Bridget Jones Author Helen Fielding | Why You NEED to Visit the Grand Canyon!

0:00You're listening to Travel Secrets with Tanya Rose, the podcast that shares wisdom for fellow travelers.

0:09Welcome to Travel Secrets with me, Tanya Rose, the podcast sharing wisdom for fellow travelers. Each week, I ask my guests to reveal their six travel secrets and the holidays and adventures that surround them. I would just like to say thank you to Mason Rose, the sales and communication agency that represents some of the finest hotels around the world for partnering with Travel Secrets the podcast. Today my guest is the wonderful journalist, novelist, screenwriter and creator of our beloved Bridget Jones. Today my guest is the wonderful Helen Fielding. That's nice, thank you. Welcome to Travel Secrets.

0:50I have been watching every Bridget film all weekend. My husband kept coming down saying what are you watching now and I said another Bridget Jones and He said, how many times have you watched it? And I said, so many times, I know every word. Oh, my goodness. They are absolutely wonderful. And I sat sobbing at the last one. It was just so wonderful. Well, I don't know whether to apologize or thank you. It was really heartfelt, wonderful tears, tears of joy and sadness. I loved it. And it's done so well, hasn't it? People do seem to have related to it. And I'm really pleased about that because it wasn't a cynical exercise.

1:26it wasn't let's just make another one um I think I've always been very protective of the character and I wrote actually wrote the screenplay in the pandemic when our family had lost people and but so had everybody's so I think it perhaps resonated because it's you know everyone has gone through that experience and as it says life has its white notes and life has its black notes and you have to rock and roll with it and surf through it. And you still stay the same person. So she's still Bridget. But like anyone, she's gone through tough times as well as fun times. And so I was really pleased that people went with that and didn't just want someone falling over or, you know, making blue soup.

2:18No, well, which was wonderful. The blue soup was wonderful. I'm sure I've got a friend who's done that as well. but it really was lovely and I am actually in love with Colin Firth so that was probably part of the reason that I was crying I can't separate Colin Firth and Mark Darcy and Mr Darcy they're just the same no I can't and actually I think I read when you wrote Bridget Jones you had him very much in mind oh yes because I wrote it as a column in the newspaper and then the BBC's Pride and Prejudice was showing at the same time and the streets were silent on Sunday nights everyone was in love with Mr Darcy slash Colin Firth so I just found the column turning into Pride and Prejudice and the hero turning into Mark Darcy slash Mr Darcy slash Colin so when the movie came along that was the one person I said it really has to be he has to be Mr Darcy and he really was perfect wasn't he perfect perfect and actually I interviewed Keely Hawks a few weeks ago on this podcast and I'm going to be doing Matthew McFadden her husband in a few weeks time and we were talking about Pride and Prejudice because obviously he was Mr Darcy and I said was he before Colin or after she went oh no no absolutely after and he really thinks that he Colin Firth is the epitome that's so sweet he's supposed to be a very nice man so let's go into your travel secrets but before we do perhaps you can just give us a taste who tell us about yourself and how travel has impacted the person that you've become it's a huge part of my life travel I love traveling I was a journalist for years and years freelance journalist and I used to do as much travel writing as I could and whenever I got a check I used to run off somewhere with it and spend it and I remember going home to my home in Yorkshire in the years before you could just google everywhere with just armfuls of brochures so I've always loved travel um it's very much a part of my life you know Bridget was always into mini breaks and holidays and I just like exploring and I like seeing how different people live and what the world's like and having adventures I love it and you grew up in Yorkshire I grew up in Yorkshire yeah and did you go on holiday when you were a child yes I mean one of the I remember one of the most surprising things when I was little was realizing that spaghetti was not orange from tins from hindsight that it was white because we we lived in quite a sooty place we lived next to a textile mill but my parents were quite they had no money but they were quite glam and adventurous and we had this dormobile and my dad converted it so we could sleep in it and then mum used to collect tins in the dormobile all year and then we'd go off for three weeks to the continent as it was called and we just we just went everywhere and it was amazing really because we never knew where we were going to wake up the next morning we'd go to sleep and dad would just carry on driving and mum would say let's stop here let's stop here and he'd say no no and then he'd find somewhere right at the top of a mountain and we'd wake up in the morning with this amazing view of the Italian lakes or it could be anywhere how lovely and it was what was great was that I think I'm very high low with everything like with clothes or with travel like I don't have to stay in a posh hotel it's just got to have some charm and I think it comes from that because my dad did know some of the mill owners who used to stay in those big fancy Italian lakes hotels and we would be in the dormobile and one time we got invited for lunch in one of these places and me and my siblings hated it because it was so formal but then we'd go back in the dorm bill and we'd park it and open the back doors right onto the lake and my mum who was a cookery teacher would cook the same food and then we'd just eat it sitting by the lake so I think I got a sense of just the freedom of being able to move and if the weather was bad dad would say well let's drive over the Alps we'll you know we'll go somewhere else where the weather's good so I still have that freewheeling approach to travel and it was wonderful and also it was part of my motivation to write because I used to read a lot of Jackie Collins and I always thought if I was a writer I could have a swimming pool that was the first time I saw open air swimming pools because we used to as a special treat go to a campsite sometimes that had an outdoor pool um so when I first went to LA on a book tour I remember staying at the Beverly Hilton and looking out over the hills and seeing all these houses with swimming pools and thinking it's actually possible here you know and did you do that do you know what I did because it wasn't the first time I went to LA but when the Bridget thing happened at that time for the price of a flat in notting hill you could actually buy a house with a pool except the one that i bought was like a film set it was as they say in yorkshire all fur coat no knickers so as soon as it rained the roof fell in and basically everything broke but it was in a beautiful spot and um you had a lovely swimming pool how wonderful that that was your motivation and you were there.

