Have you ever considered a radical change to mark a new chapter in your life? What fears hold you back from taking on a huge challenge, like walking for weeks on your own? Zoe Langley-Wathen talks about conquering her fears on the 630-mile South West Coast Path, and how it led to an even bigger goal: to walk the entire coastline of Great Britain.

Zoe is the author of 630 Miles Braver: Midlifing on the South West Coast Path. She’s also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an award-winning teacher, and host of the HeadRightOut podcast.

* Why Zoe chose the South West Coast Path to mark a rite of passage into midlife
* The beautiful highlights and the brutal, challenging aspects of the 630-mile trail
* Overcoming fears of walking and wild camping solo
* Practical advice on training, managing physical pain, and preparing for a long walk
* How the experience built lasting resilience and changed her life trajectory
* Zoe’s next epic adventure with her husband: walking the 7,300-mile coastline of Great Britain

You can find Zoe at HeadRightOut.com
You can find my tips on long-distance multi-day solo walking in my book, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, and more pilgrimage resources here.

Transcript of the interview

Jo: Hello Travellers, I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Zoe Langley-Wathen. Welcome, Zoe.
Zoe: Hi Jo, thank you for having me.
Jo: It’s great to have you on the show. Zoe is the author of 630 Miles Braver: Mid-life-ing on the South West Coast Path. She’s also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an award-winning teacher, and host of the HeadRightOut podcast.
Where is the South West Coast Path, how long is it, and why did you decide to walk it for a significant birthday?
Zoe: Thank you for having me on.
The clue is in the title, 630 Miles Braver. The path is 630 miles long, or 1,014 kilometres. It starts at Minehead on the south-west tip of England and travels all the way down to the toe of Cornwall, where you’ll find Land’s End. It then continues along the coast of Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset, finishing at Poole Harbour, the second largest natural harbour in the world. For people who need to locate it geographically, Minehead is about 60 miles or an hour and three-quarters south-west of Bristol.
As for why I did it, it was to mark a rite of passage into midlife. Around 2010, I had a moment of what felt like divine intervention in a bookshop in Wells, Somerset. I walked in and there was a book on a shelf, and I swear there was a shaft of light shining on it: the South West Coast Path Handbook.
I had been searching for a path for a long time to mark this rite of passage. I’d considered Kilimanjaro or the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, but none of them resonated. This one just clicked, because I had wanted to do it for about 15 years but never thought myself capable. I thought only gritty, athletic, strong people did the South West Coast Path, not me. I just didn’t think I was enough in any capacity.
Suddenly, it was like a lightbulb had been switched on. I grabbed the book, paid for it, and thought, ‘Right, I’m going to do this. I don’t know how, but I’ll figure it out.’ And I did sort out figure it out along the way.
Jo: You said you were ‘searching for a path for a long time,’ which is a really interesting phrase. You’d considered more iconic places, but felt a sense of calling to this one.

How does a childhood spent in the Himalayas of Nepal and India shape a life and a love for the mountains of Scotland? How can fiction help us understand the complex, painful history of India’s Partition? I discuss all this and more with the award-winning author, Merryn Glover.

 


Merryn’s nomadic “third culture kid” upbringing with missionary parents in Nepal and India
The experience of attending an international boarding school in a North Indian hill station.
The history of Indian Hill Stations like Mussoorie, from their origins in the British Raj to modern-day holiday destinations.
Weaving the complex history of India’s Independence and Partition into her novel, A House Called Askival.
The perspective of writing about India as both an insider to the international community and an outsider to the wider culture.
How her childhood in the Himalayas influenced her love for her current home in the mountains of Scotland.
Recommended travel books


You can find Merryn at MerrynGlover.com

Transcript of the interview

Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Merryn Glover, who is an award-winning author of fiction, nature writing, plays, and short stories. Welcome, Merryn.
Merryn: Hi there. Thank you for having me.
Jo: It’s great to have you on. You were born in Kathmandu and brought up in Nepal, India, and Pakistan. You have an Australian passport and call Scotland home after living there for over 30 years. Tell us more about that.
How did travel form such a backdrop to your life?
Merryn: Essentially, because my parents were working in South Asia, that’s how I came to be born and brought up there. It very much was my life.
Up until I was 18 and moved back to Australia to go to university, my father estimated that we’d probably moved 60 times. Some of those moves were backwards and forwards to the same locations or the same house, but it was very itinerant. In a lot of those locations, I didn’t necessarily have my own bedroom; it might be the curtained-off end of a living room, or I was often sharing with my big brother. It was very nomadic and it was just the life that we had. As a child, of course, you don’t think your life is unusual. It’s just the life that you have, and it’s only later on that you realize it is quite different to most people, particularly once I was back at university in Australia.
Jo: What did your parents do that you traveled so much?
Merryn: They were missionaries, in the old language, if you like, which tends to bring people out in hives.
They were working in linguistics, literacy, and Bible translation, primarily amongst one of the language groups in Nepal, but ultimately in quite a lot of locations in India and Pakistan as well. They were working a lot with local churches, local Christians, and in a lot of training, enabling them in their own literacy and linguistic work.
Jo: It’s incredible how much travel there is involved in that. When you remember being a kid, given you were moving around so much… I went to school in Malawi, in Africa for a while, and I don’t really remember it being different, as you said. How did you feel?
Did you feel different? Did you go to random schools? How was that experience?
Merryn: It was very varied. For the first seven years of my childhood, my parents spent a lot of time in a village in the hills of Nepal, and my mother homeschooled us when we were there. She was a qualified primary school teacher, so that obviously helped. She taught my brother and myself out on the veranda of the home that we lived in, in the village, for only a couple of hours every morning. After that, we were pretty free to roam and play.
When we were in places like Kathmandu, there were often small,

What makes a place sacred, and can you find spiritual transformation without traveling thousands of miles? Why do ordinary English villages and Scottish islands continue to draw seekers from around the world? Award-winning travel writer Oliver Smith talks about British pilgrimage sites from Lindisfarne to Iona, and Walsingham to Glastonbury, and how these ancient places still draw even secular pilgrims today.

Oliver Smith is a multi award-winning travel writer and author of The Atlas of Abandoned Places, and On This Holy Island: A Modern Pilgrimage Across Britain.

The double lives of pilgrimage places, and how ordinary locations can offer transcendent experiences
Lindisfarne’s tidal causeway
The tension between commercial tourism and genuine spiritual seeking at sacred sites
Iona’s remote Scottish island setting and the challenging journey required to reach it
Walsingham’s remarkable history from medieval powerhouse to modern multicultural pilgrimage destination
* Why Glastonbury might be Britain’s best pilgrimage
The philosophy of traveling deeper not further, and finding extraordinary meaning in familiar places

You can find Oli at OliverSmithTravel.com
You can find more Pilgrimage Resources here, as well as my book, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways.

