Oh What A Time... - #126 Journeys and Adventure (Part 2)

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!**PLEASE NOTE: This episode was recorded just before Leslie Lemon - the custard-loving WW2 hero that so many listeners emailed us about - died at the age of 106 years old, last week. In tribute to the great man, we’ve left in our celebration of his custard-guzzling ways.**This week we’re hitting the road and exploring the incredible travels of the likes of Eva Dickson, we’ll be getting in a canoe across Belgium with Robert Louis Stevenson and we’ll head to the Pacific Ocean with Meriweather Lewis.Elsewhere, what on earth did writers do before google docs? Meet up in person? Imagine! If you’ve got anything on this or custard or anything else, you can email us: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Keep people and pets safer. Always keep your dog on a leash in public. Learn more at toronto.ca slash leash your dog. A message from the city of Toronto. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle Three. Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible original series.

When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the Grandview shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in the supernatural thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Hello and welcome to part two of Adventures and Journeys. Over to you, Ellis James. Right, how much can you fit into a short life? Now, I would embarrassingly argue that the

three of us now middle-aged. Would you agree with that? Well, as discussed at the top of the show, I'm going to live to a minimum of 160 in my custard diet. So no, I'm still my youth. Tom is nowhere near middle-aged. Absolutely. He's still very much in his youth.

I'm around about the point where I've got to decide what I want to do with my life. That's where I am. As a sort of non-custard-taking, sort of normal human, yeah, I'm firmly middle-aged, 44, right. But this is a question raised by the story of the Swedish explorer, aviator, war correspondent and rally driver. Wow. I mean, how's that for a quadruple? Give me them again? What were they?

She was a Swedish explorer, aviator, war correspondent and rally driver. Wow. I'd be compelled to say, are you lying if someone said that to me in a bar? What do you do? You know, Jack of all trades, master of none, which is the one you're bad at? Are you a bad war correspondent? Yeah. And I dabble in rally driving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I also do a bit of temp work. How much temp work do you do? Now Eva Dixon, although she was born Eva Lindstrom, born in 1905, she battles sexism and chauvinism to become a pioneer not only of motorsport but of feats of adventuring

as well. She was born in Stenning Castle to the north of Stockholm in 1905, the daughter of a well-to-do stud farmer, horse breeder and author Albert Lindström and his wife Maria who came from a high society and grew up with her brother, I think it's Eik or Aki in Lund Castle, an 18th century baroque country house in central Sweden. Because that's the thing with adventuring, it did tend to be the posh people who did it. It was not really working class pursuit being an adventurer. I would say only in the noughties was adventuring for all classes.

Apart from occasionally you would get like a stowaway. I'm thinking of that, I think it was Welsh, that 40-year-old boy who's a stowaway ended up in the Arctic. Yes. Or you would be working on the adventurer's boat. So you'd have a really tough job and you'd probably freeze to death somewhere. Having made not enough money. Perce Blackborough, that was his name. He was born in 1896 in Newport and if he was born in Newport in the 1890s he was working class.

That's a cast iron guarantee. And he was a Stowaway on endurance, which was Shackleton's ill-fated trans-Antarctic expedition in 1914 to 1917. I mean, that's unlucky, isn't it? You're buying a ticket to the Stowaway lottery, but of all of them, that is the one you have. Yeah, yeah. He developed severe frost bite because he'd taken the wrong sort of boots. What? So his feet were constantly exposed to the water in the Southern Ocean and he got gangrene. Green Street described the operation Blockborough had. All the toes of his left foot taken off, quarter inch stumps being left, the poor beggar behaved splendidly and it went without a hitch. Time from start to finish 55 minutes. When Blockborough came to he was chivalrous

anything, started joking directly. He was an up upcase but in the main if you were a proper adventurer you tended to be quite you tended to be quite well to do now she lived in a castle that is until 1916 when she was nine years of age and Albert her dad was appointed head of the horse dead authority in Stockholm and a family moved to the Swedish capital so So, as befitted, a childhood surrounded by horses, Eva could ride from an early age, moved in elite circles, gotta be honest, never really trust horsey people but that's fine, that's just my own thing. She posed for sculptors and painters as a teenager, continued to model fashion for Swedish magazines as an adult and in the early 1920s met and in 1925 married