8:07Obviously it was literary things as well and the love of the written word and but yeah pools as well. How fantastic. Well let's go into your travel secrets. Let's start with what's the most unexpected travel experience that you've ever had? Well apart from the spaghetti which was very surprising. I think I went through a phase when I was a backpacker so I worked at the BBC for about 10 years when I left college and then I just it was time to you know break free and have my gap car which I'd never had before and I went with a girlfriend a couple of girlfriends we went on different trips and I went to Central America with one friend we kept meeting boys like Bob and Matt and Rick and Duane in Honduras but Rick and Duane were diving instructors so they kind of taught us how to dive it was all very informal and probably against the rules not Paddy certificate no but they took us down to this cliff underwater cliff that was a thousand foot cliff and you could just roll just roll in the water and so it was like discovering a whole other universe a whole other aspect of the world under the water so I've always loved diving I love the water I love looking at it being in it being on it um but I love diving so I got I did get certified after the whole Rick and Dwayne episode person.

9:46That was the first unexpected. Yes I had no idea that you could that there was that whole world under the water and that you could breathe and be in it. How lovely. I love it. That wasn't where you got marooned on a desert island or something. Yes it was at the same time. Well yes because Rick and Dwayne said they would take us. Dwayne had long long lank hair. It was sort of a a bit beavis and butthead really, but Rick and Dwayne wanted to take us to an island for a picnic. So we got to this island and then it rained and then a storm was coming and then the boat didn't come back. So we had to spend the night with Rick and Dwayne under a hut.

10:37It was very dramatic, but it was kind of great. And then we woke up in the morning and the sun came out and the boat arrived. And it was perfect. It was, yeah. I always have this thing about Zen and the art of travel because I think travel is different from a holiday. Yeah. And when you're traveling, you have to go with it. Like I was saying about the movie, and you're going to have good days and bad days and things will go wrong. But then suddenly something miraculous will happen. Or you'll go in a hotel that seems awful, but then I remember on that trip, we went to a sort of dive hotel, but then in our room, the wallpaper just said, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.

11:19And it was so sweet that we fell in love with the hotel. Oh, that's so lovely. And actually, that's very good because for the next question I was going to ask you, what is your most underrated or overrated travel experience? and I think it's quite difficult to find something that's underrated or even for you to say it out loud because most people look for the best whenever they are travelling, don't they? Underrated in an odd way for me was the Grand Canyon because usually when you go and see the wonders of the world you're like a bit disappointed. Like with the Taj Mahal, it was all scruffy round it and I just didn't feel it.

12:01But the Grand Canyon, I mean, it sounds stupid, but the thing you think is, oh, my God, it's so big, which is a bit obvious. But it's... But it could not be. It's the awesome power of nature. I just thought it was unbelievable. And the little area, the village, is tiny when you see it from the air. and we stayed in or stay in this lodge called the El Tavar which was built in 1905 it's one of the great national park lodges which are one of the great things in America and there's um it's not very expensive it's a national park lodge they have these suites which open out onto the canyon so in the morning if you stand there you see the first ray of light touch the first little dent and turn it pink.