Transcript of the interview
Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Oliver Smith. Hi Oli.
Oli: Hello, how are you doing?
Jo: Oh, it’s great to have you on the show. Just a little introduction. Oli is a multi award-winning travel writer and author of The Atlas of Abandoned Places, and On This Holy Island: A Modern Pilgrimage Across Britain, which we are talking about today. It’s a fantastic book.
Now, Oli, I wanted to get straight into it. So you say in the book, although you’ve traveled all over the world, you say quote from the book,
“What interested me now were those places that promised a kind of travel beyond what could be charted on an ink or pixel map.”
So I wondered if you could start with that, because you’ve been to all these tick list travel places. What about those that are these soulful journeys?
Oli: I guess what really interests me is that a lot of these places that feature in the book, they sort of live double lives, you know?
If I pick one at random, or one near where you are in the country. If we think about Glastonbury for example, it’s fascinating because people go there with such huge expectation. For some people it’s a place that unlocks other worlds to them. The tor might be a portal to some world of the fairies or some world of Arthurian legend, or it might be something to do with Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus Christ walking in Somerset and that old legend, you know, so much is invested in it.
Yet at the same time, Glastonbury is a place where if you go to the high street, there’s a Boots. There is a pub selling the usual repertoire of lagers and warm beers and Nobby’s Nuts behind the bar, you know, these places. I think all of them, to some degree in the book, they are ordinary, mundane places that people live in and people pass by every day.
But then they offer, they promise a kind of an extra level, which is detectable to some people and isn’t to others. So it is that kind of duality. I think what really interested me when I was writing this book.
Jo: Yeah, and I guess, well it’s almost a bigger question because when you look at your career as a travel writer and you mentioned their expectation,

What is it like to work on ancient English churches, cathedrals and stone monuments? How does stone, a symbol of permanence, change over centuries? In this interview, I explore the craft of stonemasonry with church conservator Andrew Ziminski.

Andrew Ziminski is a stonemason and church conservator with decades of experience working on some of the greatest cathedrals and churches in Britain. He’s also the author of The Stonemason: A History of Building Britain and Church Going: A Stone Mason’s Guide to the Churches of the British Isles.

* The ancient craft of stonemasonry and how the tools have remained unchanged for millennia
* How stone is damaged over time by settlement, weather, and even the metal used to build with
* The defining features of Gothic architecture, a movement focused on light and colour, not darkness
* Why the “Green Man” carvings in churches are Christian symbols of resurrection, not pagan figures
* How ancient churches can feel imbued with the atmosphere of centuries of human experience

You can find Andrew at MinervaConservation.com.
You can find my articles and photos of Gothic Cathedrals here.

Transcript of the interview

Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Andrew Ziminski. Hi Andy.
Andy: Hello, Jo.
Jo: Yes, absolutely. So just a little introduction. Andrew is a stonemason and church conservator with decades of experience working on some of the greatest cathedrals and churches in Britain. He’s also the author of The Stonemason: A History of Building Britain and Church Going: A Stone Mason’s Guide to the Churches of the British Isles. I’m a fan and I have the books right here if you are watching the video. I love them. So thank you so much for coming on today, Andy, I want to get straight into it because —
Part of why I love churches and cathedrals is this sense of timelessness, of being small against the backdrop of history.
How does it feel for you when you are working on these ancient buildings, doing this ancient craft?
Andy: Well, in theory, I should be getting bored of it, I mean, I’ve been doing it so long, but anything but. My interest seems to grow with every project that we work on. We pretty much only work on ancient churches, medieval bridges, and the odd castle every now and again.
There’s always something new to discover, be it a particularly local school of carvers or a type of medieval graffiti that I see carved into the piers of a particular church. There are so many regional variations in the British Isles, in terms of architecture and materials and the approach of the people who built these places, that I’m always sniffing them out. And as I understand more, it makes me want to understand even more, if that doesn’t sound too crazy. I think the day I’ll stop nosing around these places will be my last one on the planet.
Jo: Well hopefully not falling off some spire.
Didn’t you work on Salisbury Spire?
Andy: Yeah, I started my training at Salisbury. I went to a local stonemasonry college because our part of England, the Southwest, is renowned for its building stones. There used to be a very excellent stonemasonry college at Weymouth on the coast in Dorset. From there I went up to the top of the tower, not the spire, but the tower, which is the square section that supports the octagonal base of the spire  which is 404 feet tall and the tallest medieval structure in...

What does it mean to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time? How can travel shape our sense of self, and how do we find our way home when faced with unexpected grief abroad?
In this episode, I talk with author Becky Doughty about her traveling childhood as a missionary kid, a life-changing trip to Tuscany that resonated with grief, and how traveling alone helped her become more resilient.

Becky writes heartfelt and wholesome, contemporary commercial fiction and Christian fiction, including the Autumn Lake and the Tuscan Romance series.

Growing up as a missionary kid in West Papua
Being adopted, from “nowhere, anywhere, and everywhere.”
How a dream trip to Tuscany turned into a journey of grief after the sudden death of her father.
Turning a traumatic travel memory into a heartfelt romance
Overcoming the fear of traveling and why embracing the moment is more important than worrying about what might go wrong.
Becky’s solo backpacking trip to run the Dublin marathon and how it stripped away everything except her own inner strength.

You can find Becky at BeckyDoughty.com


Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Becky Doughty. Hi Becky.
Becky: Hi Jo. How are you?
Jo: I’m good. It’s great to have you on the show. For a little introduction, Becky writes heartfelt and wholesome, contemporary commercial fiction and Christian fiction, including the Autumn Lake and the Tuscan Romance series. We have lots to talk about today, but as a starter —
How did travel play a part in your childhood?
Becky: Well, I always say I’m a missionary kid in recovery because travel made me fearless. Being a kid that traveled all around the world, I never really had a place that was home base. Even though we didn’t live in a lot of different countries, we did primarily live in Indonesia. My dad was an airplane mechanic and pilot, and he oversaw most of the hangar operations at our base camp in what is now West Papua.
For me, travel was just a way of life. We traveled back and forth to the States, which was home, and I traveled to school. I was a boarding student in high school and we traveled all on our own, with no parents. It was two days of travel, and we had to get to the right place during our stopover. Travel was just a part of life and it made me a fearless, “I’m just going to do whatever I want to do” kind of person. But the flip side is that it also leaves you feeling a little bit, not unrooted, but wondering where to put your roots down.
Especially since we were always told that America was home, in particular where our grandparents lived. But it never felt like home because we were always only visiting. That’s a big part of why I write stories about people finding their place. I’ve always written stories and escaped into other people’s lives for that reason.
Jo: It’s fascinating that you were told where home is whilst living elsewhere. Because you are living there, in West Papua or PNG as it was, with a very different culture, climate, and religions. I worked in mining for a while, so I know that sort of ‘Wild West’ idea of what was going on in PNG, and of course, there were wars and everything. So that’s very different.
To be told, “Your home is in America, you belong in America,” must have been very strange. What age were you? What were your formative years?
Becky: My parents went to the mission field with three kids under three. My older brother and I are adopted, not biologically related, and then the next two siblings came along naturally. My sister and I are only eight months apart. So when they went to the mission field, my brother was around three, I was one, and my sister was younger.

