ActionPacked

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 Support the show

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

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

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

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

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 Hardy

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

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

Send us a textSophia 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 Hardy

Send us a Text Message.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 

Send us a Text Message.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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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 

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. 

We catch up with Rory Dixon who organises skiing-touring trips off a boat in Norway.Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy 

Jess Isbrecht is a digital nomad who travels full time with her horses.  Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy 

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 

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 

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 

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 

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 

This week, we're talking to travel guru, Amin Momen, whose London-based company Momentum Ski organises bespoke holidays. Music © Barney & Izzi Hardy 

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 Hardy

This week, 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. 

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 

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 

Tom Kevill-Davies has managed to carve a highly successful career for himself out of his twin passions, cycling and eating. Music © Barney & Izzi Hardy

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.

Globally, there's just a handful of specialist Courchevel operators who look after their guests on this giddy level. London-based Consensio is the leader of the pack. 

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. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy 

Action woman extraordinary – mountain and ocean photographer, skier and freediver, Melody lives her life on the edge.Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy 

It was three years ago that we launched our podcast and today we're in a village that dates back to 1930. It is now evolving into what should become one of the most important  future destinations for skiers in the whole of Europe. 

The island of Jersey's top five-star hotel is a very special place indeed. 

We went on a lightning tour of some of the crumbling coastal defences linked by a network of underground passages and even an underground German hospital.

A vast ski area, environmentally-friendly chalets, and birds of prey are just a few of the attractions of Morzine.

With its glorious terraced houses, tree-lined promenades and grand public buildings, Cheltenham in Gloucestershire is said to be the most complete Regency town in Britain. Of course, it's best known these days for horse racing. 

We first visited in summer and are now looking forward to better weather to come when we can explore the gardens of The Newt once again – all 17 acres of them.

Jacob Perkins' idea of fun is to travel down a mountainside in a straight line, reaching  impossible speeds of up to 150mph without any form of motor. 

For the past 40 years, Richard Kay has been the expert on the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and has travelled the world to report on the comings and goings of the Royal Family.

The village of Lacock was once a quaint medieval community with cobbled streets,  cottages and coaching inns set around a tumbling stream. It all looks rather familiar because we've seen it in the cinema, movie theatre and TV screens – scenes from Pride and Prejudice, Downton Abbey and Harry Potter were all shot in Lacock. Music © Barney & Izzi Hardy 

High in the central Pyrenees, a one-hour drive from Toulouse Airport, we're in search of big and beautiful brown bears. Music © Barney & Izzi Hardy 

Explore a world of polar bears and icebergs, or cross the Atlantic to forgotten corners of the Caribbean. You need the right spirit, but absolutely no previous seafaring experience is necessary. 

This week, we're taking an intimate look at one of Austria's largest, most diverse and exciting ski areas. 

We loved last year's episode featuring Geraldine Fasnacht so much that we've decided to air it again.  Geraldine's idea of a little light, adrenaline-fuelled recreation is to climb one of Europe's highest peaks and then dive off it in a wing suit at speeds of up to 180 kilometers per hour. Music © Barney & Izzi Hardy 

The future of Marston Park is at risk due to planning permission controversy. Listen here to see if you'd like to support it. 

Legendary explorer, John Blashford-Snell is never happier than when he finds himself astride an elephant in India or paddling a dugout canoe in the South American rainforest, or shooting rapids in the crocodile-infested waters of the Nile.Music @ Barney and Izzi Hardy

Most people don't truly appreciate the glory of the Alps that's revealed when the snow melts, the cows leave their winter quarters and chew the cud in meadows and high pastures sprinkled with flowers. They also fight each other!Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy 

Another watery sport for this hot weather is powerboat racing, which is said to be the fastest growing marine motor sport. Music: © Barney & Izzi Hardy