Presenter Gaby Roslin has travelled on all sorts of trips, from the luxurious to the gritty roadtrips.
The broadcaster and presenter tells all about a run-in with grizzly bears in Alaska and a disappointing meal in Havana in this week’s On The Road With.
Read on for her best travel experiences.
What’s your favourite on-the-road moment?
In my early twenties I drove with my best friend Celia from San Francisco to LA on the Pacific Coast Highway.
It’s one of those drives I’ll never forget. Beforehand we visited the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, where I fell in one of the ponds as Celia asked me to step back to get a better picture.
So I started off in wet clothing, which is never a great thing for a 12-hour drive. But as we left San Francisco there was suddenly this extraordinary expanse of blue sky.
On the way, we stopped at the Big Sur and around Carmel. We kept saying, ‘This is incredible!’ We couldn’t believe the beauty of it all.
What keeps you sane on the road?
I love the radio. When we go to Italy there’s a radio station – Radio RDF Italy, 102.7 FM – that my youngest must have heard when she was little because she always asks us to put it on.
It has international music but with Italian chat. So we all try and learn Italian from listening to that while we’re there.
When have you been most frightened when travelling?
Probably when filming an ITV series called Predators in Alaska in 1994. We went to film grizzly bears and we were only ten feet away from a grizzly with her cub. Suddenly our guide looked at me and said, ‘Walk, NOW!’
We’d been told not to run because they chase you. I love the adrenaline of a zipwire but the adrenaline that went through me that day, it was absolutely bloody terrifying.
Have you ever pinched anything from a hotel room?
A dressing gown from the place we were staying on Turks and Caicos Islands, when my husband David proposed to me.
I went up to the counter at the end of our trip and said to the woman at reception, ‘Please can I pay for the robe?’ She shook her head. So I asked again.
She went, ‘Ah, no, no!’ Then she followed me out and said, ‘Don’t tell anybody, just take it!’ David proposed one evening on the beach with the kids.
I laughed and cried, and the girls, who were only ten and five, laughed and cried and were jumping up and down.
What has been your most life-changing experience while travelling?
Probably being just six feet away from killer whales when we were filming the Predator series 25 years ago.
We were in Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands off Washington State. I have never experienced beauty like it in my life. It’s the closest I’ve got to Mother Nature.
The power and the beauty of that killer whale… it was spy-hopping us, which is when they hold their heads out of the water. Then it came up out of the water at the end of our boat.
While the whale was behind us I was meant to do a piece to camera but I couldn’t because the tears were streaming down my face out of sheer and utter awe at this majestic creature.
Then I did an impassioned piece to camera pleading with people not to go and see killer whales in captivity.
What would be the worst meal you’ve had abroad?
The last really big family holiday we went on was to Havana. We’d been told about this place where you can eat on the balcony of somebody’s house but everything was made with pineapple.
I love pineapple but there was one dish with fish and pineapple. The family were lovely – they played us their musical instruments as we looked over the main street but the fish really wasn’t great.
Still, you go to Havana for the experience.
Where is the strangest place you have spent the night?
On safari at Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. We were having sundowners when my youngest daughter said, ‘My sister’s laughing really strangely.’ I said, ‘That’s not your sister. That’s a hyena.’
As we went back to our tent we were told we mustn’t leave it again in the night. We could hear the lions.
If you’ve ever heard a lion in the wild, it doesn’t sound like a roar. It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard. So that was strange and very special.
Where are you going next?
We wanted to go to France and Italy but my dad is here on his own. He’s in his eighties and I don’t want to be locked down somewhere and not able to get back to him.
So who knows? If I had to choose one last place I could ever go to, though, it would be Africa.
That Gaby Roslin Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all podcast streaming platforms. Episodes are weekly.
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