A new travel podcast that is more pub fireside story than where-to-go guide launches with a tale of two cyclists. The Rough Guide to Everywhere (Rough Guides, iTunes) features Dervla Murphy, who cycled overland from Ireland to Delhi in 1963, and a more modern traveller, twentysomething Charlie Walker, back from four years cycling around the world. Friendly Rough Guides travel editor Greg Dickinson presides over their chat with minimal interruption, as inspired by their memories as listeners will be.
Now in her 80s, Murphy is a delight, and very much part of the no-fuss generation, who takes being chased by wolves in her stride. She was always desperate to travel, but it wasn’t until her mother died that she felt she could. At the age of 30, she says: “I was off.” On the road, she found it “more convenient” to pretend to be a man. “There weren’t that many women wandering around,” she explains.
Murphy gifted her daughter Rachel with a love of travel by celebrating her fifth birthday in South India and taking her to Peru, where she walked 1,600 miles at the age of nine. “I detest hotels,” Murphy says, with a passion. She’s a woman living life to the full.
“Did you ever find that sense of pointlessness when you were cycling?” asks Dickinson.
“Never,” she answers. “I just enjoyed myself!”
By contrast, Walker brings out the big guns when it comes to dramatic storytelling. Boredom motivated his round-the-world journey on a bicycle, along with the idea that being a rugged traveller would help him attract women. “I got lost in a blizzard on a plateau in Tibet,” is his opening gambit. “It was like being in a loud, windy purgatory. I was trudging through shin-deep snow and my feet had gone completely numb to the point where I felt like I was just walking on my ankles. It was the first time in my life when I thought I could die.”
At just over half an hour long, The Rough Guide to Everywhere delivers a punchy enough listen for a commute. Naturally, any travel podcast has to mention the ubiquitous hygge, so that’s coming up along with more great guests, including Ruby Wax.
If you like this, try … Travel Tales.
