Welcome to Action Packed Travel! Our podcast features amazing travel stories...without having to go anywhere. The episodes are interviews with people who've been inspired by their adventures. They're also full of information and useful links, all of which you can find on our Show Notes. Our podcast can be used for future travel ideas and plans for the days when we can explore the world again! About us: we're Felice & Peter Hardy and we’ve spent half a lifetime travelling to just about every corner of the world, making a living as travel writers out of what we like doing best – and that’s skiing, biking, hiking, eating, exploring, city breaks, seaside…and a whole lot more. We've had lots of favourable reviews, such as: "What an interesting and diverse world you are opening up for us in a nicely laid back way. Very informative and some are also wonderful archive material."
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 Support the show
4/28/25 • 45:42
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 Support the show
3/19/25 • 33:27
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 Support the show
2/28/25 • 30:34
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. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
1/30/25 • 30:36
Travel writer and author of My Family and Other Enemies, Mary Novakovich, explores her homeland, including the hinterland of Croatia most foreigners never visit. Music: © Barney and Izzi HardySupport the show
12/20/24 • 34:27
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.Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
11/13/24 • 35:27
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. Music: Barney & Izzi HardySupport the show
10/23/24 • 36:43
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. Music: © Barney & Izzi HardySupport the show
9/29/24 • 35:10
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. Music © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
8/27/24 • 22:16
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. Music: © Barney & Izzy Hardy Support the show
7/30/24 • 35:59
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.Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
6/30/24 • 25:27
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. Support the show
5/22/24 • 31:36
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. Support the show
4/29/24 • 28:59
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. Support the show
3/24/24 • 23:41
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. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
2/6/24 • 19:36
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. Support the show
1/2/24 • 21:07
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.Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
12/2/23 • 21:42
Jess Isbrecht is a digital nomad who travels full time with her horses. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
11/27/23 • 17:09
Harry Mitsidis has travelled to every country in the world, at least twice. He's the founder of a website called NomadMania.Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
11/5/23 • 31:51
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.Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
10/27/23 • 23:03
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.Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
9/28/23 • 33:15
We're on the road exploring a thriving sector of the travel industry that continues to explode in popularity across Europe. Music © Barney and Izzi Hardy Support the show
9/9/23 • 25:43
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 Support the show
8/27/23 • 28:31
This week, we're talking to travel guru, Amin Momen, whose London-based company Momentum Ski organises bespoke holidays. Music © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
8/15/23 • 27:15
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.Music © Barney & Izzi HardySupport the show
7/17/23 • 31:19
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. Music © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
7/1/23 • 27:32
Chris and his girlfriend Phoebe are in the saddle, for what you might describe by any standards as a rather long bike ride.Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
6/21/23 • 32:16
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. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy Support the show
5/28/23 • 21:28
Tom Kevill-Davies has managed to carve a highly successful career for himself out of his twin passions, cycling and eating. Music © Barney & Izzi HardySupport the show
5/19/23 • 28:25
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.Support the show
5/9/23 • 26:33