Have you ever wondered what it’s really like to live and work on a cruise ship? Is it all glamour and exotic locations, or is there a hidden, more challenging side to life at sea?
How do you cope with being away from family for months at a time, and what strange events unfold on these floating cities? In this episode, former cruise ship entertainer Wendy Nugent talks about her journeys and how they inspired her mystery novels.
If you like episodes about the sea/books, check out episode 1 where I talk about my tallship journey from Fiji to Vanuatu, Sailing around the world with Tom Dymond; Tallship sailing in Galveston, Texas, and Sailing the Pacific with Nadine Slavinski.

Wendy spent a decade as part of an award-winning magic act performing on cruise ships all over the world. She traveled from Alaska to Venezuela, Bermuda to Tahiti, and many exotic ports of call in between. Now, Wendy uses her insider knowledge of cruise ship life to write entertaining cozy mystery books set on cruise ships.

* Wendy’s journey from a theater graduate to performing on ships around the globe
* The highs and lows of life at sea, from incredible shore excursions to the challenges of being away from family
* The strict social hierarchy and unique culture on board, with crew members from many different nations
* The weird and wonderful things that happen on cruises—from ship fires to rescuing refugees—that inspire her mystery novels
* Practical tips for potential cruisers on choosing the right itinerary and ship size for their travel style
* How to make a tiny, temporary cabin feel like home, especially when your cabin mate is a performing parrot
* Recommended books

You can find Wendy at WendyNeugent.com.

Transcript of the interview
Jo: Hello, travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Wendy Neugent. Hi Wendy.
Wendy: Hi Jo. It’s so nice to get to talk to you.
Jo: I’m excited about this. Just a little introduction. Wendy spent a decade as part of an award-winning magic act performing on cruise ships all over the world. She traveled from Alaska to Venezuela, Bermuda to Tahiti, and many exotic ports of call in between. Now, Wendy uses her insider knowledge of cruise ship life to write entertaining cozy mystery books set on cruise ships. I think you’ve got one there as well, haven’t you? One of your books.
Wendy: Yeah, Murder Takes a Bow.
Jo: Fantastic. So this is going to be really interesting. To start off, just tell us —
How did you come to work on cruise ships in the first place? Why did you want to be part of that kind of life?
Wendy: I have a degree in theater, so I had a background in entertaining, but I was actually working at Colonial Williamsburg as a costumed tour guide straight out of college. I had moved there from upstate New York and was excited to be someplace a little warmer. I met someone who was working on cruise ships and they ended up hooking me up with a job working as a youth counselor. So that was my first contract. It was just three and four-day cruises, really quick. It was on the former Disney ship, the Premier Cruises. I ended up working my way up to being part of a review show where I had a section where I would hold up big dance cards and dance around on stage and do silly things like that. 9

How can a physical journey trigger profound inner change? What draws a non-religious person to undertake a Catholic pilgrimage? What happens when you encounter both the best and worst versions of yourself on the same path? Bradley Chermside, international best-selling author, entertainer, and host of the El Camino de Santiago Podcast shares his transformative journey.
You can also find my memoir, Pilgrimage, and lots of pilgrimage and Camino resources here.

Bradley Chermside is an international bestselling author, copywriter and multi-award winning singer and entertainer. He’s the host of the El Camino de Santiago Podcast, and today we’re talking about his book,The Only Way is West: A Once in a Lifetime , 500 Mile Adventure Walking Spain’s Camino de Santiago.

* Life before the Camino and why walk a pilgrimage if you’re not a Christian
* Spiritual and personal influences
* Highlights of the Camino, and the challenges along the way
* Meeting people, walking together and alone
* Balancing life after Camino — and why Bradley continues to walk the routes
* Recommended books

You can find Brad at BradleyChermside.com and also on the El Camino de Santiago Pilgrims Podcast.
I was also on Bradley’s Camino podcast talking about my own Camino experience here. 

Transcript of the interview


Jo: Hello, travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Bradley Chermside. Hi, Brad.


Brad: Hello.


Jo: Hello. So just a little introduction. Brad is an international best-selling author, copywriter, and multi-award-winning singer and entertainer. He’s the host of the El Camino de Santiago podcast, and today we’re talking about his book, The Only Way Is West: A Once-in-a-Lifetime 500-Mile Adventure Walking Spain’s Camino de Santiago. And on the video, Brad’s just showing the book there, it is fantastic. So we’re going to jump straight into it. I wanted to pick out this quote from the book.
You talk about, “A meaningless, empty existence, exacerbated by the Monday morning blues.” Why was pilgrimage the answer?
Take us back. What was life going on in your life at that time and why was pilgrimage your answer?


Brad: Well, exactly what you just described there was a meaningless existence. I knew it had a limit on it. I knew it wasn’t a sustainable way of living.


Jo: What was it though? We’re dying to know.


Brad: I don’t really need to go into details! but it was just doing what you do as a youngster. You’re experimenting with different things, and it wasn’t really fulfilling in any way. And the work I was doing at the time wasn’t fulfilling either, even though I was making a good living out of it. And I thought, you know what? There’s got to be a drastic change here, and I’d read two books about the Camino during the time. The Camino by Shirley MacLaine, which is mad.
I was like, “Whoa, I wouldn’t mind some of these crazy things happening.” These really vivid lucid dreams and hallucinations in her dreams and stuff. And also The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho, which is one of my favorites.


Jo: And I read that one. That was my one.

What does home mean when you are always moving on? What does belonging mean when your address changes every few years? And how do we reconcile our evolving identities with the places we’ve left behind? Catriona Turner talks about her travels from Scotland to France, to Congo and Uganda, and back home again over 14 years, and how she has redefined what she calls home.
For more episodes on home, check out my solo episode on Sanctuary, Retreat, Belonging: The Importance of Home in Difficult Times; and for more on Third Culture Kids, check out the interview on Djibouti with Rachel Pieh Jones. You can also find more about my thoughts on home in my memoir, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways.

Catriona Turner is the Scottish author of Nest, A Memoir of Home on the Move.

Life in Kampala, Uganda – discovering an unexpectedly cosmopolitan city with thriving coffee and food scenes
Experiencing the Republic of Congo – navigating life in Pointe-Noire, a Francophone oil city with strong French influences
The challenges of living in transition – the struggle between temporary mindset and embracing the present moment
Unpacking the loaded terms ‘expat’ and ‘immigrant’ — privilege, cultural integration, and identity
The evolution of “home” – from a fixed geographical location to a multidimensional concept that travels with you
How children experience third culture living
Repatriation challenges – seeing your own culture through new eyes after years abroad
Unexpected appreciations – discovering the beauty of Scotland through foreigners’ perspectives
Book recommendations for understanding global living, going home, and repatriation

You can find Catriona at CatrionaTurner.com and her book, Nest, on Amazon.