12:57And then the whole thing, the sun gradually lights up. The whole thing. It's just, it's exquisite. I try and go there sort of in the few weeks before Christmas as often as I can. When it's snowy and quiet and it smells of mesquite, wood smoke. It's magical. And then I think the place I thought was overrated was Mykonos. so we used to go to Greece every year but we went to Corfu to the same place and then in the pandemic I'd basically been in the basement with two teenagers for three months and then they suddenly started opening up travel and I was on Expedia at night and I suddenly thought do you know what I think we could get to Mykonos tomorrow and I said to the kids just pack a backpack I'm not promising anything this probably won't work my friends thought I was crazy and we were going to end up in a prison or hospital or something and we got on a plane we flew to Barcelona where they'd obviously had a terrible lockdown and I felt like the worst mother ever and then we got on the plane the next day and fell asleep and then woke up and there was just blue sky and we made it and they just swabbed us at the airport and we had to stay in the hotel and not leave for one day we went to the St John Hotel and Villas.

14:23I still go there every year. It's in the bay where Shirley Valentine was filmed. So it has that view. There was no one there. It was like the Mykonos of 30 years ago. The town was empty. The locals were on the beaches. Everything was really cheap. There were no tourists. And it was absolutely magical. So we've gone back there pretty much every year. I don't know that hotel, the St John's Villas. St. John Hotel and Villas, and it looks over Delos, which is where, oh, God, it might be Aphrodite or similar, was born. And the famous view, you know, the sunset view. And it's just gorgeous. It's one of those white hotels tumbling down.

15:11And then there's a restaurant called Hippie Fish at the bottom, which is fun. But it's not like really Mykonos-cini. Yeah. It's quiet, and it's just beautiful. we have a lovely hotel in Mykonos called Cali Mykonos it's really nice, it opened last year it's really fabulous maybe you should try that Mykonos was much lovelier than I expected but we always stayed every year in this village called Kaminaki in Corfu in the same house which is called the Yellow House and it was just an old stone house right on the water and basically it has such memories like i'm saying the difference between travel and holidays and that was a holiday because we knew exactly what was going to happen and we'd walk along the cliff and go to the taverna in the next village and we do water skiing and you know those donuts that bounce in the water and go to the water park and the kids really went there every year when they from being babies it's so nice to go back to the same place every year and then if you have the same house even if it's not your house you know everything don't you yes you know where the restaurants are you know the kitchen you know how everything yeah you're not going to complain about anything what is the number one destination you think everyone should go to once in their lifetime honestly I say the Grand Canyon because I think it's miraculous I think that to see how did how did that happen it's like machu picchu yes yeah i mean i'm not saying everyone should go to machu picchu because i think they'd enjoy the grand canyon more because then you can go to sedona and there's a lovely enchantment resort with a spa and you know there's a whole beautiful thing machu picchu's hard but machu picchu i literally couldn't understand how they'd made it and at the end of the three hour tour i said to the guide what what do you actually think and he said honestly helen i think it was made by spacemen or aliens in all seriousness

17:22okay angels maybe i don't know but did you get altitude sickness when you went up terrible not at machu picchu but cuzco i think there was wine involved and also all the restaurants the menus was we were laughing so i went to a literary festival and there were all sorts of people there salman rushdy helped me not to get mario vargas loza mixed up with gabriel garcia marquez who was dead he saved me from that one but we also every time we ate out the menu would all be either alpaca or guinea pig so it's like alpaca stroganoff alpaca curry alpaca or guinea pig stew yeah we laughed very very funny i haven't been to machu picchu and i haven't been to the grand canyon either i feel very ashamed to say that i haven't done either but i would love to go to the grand canyon and i want to go white water rafting as well have you done that there um no i've done we went to belize and we did in sort of donut floaty donuts down a very tame river and then we all fell in and got all stuck together and it was a bit of a failure.

