This panel will discuss the relationship between perceptions and realities of travel, and the influence of travel literature and photography on tourist experiences.

Forum for European Philosophy and Department of Philosophy,Logic and Scientific Method Literary Festival event

Horatio Clare is an award-winning author, broadcaster, novelist and journalist. In 2008 he journeyed from South Africa to South Wales following migrating swallows, a journey he wrote about in A Single Swallow. His latest expedition took him from Felixstowe to Los Angeles on a 150,000 tonne container ship. Horatio writes regularly for Conde Nast Traveller and various national newspapers.

Alex Gillespie is a Lecturer in Social Psychology at LSE and Co-Editor of Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. He has over fifty publications, including three books. He is interested in tourism and tourist photography as an encounter with the other saturated in fantasy.

Abigail King is an experienced journalist and photographer who writes about travel for both print and online media. She has circled the globe twice, camped in the snows of Kilimanjaro and Patagonia and tracked down tigers, turtles and panda bears. She’s then had a hot shower and embraced the city life of New York, Rio, Paris and Tokyo.

Suggested hashtag for this event for Twitter users: #lselitfest

For over 50 years, the British Guild of Travel Writers has been the UK’s “premier association of media professionals who focus on travel.”

In their own words:

“The Guild’s name stands for reliability and respectability in the fiercely competitive worlds of travel writing, photography and broadcasting. The criteria for membership are tough.”

That’s why I’m so pleased to mark this milestone in my own travel writing career: becoming one of their members!

Tripbase have just published their list of 100 Favorite Travel Writers – and you can imagine how happy I was to see that “Abigail King” made the cut. I’ve no idea what factors Tripbase used to draw up their list but I’m not going to argue with the final result!

As I write this, I’m huddled up in frosty London rather than stretching in the sun like the “favorite writer” in the pic but the news warmed up my day anyway.

Cheers Tripbase for the encouragement.

A safari through the lesser-known Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana allowed me to get up close and personal with these zebras.

This time last week, I was in the pit lane at the Valencia Grand Prix and it’s taken some time for my ears to stop ringing and my heartbeat to slow down. For days before the big race, the streets of Valencia hummed with the distant noise of robotic mosquitoes but however noisy that felt, it was nothing compared to being up close.

I’ve spent this last week in Kraków, amid snow and sunshine, sobering historical sites and the best hot chocolate known to man.

This photo (of me) comes from an underground restaurant called The Piano Rouge. Beneath Kraków’s formal, medieval square, this place reminded me of a cross between Aladdin’s cave and the Moulin Rouge, with its scarlet fairy lights, velvety throws and corset-shaped lampshades.

They play jazz but serve up traditional Polish food wrapped in a French title.

I loved it.

The sun sets after a day picking olives...

It all started with the police check last night.

Torchlight zig-zagged across the car and we huddled in the backseat.

“You are English,” said the policeman. “And yet you say you want to go to Pegalajar.”

“That’s right,” said MG, our driver. “My friends here – they want to pick olives.”

“They want,” he lingered over the words, “to pick olives?”

From Liquid Gold & Mud Slides – read the full article at Inside the Travel Lab.

A Weed on the Side of a Footpath

Pilot Whales

Pedro Martina’s sun-worn face lights up as he grabs my shoulder and points into the distance.
“Three of them are under the water now,” he says as I scour the shades of blue. “One baby and two adultos… and further behind them I can see two more.”

It’s certainly not the first time Pedro has hunted whales, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. Despite a seafaring tradition of more than three generations plus hauling tourists along the waves every day, he still wears that expression of childlike wonder.

Read the full article here.

Finding Dolphins