Transcript of the interview:
Jo: Hello Travelers. I am Jo Frances (J.F.) Penn, and today I’m here with Catriona Turner. Hi Katrina.Catriona: Hi. So happy to be here.Jo: It’s great to have you on the show. Catriona is the Scottish author of Nest, A Memoir of Home on the Move, which we are talking about today.
Tell us a bit about why you left Scotland 14 plus years ago and some of the places that you’ve lived.
Catriona: Yeah. Coming up for 16 years ago that we left in 2009 and that was because of my husband’s job. So we had met a couple years before and it was always kinda on the cards that his company might ask him to be globally mobile.
So when the opportunity came up, we did, I had been teaching for 10 years and I was happy to kind of take a career break to move to Southern France for three years, because who wouldn’t?
Jo: Yeah, for sure.
Catriona: — on the company Dollar and off we went. We got married about the same time and 14 years later, we came back having, by then moved to Uganda and back to France and the Republic of Congo and Denmark, and then back to France.
One more time in Paris before we came back, yeah. Coming up for two years ago now we’re back in Aberdeen, in the northeast of Scotland, which was where we left from.
Jo: And with two kids.
Catriona: Two kids that joined us along the way.
Jo: Well, it’s interesting and I wanted to talk to you ’cause although we lived in different places, I left England in 2000 and returned in 2011.
So I was away 11 years and no children so I understand the sort...

Why does Egypt continue to fascinate curious travelers? What hidden chambers might lie beneath the pyramids of Giza? How does the duality of Egyptian mythology influence thriller writing? Join thriller authors J.F. Penn and Luke Richardson for a conversation that weaves together archaeological intrigue, travel insights, and the creative process behind crafting compelling adventures in one of history’s most enigmatic settings.

Luke Richardson is the bestselling author of the Eden Black Archaeological Thrillers and the International Detective Thriller Series.

* Why Egypt continues to capture the imagination: Ancient myths, tombs, and timeless sites
* Modern Cairo and Garbage City
* The Oasis of Siwa
* The Pyramids of Giza, and recent archaeological finds about what might be underneath
* Travel tips for modern Egypt
* Recommended books

You can find Luke at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com and his books on Amazon. You can also find his trip notes and pictures at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/egypt
If you enjoy thrillers inspired by and set in Egypt, check out The Giza Protocol by Luke Richardson and Ark of Blood by J.F. Penn.

Transcript of the interview
Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Luke Richardson. Hi Luke.
Luke: Hello.
Jo: I’m so excited to talk to you. Just for the listeners, Luke is the bestselling author of the Eden Black Archaeological Thrillers and the International Detective Thriller Series, and today we are talking about Egypt, which inspires locations in several of our books, Luke’s thriller, The Giza Protocol, and also my Ark of Blood.
We share an enthusiasm for action adventure thrillers. Obviously, we both write them and this is a topic we like to geek out on.
What is it about Egypt for you? When did this fascination start and why did you want to go?
Luke: There’s so much about Egypt as a country, isn’t there, that just, it’s so evocative of the stories that we write, you know, there’s so much mysticism and so much magic there and, and it conjures up images from Hercule Poirot on the Nile solving murders to the glamor of Cleopatra, to the ambition of Rameses.
And we are not the first writers to be captivated by this. This has happened from Shakespeare all the way forward through the romantic movements, people have been captivated by the magic of Egypt. But there’s also that mystery to it there. There’s things that people don’t know about Egypt.
What were the pyramids for? How were they built? Of course, people say they’re tombs for the Pharaohs, but it’s far more interesting, I think, to consider some of the other theories about maps and power plants and really imaginative, fun stuff that makes our stories tick.
Jo: Yeah. And it’s funny ’cause I was thinking about this in terms of why did I become obsessed with it?
And you and I both have read a lot of the same books, you mentioned there that so many writers have done Egypt. And then of course I’m a little bit older than you, but Indiana Jones obviously and yet we still want to go and see it ourselves, I guess.
And I remember when I was little, we went to Bristol Museum and there was a mummy there and we actually went back quite recently and it was a pretty crap mummy, to be honest. It was pretty bad.
But as an 8-year-old, it made me think, what the hell? Who are these people?

“The meaning of life is that it stops.” — Franz Kafka
I’ve always felt most grateful to be alive when I walk among the dead. That might sound strange, but bear with me!
Step through a lychgate into a church yard or descend a narrow stone stair into a catacomb or ossuary, and the pace and the noise of the world falls away. In these quiet spaces—graveyards beside ancient churches, sprawling Victorian cemeteries, underground chambers decorated with bones—I consider the shortness of life, memento mori, remember you will die, and it puts life into perspective. I can hear my own heartbeat more clearly, and the stories begin to rise.
In this episode, I’ll take you with me to a handful of places that have shaped some of my stories and travel memoir. If you’ve read my ARKANE thrillers or the Brooke & Daniel series, you’ll recognise many of the names.
But whether you’re here for research, reverence, or simple curiosity, I hope you’ll find something to spark your imagination and, perhaps, shift your perspective on these places that so many stay away from.

* What’s the difference between a graveyard, a cemetery, and an ossuary?
* Why am I so fascinated with these places?
* Sedlec Ossuary, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic
* Paris Catacombs, France
* Kensal Green Cemetery, London, England
* Crossbones Graveyard, Southwark, London, England
* St Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans, USA
* Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo, Sicily
* Archbishop’s cadaver tomb, Canterbury Cathedral, England
* Mass grave in the Dohány Street Synagogue, Budapest, Hungary
* Graveyard of St Mary and All Saints, Boxley, Kent


First, some definitions.
What’s the difference between a graveyard, a cemetery, and an ossuary?
A graveyard is usually a burial ground attached to a church, whereas a cemetery is a stand-alone burial area, for example, found near a crematorium, or a public burial ground.
An ossuary, from the Latin ‘ossos’ for bone, is a container or chamber specifically to hold bones. It can be as small as a box, or as large as a chapel. In Europe, there are many ossuaries where the bones are used as decoration.
Why am I so fascinated with these places?
The Latin phrase memento mori—remember, you will die—has never felt morbid to me. It makes me grateful that I am alive on this day, to have the life I do, to love the people I love, and to be able to write and create. Life is indeed short, and I want to make the most of it.
I find myself drawn to these places not out of some macabre fascination but because they strip away illusion. In a world obsessed with preserving youth and denying mortality, there is something profoundly honest about these places that honour death.
The dates etched in stone. The names that no one remembers anymore, even this of the wealthy who thought they were important in life. The weathered gravestones, some leaning or sunken so deep they’re practically swallowed by the ground. All these make visible the brief span of our lives. This clarity energises me. I’m 50 as I write this, definitely middle-aged. If I am lucky to have decades left, how will I spend them? What stories will I tell? What experiences will I have? What challenges will I face?
This relationship with death might be unusual in the modern west, but for most generations, and for many cultures even right now, it is a completely normal part of life. As Franz Kafka said,

“The meaning of life is that it stops.”

Perhaps it is our modern sensibility to avoid discussing death that is the more unusual. I hope to change that a little today, so come with me on a journey of the dead.
Sedlec Ossuary, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic
It was a freezing winters day back in 2015 when we took the train from Prague to visit the Sedlec Ossuary, also known as the Bone Church.