18:33That sounds very Bridget to me. Yeah. No, there's been a lot. I mean, a lot of the stuff in the books, travel stuff, like there was one time I went skiing and after lunch got on the button lift. I forgot to put my skis on. So I was sort of scampering up the hill and the French were saying, Mais que ce que vous faites, c 'est idiot. But things like that do happen. But that's so funny. I went skiing in Switzerland with Michael Winner once, you know, the critic. And he was the bane of my life, but I loved him and he was so nice to me. If he loved you, he loved you. If he didn't, woe betide. So every Monday he would phone me and say, right, where are you sending me this week?

19:13And he would pay wherever he went. So he could write whatever he wanted. And I used to say to the hoteliers, if you do what I tell you, you will have a great review because I know what he likes. And I went skiing with him and we went up on the chairlift and basically he wasn't skiing. so he had no skis on and I got off and he went all the way around again and I was I was skiing underneath going what are you doing he was going I'm not I don't know what to do and I actually fell over nearly broke my hip because I was laughing so much it was hysterical can you actually do that and go around yes yes he went all the way around again oh my god so then I had to meet him at the bottom and then go all the way up to the top and say right what what what what walk when we got to the other side it was really very amusing um Bridget in Thailand has have you been to Thailand did you get some inspiration from a trip that you've done there yes I went in my backpacking phase um and I went with a girlfriend who was of the military background and she was very strict um I remember we went up to Chiang Mai and some boys tried to sort of rob us and she just got all strict with them and she just said now don't be so silly put those knives away of course you're not going to rob us and take us to the village but we did go to kosamui and we she she was married and i wasn't and she had a thing about boys who have huts near one and we were not allowed to stay near boys who had huts near one or drink lots of cocktails or anything like that she was very strict but um yeah some of the stuff I did manage to break free and so some of the stuff that happened to Bridget did sort of happen a bit but you didn't get arrested and put in prison no luckily a lot of fun though I bet you did I bet you did and actually when I was watching again it really reminded me of my 30s with talking about Chardonnay at my 30th birthday my best friend wrote a poem and it was very long but there was one um little line and it said old movies of love, new movies of laughter, Chardonnay cigarettes and that bloody taramasalata because all I had in my fridge was Chardonnay and taramasalata.

21:22Classic. Every time they came around, they went, oh my God, you are Bridget Jones. I said, well, I'm sorry. Chardonnay or taramasalata or both. What's wrong with that? Exactly. And it was delicious. Delicious. I was very happy with both. That takes us nicely onto the food and drink question. food is so important in travel it's so important in life what do you like eating what do you not like eating where's your favorite restaurant what's your cocktail is your drink chardonnay my mum as I said was a cookery teacher and when I left school I was an au pair in the south of France and then I worked on a campsite in the Dordogne so the woman did sort of teach me in the campsite how to cook um but then it always goes wrong because I lose focus or I get out above myself in what I can achieve like with the soup that did happen because I had to make a bouillon or something and tie stuff together with string and I only had blue string and then he had to put cream in and I was people coming around and they were all being early and I was like fuck it be fine I just put the cream in and then when I came to serve it was blue but it was only across the string you know did they eat it yeah of course they did it was fine it's just but um the first time I had a really posh meal because basically when I was growing up we just went in the dormobile and went camping so I didn't stay in a posh hotel till I was probably 25 and I was working for the BBC and I went around America making a sort of spin-off of Top of the Pops and I really didn't know what to do in the hotel I was just very intimidated by it and also in those days you know I was sort of 25 and blonde and when I came in the doorman would be like who are you going to see what's your you know it was that era I mean honestly but um yeah so I I kind of was very used to being on a budget and I had this friend who you probably know the Reverend Richard Culls who was in the communards and when he got successfully was really generous and he took me to the Colôme d 'Or in the south of France and it's the first time I've had a really expensive bottle of wine in a wine glass that was like a bucket it was huge and I've never had food like that and I remember we had a grand marnier souffle yeah and it was one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten so then of course I started trying to make grand marnier souffle at home with varying results because I always used to have loads of people around for dinner and they just I think they just came with the entertainment value really that's very brave and we used to prop up the recipe book and say this is what it would have would have been like if it turned out right but I love that place I really love it because it's so authentic yeah I mean they have all these sort of Picassos and Matisses on the wall and I think that can't be real otherwise people would nick them surely but no they are real and I told you before we started I go there every year in August my husband's been going since 1969 the wonderful thing about it is the cupboards don't shut, the air conditioning rattles, but every single thing there is so authentic.

