operators who look after their guests on this giddy level. London-based Consensio is the leader of the pack. | |||
| Music On A Train | 12 avr. 2023 | 00:29:37 | |
Cheryl B Engelhardt is a singer-songwriter who composed and recorded her album, Passenger, on a train journey from New York City to Los Angeles. | |||
| Sea and Ski With Melody Sky | 03 avr. 2023 | 00:26:50 | |
Action woman extraordinary – mountain and ocean photographer, skier and freediver, Melody lives her life on the edge. | |||