What makes the tiny island of Lindisfarne a “thin place” where the spiritual and physical worlds seem to meet? How does living in such a close-knit community shape one’s identity? And what secrets lie beyond the tourist paths on this ancient sacred site? LK Wilde and J.F. Penn talk about their love of Lindisfarne.Laura is the award-winning author of historical fiction, romance, and uplifting feel-good fiction. Her novel Silver Darlings is set on the Northumberland Island of Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island.


Where is Lindisfarne and what makes it unique as a tidal island?
Holy Island, the rich Celtic Christian heritage and Viking history
What it’s like to grow up on a remote island with only 150 residents
Lindisfarne as a “thin place” where spiritual experiences feel more accessible
Natural wonders: sand dunes, seal colonies, and bird sanctuaries
Essential safety tips for crossing the tidal causeway
The fishing heritage that inspired Laura’s novel Silver Darlings
Local delicacies: fish soup, fresh crab sandwiches and the potent monastic mead

You can find Laura at LKWilde.com and her books on Amazon and other stores.



Transcript
Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with LK Wilde. Welcome, Laura.
Laura: Hello. Thank you for having me.
Jo: It’s great to have you on. So little introduction. Laura is the award-winning author of historical fiction, romance, and uplifting feel-good fiction. Her novel Silver Darlings is set on the Northumberland Island of Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, here in England, which we are talking about today. So just to get us started.
Where is Lindisfarne? How big is it? What makes it so special?
Laura: It’s quite a famous place considering how small it is. It is off the coast of Northumberland, which for those who don’t know, it’s probably about halfway between Newcastle and Edinburgh.
It’s really close to the Scottish border, and it’s a tidal island, so you can get across twice a day, there’s a road to drive across and it’s about eight or nine miles round, and there’s a population about 150. So you’ve got a very small village in one tiny corner of the island and then a big nature reserve. But it’s got quite an important historical significance considering when you look on a map, it’s a tiny little pinprick.
Jo: It is really small. And so you said the eight or nine miles, just so people know, you can easily walk around that?
Laura: You could. There’s not a path all the way around, so you’d have to do a bit of scrambling over rocks and things. But yes, you could definitely walk around it.
Jo: As you said, really near the borders. And when I was there, only briefly, which we’ll come back to, but on that one side you are looking towards the coast of England. On the other side, what do you see looking off the other side?
Laura: You can see the Farne Islands, which are a cluster of islands a bit further down the coast. And then a lot of sea.
Jo: Exactly. And that’s the way the Vikings came, right?
Laura: Yes. And I think you can still almost get that a bit in the accent. It’s quite unique. The accent on the island is a real mixture of Newcastle and Northeast and Scottish and they have their own words and things. I wonder how much influence from Scandinavian is in there too.
Jo: That’s interesting. Do you speak that accent?
Laura: No. I had to get a narrator to record the audiobook for me because I’ve tried, and when I went to school there, everyone used to say “Aye” instead of “Yes” when you did the register. And for me, with my very obvious Southern accent, it was so embarrassing.

Experience the rugged beauty, ancient legends, and captivating history of Scotland with Andy the Highlander. From standing stones and whirlpools to myths and famous battles, Andy shares stories that bring the Scottish landscape alive. Discover why Scotland is more than tartans and bagpipes in this fascinating discussion about culture, heritage, and a passion for storytelling.
In the introduction, I talk about my personal connection to Scotland (I am a quarter Scottish!), and how it inspired my monster horror, Catacomb, as well as featuring in Day of the Vikings, and the anatomical connection to Desecration.

Andy the Highlander is the bestselling author of Lochs and Legends, A Scotland Man’s Guide to the Heart of Scotland, as well as an actor and tour guide.
Show notes:

Andy’s journey to becoming “Andy the Highlander” and his experiences on the TV series Outlander
The allure of ancient standing stones, including Clava Cairns and Callanish
Historical intrigue from Culloden to the Body Snatchers of Edinburgh
Eerie encounters in places like Culross and Scotland’s many haunted sites
Rugged islands, beautiful lochs, and the distinct regional flavors of Scottish whisky
The rivalry of Scottish clans and football teams, and the “Outlander Effect” on tourism
Recommendations for books, films, and practical tips for traveling in the Highlands

You can find Andy at Highlander Tours and Lochs and Legends in all the usual places, or here on Amazon.

Transcript of the interview
Jo: Hello everyone. I am thriller author J.F. Penn, and this is the Books and Travel Podcast. And today I’m here with Andy the Highlander, the bestselling author of Lochs and Legends, A Scotland Man’s Guide to the Heart of Scotland, as well as an actor and tour guide. So welcome to the show, Andy.
Andy: Thank you for having me.

Oh, it’s great to have you here. So first up —
Why are you called Andy the Highlander?
Andy: I became Andy the Highlander back in 2015. I was fortunate enough to film on the hit US TV drama Outlander. I was one of Jamie Fraser’s men back in 2015. I filmed about 35 days on the show, and I then did a video in my garden demonstrating how to wear the plaid, the Filmore—the Great Kilt—and it got 5.3 million views in the first 30 days.
So that’s really where this journey of Andy the Highlander began. At the time I started investing in the swords, 18th-century clothing. My wife Anna thought I had lost the plot, and we had no idea this was going to become a business, but also very much who I am. I’m now more Andy the Highlander than I am old Andy. I don’t even know who he is anymore, to be honest. So yeah, it’s been some journey.
Jo: Yeah, ’cause you have a tour guide company as well, right?
That’s right. I run Highlander Tours, and I’m one of the busiest tour guides in the country, taking people from all over the world around Scotland. So that’s a very incredible job. Scotland is my office, and you know what they say: if you find something you love, then you’ll never work another day in your life.
Jo: That is true. So I guess on this show, I’d like to do things that maybe people don’t know, that are a bit less obvious, and you definitely have some of those in this book. So many people listening—maybe a lot of Americans, for example—have family connection to Scotland, even if that’s generations ago and maybe they haven’t even visited, but —

What are the fascinating — and also dangerous — aspects of Death Valley National Park? How does visiting a stark desert landscape give us perspective about our place in the world?

Steve Hall is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker and a seasoned adventure hiker renowned for his extensive explorations of Death Valley National Park.

* What’s special about Death Valley National Park?
* What are some of the iconic places to visit?
* The dangers of Death Valley
* Solo adventures and challenges
* Dark skies and star gazing
* Legends and history
* Conservation and visitor etiquette

You can find Steve’s hiking videos of Death Valley and other places at YouTube.com/stevehallDV. The Death Valley National Park website has lots more info.
You can find pictures and notes, as well as book recommendations on Death Valley here.
You can find Death Valley, A Thriller, by J.F. Penn, here.