24:48The bar is the loveliest bar in the world, I think. And the food is very simple but delicious. Delicious. And as you say, you're sitting there and you've got a Picasso here and a Matisse there. Because they used to pay in paintings. I'll tell you where I went this year. It reminded me in some ways of that. Sahilya Fort in India. and it was renovated in I think about 2000 by Prince Richard Tolkart and it's just again it's a view and water there's this sacred river and the room you get the sunrise you get the sunset it's like all of India is there the ghats on the bank of the river are below you and people are out washing saris at sunrise and you can go out in a boat at sunset and light little candles in the river.

25:42And then the prince hosts dinner in a different part of the garden every night. And it's like a sort of dinner party every night, candlelit. Absolutely charming and inimitable in a way. And I think I love authenticity in places. and then you step out and people kept wanting to take selfies and I thought, well, maybe I'm famous. And it's just because there's hardly any European tourists. It's all local people coming to worship. And was the food delicious? Yeah. I do love Indian food. I know that when I've done some research and I've read about your mother, you said that she was a cookery teacher, which you've told us, but that she liked doing like mini things and, you know, like the cocktail sticks that Bridget's mother serves and things.

26:35So was she a bit of an inspiration about that? Well, it was very post-war. You know, they'd gone through rationing. So when they started getting food, it was all very experimental. It was all meat with fruit. In fact, there's a restaurant in St. John's Wood, which still, what's it called? Oslo Court. Have you ever been there? Oh, I have. I went last year. It does 70s food. It does like rum bar bar. And every five minutes there's a birthday and they sing happy birthday to people. Yes. And they have pavlova and there's the biggest menu that you've ever had. Yes, absolutely. And mum was hilarious.

27:12I used to take her to really fancy places when I was a restaurant reviewer. And I took her once to somewhere very posh, I won't say the name, and she bit into a profiterole and she said, well, if I'd made these, I would have considered them a failure. I'd have thrown them away and opened a tin of pears oh that's absolutely brilliant but she was right actually they were a bit soggy and actually my grandmother used to do that we used to go for Sunday lunch to her and she would always for my father open a tin of pears and evaporated milk lovely evaporated milk and raspberries delicious absolutely delicious and do you I know that you came from Yorkshire and then came down south you went to Oxford didn't you and I think I remember hearing that you said that you were a little bit confused about dinner time and lunch time and things like that.

28:03Well, in Yorkshire when I was growing up, dinner was at 12 o 'clock and supper was at sort of 6 o 'clock. And when I went to Oxford, I was asked by the tutor to go for drinks before dinner. So I turned up at noon and she was like what and then I was invited to a dinner party and I thought okay so I should wear like an evening dress well I think I it was from CNA you know um but of course it wasn't that it was spaghetti bolognese and everyone in jeans and you know candles in old wine bottles and things I just got everything wrong and didn't understand what was going on I think that's wonderful and I I remember hearing Richard Curtis saying you were such a one-off and so wonderful.

28:57Didn't he become your boyfriend or something after a play? Well, I was in the play and I was playing Marlena Dietrich. And then he came up afterwards and said, oh, I said I want to be your boyfriend. And I was like, oh, God, these public school boys. No. But then he invited me around for lunch. And then I went around to this house and there were 12 boys all living together, including Rowan Atkinson and various other of that. Oh, what fun. And they were just really nice and funny. And they said they thought I was really sophisticated until I opened my mouth, you know. But I did like, I mean, they're still friends, you know, because they were really funny.

29:38Did he do the Bridget Jones' films? No. I mean, Richard was one of the writers on the first one. On the first one. Yeah. There were four screenwriters, one of whom was Andrew Davis who did Pride and Prejudice. So, of course, it was really fun working with him because he was really interesting about how he'd plotted the BBC version because the beats of that Pride and Prejudice story are really good. So Andrew was very good. And, you know, Richard was very, we were all very close and working closely together on the first one. But there's been, some of them have had, like, numerous writers, like the baby film I think there were 12 writers but this one was pretty perhaps the closest this one and the first one the closest to my original screenplay amazing and I also read that you had when you were a journalist done something with comic relief or was that after you were a journalist you went on the first comic relief documentary or something when no when they launched comic relief i was working on the lay late breakfast show and i decided i was going to do a satellite broadcast from the sudan before they had satellites so we had to take a satellite dish on a lorry on an airplane and drive it to the refugee camp

