Being a Tourist at Home with Jenny Herbert: Episode 237 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

You’d know I usually only run a solo interview with someone reasonably well known – say Paul Theroux, for example – but this episode is special. Jenny Herbert’s new book The Art of Being a Tourist at Home touches on so many thoughtful travel themes that I couldn’t split up an interview into small chunks on different topics – I wanted it to hang all together.

Now, this was a really interesting interview to prepare for, because although Jenny’s book is – my summary – a bible of how to prepare for a trip as a thoughtful traveller, and how to survive temporarily without travel, like during a pandemic when we need to stay home – her overarching message is that we actually shouldn’t travel. Climate change, overtourism and pandemic created the perfect storm for her argument about why we need to stay home. I still maintain that there are absolutely valuable lessons to learn from travelling abroad (post-pandemic – not yet), that we can’t recreate by staying at home – that truly, distinctly leaving your comfort zone sometimes is essential – we just need to do it thoughtfully.

Anyway, see what you think yourselves – hope you enjoy this interview.

Show notes: Episode 237 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

Being a Tourist at Home with Jenny Herbert

You know I’m all about travelling more thoughtfully and purposefully – and you might find it strange that I’m talking in Episode 237 with the author of a book about *not* travelling!

Jenny Herbert’s book “The Art of Being a Tourist at Home” is, as the title suggests, about how to get that travel feeling, and many of the benefits of travel, without straying far from your home turf, and certainly without hopping on a plane or landing on the doorstep of a community overcrowded by other tourists. I agree with her premises for not travelling, although I do think there is still an important role for thoughtful travel even in a world fighting climate change and pandemics.

In this interview with Jenny, we talk about some of her tips for gaining the benefits of travel in your hometown, when it might be okay to travel, how wonderful walking can be for getting some of the “travel feeling”, whether you need to immerse yourself in a foreign culture to grow and how to carve out time for staycation-style travel.

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