Transcript of the interview
Jo: Hello travelers. I’m thriller author, J.F. Penn, and today I’m here with Steve Hall. Hi Steve.
Steve: Hi Jo. It’s great to be talking to you today.
Jo: Yes, just a little introduction. Steve is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker and a seasoned adventure hiker renowned for his extensive explorations of Death Valley National Park, which we’re talking about today. Let’s start with the basics.
Where is Death Valley in the world and what drew you to it initially?
Steve: Great questions. You know, it’s great to be talking with you about Death Valley National Park—of course, my favorite national park to visit. Death Valley is part of the Northern Mojave Desert, and it’s located right along the California–Nevada border.
It’s kind of situated in between Las Vegas to the east and the Sierra Nevada mountains off to the west. It is the largest national park in the lower 48 states. It actually has the great size of 3.4 million million acres, and it’s 140 miles in length, going from the bottom of the park all the way up to the top in the north. So it’s quite expansive.
Well, it kind of started for me back in 1997 when I was with a group of friends on the way to the Grand Canyon. As we finished up our trip there, we had a couple of extra days on our way home. So I noticed on a map all these kind of scary-sounding names within Death Valley—locations such as the Devil’s Golf Course, the Devil’s Cornfield, the Funeral Mountains, Badwater—kind of all scary, foreboding-sounding places. I told my friends, “Why don’t we stop there? We have a little extra time and see what Death Valley is all about.” And that’s what we did.
We drove through the park and actually had a kind of scary experience right when we first crossed the park boundaries. My very first memory of crossing into the park was seeing an injured motorcyclist on the dirt just off the road. I guess he had taken a turn too fast or something, but he flew off his bike and was injured, and paramedics were attending to him. So that was my introduction to the park—seeing somebody badly injured.
But on that first trip, I visited some of the famous tourist destinations such as Badwater, Artist Palette, Zabriskie Point, and Devil’s Golf Course. So that kind of gave me a little taster or teaser of the park. Those are the same kinds of destinations that first-time park visitors are sent to.
Let’s just get a bit into what it looks like because you mentioned a few things there, like the Devil’s Golf Course. I went to Badwater.

Welcome back to the Books and Travel Podcast! In this episode, I explore why I’m restarting the show, how travel has shaped my writing, and the deeper reasons we journey—both physically and through books.
From revisiting my first episode to discussing reinvention, curiosity, and the meaning of travel, this is a fresh start filled with inspiration for readers, writers, and adventurers alike.

* Why I’m restarting the podcast – Revisiting my first episode on The Three Trips That Changed My Life and the theme of reinvention.
* Turning 50 and creative confidence – How my journey as a writer led to this fresh start.
* Books that came from the podcast – Pilgrimage (travel memoir) & Writing the Shadow (creativity & darkness).
* The ocean metaphor – Light & dark sides of travel, inspired by The Three Trips That Changed My Life.
* The meaning of travel – Emily Thomas on experiencing otherness.
* Curiosity – Steve Brock on using travel as a learning lab.
* Finding beauty close to home – Brianna Madia on redefining what travel means.
* Travel inspiring fiction – Layton Green on researching thrillers through travel.
* How place shapes storytelling – Roz Morris on writing from past experiences.
* Gothic travel, cemeteries, and memento mori – Loren Rhoads on being “life-obsessed” rather than death-obsessed.
* What’s coming next for the show

You can find my books at JFPennBooks.com and see more of my photos on Instagram @jfpennauthor

Curiosity, Reinvention, and Inspiration: The Return of Books and Travel
Hello travelers, I’m Jo Frances Penn and yes, the podcast is back!
I’ve missed talking to other writers about travel and the places that inspire us and many of you have told me that you enjoy the show — so I’m excited to be back, and I already have lots of new guests lined up for interviews about fascinating places as well as the deeper side of travel, and of course, book recommendations!
As this is the first episode for a while, I’m doing a solo episode with some clips from other guests where I’ll go through why I originally started this podcast and why I’m now restarting the show, thoughts on why we travel, reinvention, curiosity, different perspectives on places, especially when we are outsiders, as well as finding beauty closer to home, and of course, memento mori.
I would love to know your thoughts on the show, or about a particular episode, and I would love to see photos of where you’re listening. Right, let’s get into it.
Six years ago, in February 2019, I released the first episode of this podcast in a solo show entitled Lake Malawi, Jerusalem, and Blue Water Sailing to Vanuatu. The Three Trips That Changed My Life — and I’m going to play the opening clip as it relates to why I am restarting the show again now.
“This show is all about reinvention, which is also part of what travel means to me.
When I think about what I want to do with my life for the next 10 years — I like to think about the 10 year span because if we commit to doing things for 10 years, amazing stuff happens that we may never have expected.
So when I think about my life, the main thing that stays the same is books and travel. These are the things I come back to again and again. The things I truly, truly love.
I’m also fascinated by the inner and outer journeys that both books and travel can bring — a change in perspective, an empathy. Perhaps an entirely new direction in your life because of something you’ve read or somewhere you’ve been or something you’ve experienced. If you know what I mean,

Why is resilience such an important part of pilgrimage? How can embracing the challenge of the way help in daily life? Why do we need to heed the call to pilgrimage before it’s too late?
I’m Jo Frances Penn and in this episode, I share some clips from podcast interviews I’ve done around my new book, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. Thanks to Travel Writing World with Jeremy Bassetti, Into the Woods with Holly Worton, and Sacred Steps with Kevin Donahue, podcasts you will enjoy as listeners to this show.
As this goes out, Pilgrimage is available now in a special limited edition signed hardback, as well as a paperback, ebook, audiobook narrated by me, large print edition, and a workbook.

In this episode, I talk about: 

Which were the three ancient ways I walked and why they’re interesting even if you’re not religious
What I learned along the way
The three types of energy you need at the different stages 
How pilgrimage reminds us we are animals, and how it gives a much-needed perspective on life.


In this first clip from the Travel Writing World podcast with Jeremy Bassetti, I talk about the specific pilgrimages I walked and why they’re interesting, even if you’re not religious. 
Jeremy Bassetti: The book is called Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways.
What were the three pilgrimage routes that you took during your walking adventures?
Jo Frances Penn: So, I did the Pilgrims’ Way first, which is from Southwark Cathedral in London to Canterbury Cathedral in the southeast of England. And that’s the route of The Canterbury Tales, which I’m sure people have heard of, medieval tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and it was about visiting the shrine of Thomas Becket who was martyred under Henry II.
And it was the pandemic and it was also the 850-year anniversary of the Becket martyrdom. So that kind of helped me decide to do that one. I couldn’t go and do the Camino during the pandemic because of course we couldn’t travel. And also, I’d highly recommend it as an easy route for a first multi-day solo.
Then the second one was the St Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose in Scotland to Lindisfarne, Holy Island on the northeast coast of England. And St. Cuthbert was a medieval monk and a bishop. And, I wrote about Lindisfarne in my thriller Day of the Vikings, so I really wanted to do that and that was a spectacular route. I highly recommend the Cuthbert’s.
Then finally there was the Camino, a goal I’ve had for several decades, and I did the Camino de Santiago Portuguese Coastal route from Porto in Portugal, up to Santiago De Compostela. I feel like the Camino is quite mythical for many people and certainly for me.
And when I had COVID the year before, in 2021,