31:09it was a bold venture very bold it was bold perhaps inconceived I don't know but to link the aid workers with their families on Christmas day and then the first two years I made the documentaries in Sudan and Ethiopia and Mozambique but I was very strict I was like the local people will speak for themselves with subtitles there'll be no human beings used as props no hugging babies no no background people they're going to be people so I was very firm about that um but we did have yeah we had some adventures and I had quite a few years where I was obsessed with Africa and I just I kept going as a journalist my sister lived in Kenya so we used to go there that's lovely um in the Rift Valley and I still I took my kids to a place called Elephant Watch Camp about five or six years ago in Samburu they were quite little I think I overdid I was like I don't want to go to a resort I want to go somewhere real but when we arrived we were the only guests and the only other people there were Samburu warriors at that moment but they turned out to be very nice and one of them had just been in Malibu he told me for a month promoting the camp so nothing is quite what it seems but it was a great place and did your kids love it yeah and the Samburu were their friends and you know they just were brilliant guides because they could always you know get to the lion before anyone else they they were trackers trackers yeah um and you know it was proper were camping and we had to there was a you know there was an elephant that would come in the camp we were warned about it warned about crocodiles in the river I was like I'm really sorry I think one of them said at one point maybe couldn't we have gone to a resort all right shut up next time next time oh that's so funny and did your kids grow up in LA or did they grow up here Both, both places.

33:19But L.A. was a place that, I mean, I love the landscape. Everyone's so rude about L.A. And if you go there as a tourist, you're like, well, where is it? It's all hidden. But when I arrived there, apart from realizing the possibility of a swimming pool, it was just the landscape that was so brilliant. Like, it's surrounded by hills. Yeah, so you could do lots of hiking. I love the California coast. I love Malibu. It's not like I thought. Well, it's all burnt now, but it's not. There are these posh houses, but Surf Rider Beach, where the pier is, is full of Hispanic families. Anyone can go there.

34:05It's got a real hippie vibe. And the further north you drive, the more wild and beautiful it gets. And then the Joshua Tree Desert was so cool. Like the 29 Palms Inn, it was like a David Lynch movie. And I just explored and mini-braked like mad when I got there. I love it. So do you live there now? I'm pretty much here now. You didn't lose your home or anything though in the awful fires? Close. It was very close. Very, very close. Terrible. It was sort of unbelievable. In fact, the new novel I'm writing is set in L.A. and it did end with an apocalyptic fire in L.A. and I thought, oh, this is too far-fetched.

34:49And then when I saw it happening, I thought, wait, you've taken my ending. I mean, I think that was quite a shallow response, which I own. And my daughter was sort of in the middle of the fire. Was she? So I was trying to persuade her to get in the car and get out. How old is she? 18. Oh, gosh. But she got out just... Scary, scary, scary. Let's go on to your top travel tip. Well, not everyone would be able to make use of this, but everybody who goes on a plane would appreciate this. And it's to do with babies. So I traveled with babies a lot. Dash, my first child, went on 24 flights in his first year because I took him on a book tour.

35:37And so the trick is to make babies not cry on airplanes. It's all about their ears. You have to get the bottle into their mouth, not when they put the seatbelt on, but when the wheels leave the tarmac. And if they have a bottle as it's taking off, they won't cry. Because it'll pop their ears. And same with landing. and the other reason they cry is because they're bored or frightened so what I used to do was just buy a load of rubbish I'd go to the 99 cent store and just buy loads of little bits of rubbish and wrap them up so in that sort of awful time between fasten your seat belts and take off I just give them all these little presents to unwrap and throughout because I used to fly between LA and london on my own with basically a baby and a toddler lots of times so it was like a military operation but now i have to stop myself being that awful woman when there's a crying baby of going up to them and saying why don't you give them the bottle i have to stop myself and say just don't give unsolicited advice just let's hear they're all listening to this so that they will now know it worked i thought you were going to say cal poll well yeah that as well obviously Calpol and the bottle and the bits of rubbish wrapped up.

