Penguin presents the audiobook edition of East of Croydon written and read by Sue Perkins. A few years ago I was asked if I'd like to make a documentary on the Mekong River, travelling from the vast delta in Vietnam to the remote and snowy peaks of Tibet. Up until that point, the farthest East I'd been was Torremolinos, in the Costa Del Sol. Here's...

A classic of travel writing, In Morocco is Edith Wharton's remarkable account of her journey to that country during World War I. With her characteristic sense of adventure, Wharton set out to explore Morocco and its people, traveling by military jeep to Rabat, Moulay Idriss, Fez, and Marrakech, from the Atlantic coast to the high Atlas. Along the w...

In May 2018, former Monty Python stalwart and intrepid globetrotter Michael Palin spent two weeks in the notoriously secretive Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a cut-off land without internet or phone signal, where the countryside has barely moved beyond a centuries-old peasant economy but where the cities have gleaming skyscrapers and luxuri...

In the autumn of 1988 Michael Palin set out to circumnavigate the world, following the route taken by Phileas Fogg 115 years earlier. He had to make the journey in 80 days - accompanied by a BBC film crew - using only forms of transport that would have been available to Fogg. Their voyage took them from the opulence of the Orient Express to the ste...

Until the early 1990s, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, travelling behind the iron curtain was never easy. In undertaking his new journey through Eastern Europe, breathing in its rich history and exquisite sights, and talking to its diverse peoples, Palin fills what has been a void in his own experience and that of very many others. This au...

When Suzanna Clarke and her husband bought a dilapidated house in the Moroccan town of Fez, their friends thought they were mad. Located in a maze of donkey-trod alleyways, the house - a traditional riad - was beautiful but in desperate need of repair. Walls were in danger of collapse, the plumbing non-existent. While neither Suzanna nor her husban...

One summer, Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way - a challenging 256-mile route usually approached from south to north, with the sun, wind and rain at your back. However, he resolved to tackle it back to front, walking home towards the Yorkshire village where he was born, travelling as a 'modern troubadour', without a penny in his pockets...

Until 1991, foreigners were only allowed along the Trans-Siberian railway. Colin Thubron searches for the `core of Siberia', Russia's wild east - and encounters Mongol shamans; the 2,500,000- year-old mummified remains of a princess; sweaty 85 degree temperatures and Akademogorodok, an abandoned city where a lone professor experiments with cosmic c...

On the 29th May 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made history as they took their first triumphant steps on the top of the world. On 16 May 1998, Bear Grylls followed those same footsteps, achieving a childhood dream and entering the Guinness Book of Records, as the youngest Briton, at 23, to summit Mount Everest. Taken from his bestselling au...

Down Your Way was a BBC radio series from 1946 to 1992, on the Home Service and then on BBC Radio Four. It visited towns around the United Kingdom and spoke to residents . Sometimes being described as having portrayed an increasingly outmoded and rose-tinted view of Britain concentrating on market towns with pre-industrial roots and ignoring indust...

Knitting aficionado and notable artisan Clara Parkes delves into her storied travels with this inspiring and witty New York Times bestselling memoir on a creative life enriched by her adventures around the world. Building on the success of The Yarn Whisperer, Parkes's rich personal essays invite listeners and devoted crafters on excursions to be sa...

Victoria's irreverent pilgrimage takes her to key places around the world that also share her namesake, from Fort Victoria in Ghana, to Victoria, Nova Scotia, and finishing at Zambia's Victoria Falls. Victoria's adventure is fuelled by her fascination with the Queen Victoria - both her public and private persona. She explores how Victoria felt abou...

On 23rd September 1878, Stevenson set out on an 11 day tour of the Cervennes with his recalcitrant donkey, Modestine, following completion of his writings in the French town of Monastier. His natural affinity for France, his appreciation of its landscape, and his enthusiasm for the French way of life as well as his account of the conflict between t...

In the summer of 1986, two Cambridge history undergraduates set out on Marco Polo's famous journey across Central Asia to the city of Xanadu in Mongolia. This account traces their experiences in the war-torn Middle East and along 1500 miles of the Silk Road to their eventual destination.

'Bitter Lemons' is Durrell's paen to the beauty and mystery of Cyprus, from the romance of the characters living in Bellapaix where Durrell bought a house, to the beauty of the mountain ranges and the excitement of the slow but gradual uprising of the Greek Cypriots who are determined to achieve 'Enosis' - union with Greece and freedom from British...

In September 2014 the wreck of a sailing vessel was discovered at the bottom of the sea in the frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic. It was broken at the stern and covered in a woolly coat of underwater vegetation. Its whereabouts had been a mystery for over a century and a half. Its name was HMS Erebus. Now Michael Palin - former Monty Python stal...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, read by Anne Reid. Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years is terminally ill, the couple lose their home and their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South Wes...

Sir Samuel White Baker, (b. 8 June 1821 - d. 30 December 1893) was a British explorer, officer, naturalist, big game hunter, engineer, writer and abolitionist. This account of a big game encounter is a thrilling testimony that relays the sights, smells and especially sounds of a nineteenth-century hunting experience.

Peter Fleming, brother of the author Ian, tells the story of his journey from England via the Trans-Siberian Express to China, and his subsequent attempts to become the first Westerner to reach the anti-communist front.

Michael Palin is off to the Sahara Desert. From a starting point in Gibralter, he makes his way to Morocco, then over the Atlas Mountains to the little-known countries of Mauritiana, Mali and Chad. He journies on the longest train in the world and travels with nomadic herders, finally returning to the classical remains of Tunisia - where the Monty...

Join the intrepid Michael Palin as he embarks on a comic race against time, travelling from the North Pole to the South Pole. As he crosses 16 countries by train, truck, raft, Ski-Doo, barge, balloon and bicycle, he experiences a fascinating range of characters and landscapes whilst his own endurance is tested to the limit.