How can walking in the path of history put life in perspective? How can you find a glimpse of the divine in unexpected places?
In this episode, I share two chapters from my book, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. You can buy the audiobook, as well as the special edition hardback, paperback and ebook, at www.JFPenn.com/pilgrimage


Walking in the path of history puts life in perspective

“Nothing ever is, everything is becoming… All things are passing and nothing abides.” —Heraclitus

On each of my three pilgrimages, I encountered places where I was aware of walking through history, where there was a sense of life being but a brief flash of light across the span of time. My passing on each route was momentary, but pilgrims have walked the same ways for hundreds of years and will continue to walk for generations to come.
The three historic cathedrals are must-visit locations — Southwark Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral on the Pilgrims’ Way, and the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela at the end of the Camino. Each has their splendours, and it’s worth allowing extra time to visit them. In the same way, the ruined abbey of Lindisfarne and its associated church are insights into history — but these are all obvious highlights.
Here are some other places where I felt a historical perspective.
Mosaic mural on the Old Kent Road, London, England
The first day’s walk on the Pilgrims’ Way from Southwark Cathedral is through gritty, urban sprawl along a main road, dense with traffic. It might not look like much, but this is the Old Kent Road, originally built by the Romans, linking London to the coast near Dover, and later renamed Watling Street by the Anglo-Saxons.
At a busy corner with Peckham Park Road, under the overhanging porch of the Everlasting Arms Ministry, lies a gigantic thousand-square-foot mosaic mural. The History of Old Kent Road by Adam Kossowski has separate panels, each portraying an era of history. The foundation of the city by Romans in their togas surrounded by soldiers with military standards, then medieval London with Chaucer’s pilgrims heading for Canterbury and a quote from the poem. King Henry V rides in triumph along the road after the battle of Agincourt, followed by the rebellion of Jack Cade against the government. King Charles II reclaims the throne in the next panel, and then modern London emerges with its British ‘bobby’ policeman, Pearly Kings and Queens with their mother-of-pearl button suits, and the factories of the city with modern cars driving along.
The mural encapsulates two thousand years of history and yet most pass by without realising that the stones they drive over or walk along have witnessed such historical events.
The artist himself represents another aspect of modern history. Adam Kossowski was Polish and arrived in the UK as a refugee from the Soviet labour camps in 1943. As well as this mural, he created many other artistic works, including the History of the Carmelites of Aylesford, at the abbey, which also lies on the Pilgrims’ Way and where he was buried after his death in 1986.
Lesnes Abbey, London, England
The ruins of twelfth-century Lesnes Abbey (pronounced ‘lane’) lie on the Pilgrims’ Way in an ancient woodland in east London. Founded in 1178 by the Chief Justiciar to Henry II,

In this wide-ranging interview, Emily Thomas talks about the importance of perspective and time in travel writing, how sublime moments of pleasurable terror make travel so interesting, how to overcome fears both real and imaginary, as well as the ethics of doom tourism, and how VR (virtual reality) might change how we travel in future.

Dr. Emily Thomas is an associate professor in philosophy at Durham University in England. She’s also the author of several books, including The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad.

* Traveling is about experiencing otherness, going to places that are new and unfamiliar and trying to figure out how to make sense of them
* Sublime moments in travel as a kind of pleasurable terror
* Tackling fears, both real and imagined
* Research before a trip, and arriving in Malawi, Africa
* How do travel books blur the line between fiction and nonfiction, and why is this so important to address stereotypes
* “There is no view from nowhere.” Perspective in travel writing
* Maps as processes, and how they change over time. The importance of knowing ‘when’ a book was written and the perspective of the writer.
* Doom tourism
* How VR (virtual reality) might improve aspects of travel, and what we want to keep as in-person experiences
* Recommended travel books

You can find Emily at www.EmilyThomasWrites.co.uk and on Twitter @emilytwrites
Shareable and header image generated by Jo Frances Penn on Midjourney.

Transcript of interview (lightly edited)
Jo Frances Penn
Dr. Emily Thomas is an associate professor in philosophy at Durham University in England. She’s also the author of several books, including The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad, which we’re talking about today. So welcome, Emily.
Emily Thomas
Hello. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Jo Frances Penn
I’m excited to talk about this topic.
What drew you to write a book about travel and philosophy, since one seems quite internal, and the other one quite external?
Emily Thomas
That’s right. So I have been a professional philosopher for more than 10 years, but far longer than that I have been a backpacker. So I did buckets of traveling when I was younger. And at some point, when I was writing about philosophy, I began wondering, does philosophy have anything to say about travel? Is there some way that I can bring these two parts of my life together, and I started doing some research. And to my delight, I found that philosophy has lots to say about travel. And that was how the book was born.
Jo Frances Penn
What does travel mean to you?
Emily Thomas
For me, traveling is all about experiencing otherness. It’s all about going to places that are new and unfamiliar. And trying to figure out how to make sense of them, how to map them on to the world that you do know.
My best travel experiences have actually been ones where I have gone to some place where I haven’t understood anything around me. Not not the language, not what’s going on in the street, not the social cues and I have very slowly, by reading and talking to people, come to put the pieces together and come to understand the place.
Jo Frances Penn
That’s interesting. So you have otherness and the new and the unfamiliar. Does that mean that for you, traveling say within England, doesn’t count as travel?
Emily Thomas
There are definitely places within England that I don’t know at all and might give me that travel unfamiliarity experience. But you’re right,

How can we adopt an untethered attitude to life, especially when it comes to expectations of travel? C.L. Stambush talks about how her experience of motor-cycling around India taught her more about herself, and how she brings that to her daily life. We also talk about connecting with people across cultural and language barriers, when taking risks is worth it, and how we need to keep pushing the boundaries of our comfort zone to live a more expansive life.

C.L. Stambush is an award-winning writer, journalist, editor and author of Untethered: A Woman’s Search for Self on the Edge of India.
Show notes

* Taking risks and discovering that life improves because of it
* Riding alone on a motorcycle around India
* Breaking down barriers when we travel to different cultures
* Getting over our fears around traveling
* If we are not pushing forward, are we sliding backward?
* Cultivating an untethered state of mind
* Recommended travel books

You can find C.L. Stambush at clstambush.com
Header and shareable image generated by Jo Frances Penn on Midjourney and edited on DALL-E.