37:04So what's your most poignant travel experience? Well, I think it's probably the places I wouldn't go now. So Wharfdale in Yorkshire has been a favorite place of mine since I was born practically. You know, we had all our childhood years there. I remember going for guide camp there and me and Julie Barton decided to dress up as Egyptian mummies. So we had our underwear on and then we wrapped toilet paper around ourselves. It was good until we came out of the tent and then the wind blew the toilet paper off. But there was a scout camp next door to us and Miss Kendrew, the brown owl, had been sitting there with a stick anyway.

37:46And she was just furious. but we took my mum me and the kids and we took my mum right until the end really to the Red Lion pub in Burnsell again it has a beautiful view of water it's where the river wharf does this huge loop around a green an old fashioned village green and you're right on the edge of the river lovely and she used to love it there so much and I sort of longed to go back but I think it would make me so sad that she's not there but that that river that valley the the wharfdale valley it has a beautiful river path and it has a great pub every two miles I mean what more could you want with flagstone floors and roaring fires the real deal and then you can stay in some of them so it's just brilliant wonderful well you should go back but maybe in a few years when it's not quite as raw.

38:44And as you say, in the last book, they're always with you anyway. Yes, yes. So she'll appreciate you being there. Yeah. So that takes us into, I asked you to bring some photographs. Yes. Can you show us some photographs and tell us how they sum up travel to you? We've got this one, which is me in Thailand. You've seen the British movie in Thailand. I was enchanted by everything that afternoon, that piece of string for about five hours. This is when I went to Cabo in Mexico. So I've always been a bit of a risk taker. And we went out in canoes before dawn to see whales, which was arguably a bit risky.

39:30But this one jumped and it was really close. It was that close. And you could see the barnacles on its back. It was that close to us. Wow. And you are literally in a tiny little canoe. But the power of that thing, it was like pure muscle. And it had a baby. And I think they were dancing for us. You know, I think they like people. It's the same with dolphins. It was incredible. I put that in my book. This is me. This, to me, sums up holidays. just pure abandonment and joy that was me on a a boat in Greece with two girlfriends we just went off the afternoon and I love I love holidays this is a this is a classic mad hair picture I mean I love I love views like if I go to New York I stay in the standard high line because you can see the whole city and you almost don't need to leave your room you can see the sun sunrise and the sunset and the water and the Statue of Liberty.

40:37And this is the little place we stayed every year in Corfu, Kaminaki, the yellow house. There is a tiny little bay and that's, and at night you just heard the lapping of the water. Wonderful. So we'll go back. Go back there. That's me in holiday mode. I put that really, I mean, that's the one. So those sum up what you think about travel, which is gay abandonment, fun. Freedom, exploration, blue water, exploring, just being yourself and the awesome power of nature. I mean, look at that whale. It was right under the kayaks, you know. But it's worth taking a risk to see these things. But I also like staying in posh hotels.

41:28I mean, especially, you know, growing up with the dormobile. And look at posh hotels we couldn't go to. So now if I go to a posh hotel, then I really, really appreciate it. And I think even if I'm backpacking, if you stay one night in a really posh hotel, you appreciate everything about it. The towels, the bathroom, the sheets. So I think every aspect of travel is brilliant. Before I let you go, what's next for you? And where are you traveling to next? but what's next for you? Are you writing again? Yeah, well, I've been writing a book for a while, a novel, but I never think they're any good. Well, they are.

42:14No, I'm very hard. I've got quite a few that are sort of abandoned. But yeah, I'm writing another non-Brigit novel that I'm trying to finish. So that's my main thing. And where are you going next? We are approaching mini break season. And the great thing about being in London is that you can just be spontaneous and go where the weather's good and which is really important at the moment I think so there's places I haven't been I haven't been to Croatia I haven't been to Montenegro I haven't been to Bodrum by really feeling very Italian at the moment as you can probably tell I'm very in a very Dolce Vita sort of mood um the places I haven't been that I really want to go to are Bhutan I really want to go there but I really want to go back to the Maldives and go diving again even though it will be without Rick and Twain but I think I've got the hang of it now and a certificate and a certificate yeah Helen it has been such a joy and a delight to go around the world with you I knew it would be fabulous thank you so much I've loved it thank you thank you so much for listening to this episode of Travel Secrets.

43:27I'm loving making this podcast and want it to reach as many people as possible to build this community of fellow travellers. So please do subscribe on your favourite podcast app and share with a friend. I'll be back next week. And remember, this podcast might not change your life, but it might just change your plans.

43:57Thank you.