Transcript of the interview
Joanna: C.L. Stambush is an award-winning writer, journalist, editor, and author of Untethered: A Woman’s Search for Self on the Edge of India. Welcome, Connie.
Connie: Thank you. I’m excited to be here, Jo.
Joanna: This is such an interesting topic.
You traveled around the edge of India by motorcycle back in the late 90s. Why did you choose that trip in particular, what led to that happening, especially back then, when it really wasn’t so common?
Connie: That journey was a long time in the coming. I would date it all the way back to when I was in kindergarten or first grade when I was very shy kid and I just hugged the wall and kept one shoulder to the wall at all times. But as I became aware of what I was doing, I didn’t like this aspect of myself. I felt like I was really losing out on engaging in life, because I just kind of watched it from the sidelines.
So over the years, I wanted to become braver and put myself in situations like forcing myself to stay up and watch scary movies or get past this very scary stuffed bear in the museum alone, and just kept pushing myself farther and farther. By the time I got to India, which is in itself a very long, convoluted story, I was working for a pharmaceutical company, and they were downsizing.
I never imagined that I would leave the United States. And I literally had this overnight revelation where I just woke up the next morning and said, I quit. I sold everything that I had, I bought a backpack, flipped a coin, bought a one-way ticket, landed in Germany, and kind of went, ‘Oh, I didn’t really have a plan or anything as to what I would do.’
From there, I progressed on through Europe and then Eastern Europe and then the Middle East. I wound up working in India as an editor for a wire service, the women’s feature service and then when that contract ended, I decided I was ready to leave Delhi but I was not ready to leave India.
I didn’t want to see India on India’s public transportation. So the motorcycle seemed the most obvious thing for me to do, because everybody had a Royal Enfield Bullet. You have this wonderful bump, bump, bump sound. And it just called out to me. So I decided, I’m just going to do this.
Joanna: We’re going to go back into the book, but I just have to ask as a child, you decided to become braver and force yourself to try these things. And then, like you said, you quit, you sold everything. There’s definitely something in your personality that makes decisions quickly, and then does these difficult things.

In September 2022, I walked the Camino de Santiago along the Portuguese Coastal route. It was around 300 kilometers from Porto in Portugal north along the coast and then inland to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, which took 14 days of back-to-back walking.
I walked alone and carried my pack with everything in it, and I organized my accommodation through Macs Adventure so I knew where I was sleeping every night. I’ve posted a day by day breakdown of the route and my gear list separately, and in this episode, I go through some of my lessons and thoughts from the Way. 
Show notes

How walking in the path of history puts life in perspective
If you’ve lost direction in life, pilgrimage can help
Pilgrimage proves you can do hard things, and that knowledge helps back in your daily life
A fusion of sacred and secular
The Camino is an industry — and it always has been
Your Camino, your way. Practical considerations and tips.
Why I needed these last years of walking alone across a seasonal change in my life

You’ll find additional reflections and tips in Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, out now at jfpenn.com/pilgrimage.

(1) Walking in the path of history puts life in perspective
The cathedral at Santiago de Compostela is almost a thousand years old, and pilgrims have been walking there since medieval times from all over Europe. I started in Porto, Portugal, with its historic center and cathedral on the banks of the river Douro. 
The route heads north along the coastline past Roman fish-salting vats, and at Matasinhos, there is a sculpture of women wailing as they look out to wrecked boats on the horizon where their fishermen husbands lie beneath the waves. Life retains a familiar rhythm through the ages and some aspects of being human never change.
Walking every day shrinks life down to its basic elements. Eat, sleep, walk.
You appreciate the simple things — shelter from the rain and wind, a hot shower after a long day, painkillers and blister plasters, coffee in the first few hours of the day, or a cold beer when the sun is high, local bread and olive oil when you’re hungry, an encouraging smile from another pilgrim.
Once you step away and see how other people live, and experience being uncomfortable, or in pain, somewhere you can’t control your environment, it’s easier to be grateful for what you have and what you will return to. It’s easy to take these comforts for granted until we lose them, even temporarily.
I travel partly because it helps me see how insignificant I am on the face of the world, and walking intensifies this feeling as it is so slow. When I look at a map at the end of the day, I see I have only crossed a tiny part of a tiny area in a little corner of the world. I can only move at my pace, which for me is what English walkers call ‘bimbling,’ a relaxed gait, stopping regularly for photos, notes, or coffee when available. 
When at home, the daily grind of life makes everything feel important and urgent. It’s easy to get stressed about a deadline or the emails that pile up, or the jobs that always need doing. Perspective narrows, even as we worry about the bigger things we can’t control — the economy, war, disease.
When on pilgrimage, I am just another human walking on the face of the world, a tiny speck in the grand scheme of things, a flash of light, gone so quickly.
The waves of the Atlantic will continue to crash on the shores after my footsteps are washed...

From the silver mines of empire to lithium mining under gigantic salt flats, Bolivia has played a significant part in history and is now shaping the future of green technology. Shafik Meghji talks about the diversity of the country from its landscape to its people and religious ceremonies, as well as recommended places to visit, and books to read.

Shafik Meghji is an award-winning travel writer, journalist, and author, specializing in Latin America and South Asia. He has co-authored more than 40 guidebooks. His latest book is Crossed Off the Map: Travels in Bolivia.
Show notes

* Bolivia’s geographical diversity and recommended places to visit, including the largest salt flats in the world
* The unexpected ways Bolivia has influenced and shaped the world
* Indigenous culture and architecture
* Festivals and other religious and cultural events, including the dance of the devils and the witches’ market
* Balancing the desire to travel with environmental responsibility
* Recommended books about Bolivia

You can find Shafik Meghji at ShafikMeghji.com

Transcript of the interview
Joanna: Shafik Meghji is an award winning travel writer, journalist, and author, specializing in Latin America and South Asia. He has co-authored more than 40 guidebooks. His latest book is Crossed Off the Map: Travels in Bolivia. Welcome, Shafik.
Shafik: Thanks, Jo. It’s a pleasure to be chatting to you. Looking forward to talking about all things Bolivia.
Joanna: Let’s start with the basics, just in case people don’t know.
Where is Bolivia? And what are some of its unique characteristics in terms of geography and climate?
Shafik: Partly, as the title of my book alludes to, a lot of people who aren’t familiar with South America or Bolivia specifically, would find it difficult to place. It’s essentially right in the heart of South America. It’s bounded by five different countries; Brazil, and Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, and Chile.
It’s incredibly geographically and climatically diverse, so it’s landlocked, but apart from the sea, it has the world’s largest salt flat, it has massive payotes due to the Lake Titicaca, which I’m sure lots of people have heard of.
It has some of the highest mountains on earth, of course, the Andes, it’s got part of the Panama Canal, which is the world’s largest tropical wetland, which he shares with Brazil, around a third of it lies within the Amazon basin. There are foothills and there are low-lands. There’s desert-like landscapes, this huge metropolis, like cities is incredibly diverse, and the climate ranges from absolutely freezing to sweltering. And you can sometimes experience both of those in the same day.
Joanna: How brilliant. We’re going to come back to some of these places.
How did you come to travel so much to Bolivia? And what’s your personal link there?
Shafik: I think like a lot of places and destinations that people come to love, it was really just by chance, it was a bit of an accident. I started off my career as a news desk sports journalist, and then slowly got fed up with that and resigned, and went backpacking around India, and then around South America.
I was really at that point, just in the highlights, I wanted to go to Rio for Carnival, and I had a wonderful time there.
Joanna: Of course.
Shafik: Of course, it’s impossible not to and really I only planned to spend a few weeks there and ended up spending a couple of months. But after that I’ve managed to drag myself away and I wanted to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, The Classic Gringo Trail stuff.