the rally driver Olof Dixon. Now the year before in 1924 Eva got her driver's license and proved herself to be like a real petrol head She and her husband began competing in races and in 1927 Eva took part in her first motor rally the women's driving race In 1927, Eva took part in her first motor rally, the Women's Driving Race, which ran between Stockholm and Rattvik, some 270 kilometres to the north east and back. Now I passed my driving test in 1998. Rally driving's never really appealed to me. I can't imagine rally driving in the 20s was a particularly safe pursuit. MoToSpoR up until 2010. Forget it. Especially early motorsport. When you watch those documentaries

about F1 in the 1950s and 60s, everyone is dying all the time. Yeah, they're all dying at 28, mad. As someone who's failed his driving test five times and still hasn't passed, I'd say motorsport at any time is a no-no for me. Absolutely not for you. That's... I'm standing by that. The Flintstone Scar would be fine. Yeah, of course. If they mass-produced the Flintstone Scar, they'll enjoy it. Those little ones kids have with the red, you know, with the yellow top.

Yeah. Yeah. You'll see me at Silverstone in that, but not something with an engine. Now, she couldn't enter male-only races, so she adopted a pseudonym, Anton Johansson, and proved the folly of the rules by regularly winning. But that meant she had to don like a theatrical mustache and conceal herself in men's clothing in winter first. So as Eva's career and celebrity developed, she'd go on to befriend Ernest Hemingway. Her taste for travel and adventure grew, like me and Wales away, you get a taste for it, and soon she was off travelling the world, much to the frustrations of her husband who she divorced in 1932. So that same year she took a pilot's license, so added flying to her list of skills. She was only the third woman from Sweden to qualify.

But her most remarkable feats were to be in the car. As noted in the British press in January 1933, Miss Eva Dixon, a Swedish woman aviator, has made a remarkable flight across the Sahara from Nairobi to Algiers. That's so far. Yeah. In a plane and it's the 30s.

No thanks. Wow. So that was reported by one newspaper earlier that month. With further reports bringing the story to its ultimate conclusion, Eva Dixon who has just arrived in Sweden from Central Africa by car. It's like, coming from that point of wealth, it'd be so easy just to live a life of comfort as well, wouldn't it? Well, I think also, yeah. You'll just embrace it. You just obviously, A, her relationship with fear is very different to mine. I think there's clearly, there's a like a wonderlust there. There's a need for adrenaline, isn't there? Yeah. But it's just

amazing to go like, I could have this life complete relaxation and comfort, but no, I'm just going to throw myself into danger and see what happens. Brilliant. But a lot of the 70s, like Formula One drivers were posh blokes who wanted danger. Really? Yeah. So she was the first woman ever to solo drive across the Sahara desert. Can you imagine that going wrong? I mean, if you attempted it today, you'd be like, this is risky.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. To do it when she's did it is insane. There's that fantastic episode of the Netflix series, Losers, where the guy is running the Marathon de Sable, which is a marathon in the Sahara Desert, and he gets lost in a sandstorm, and he has to drink his own piss for nine days.

At one point he's got to eat bats. Right, he's having a bloody nightmare. That was, yeah, that was, you know, this century I think. It's a great episode if you want to watch it, but I have given away the big spoiler that he drinks his own piss. Anyway. So she was the first woman ever to solo drive across the Sahara Desert. So this was achieved in a Chevrolet Roadster, licensed plate T1579, who proved the basis of her best-selling travel book of 1933, in Iva e Sahara, or Iva in the Sahara. The journey took 27 days and was prompted by a wager offered by the Baron von Blichsen, who promised her a crate of champagne.

Who doesn't sound real, is there, Billy? That sounds like a fake Baron, doesn't it? Get this! Promise her a crate of champagne if it could be achieved. Come on. Go down to Majestic. You can get it from Ocando. Also, after 27 hours driving across the Sahara, you don't want alcohol. You want water. I tell you what, throughout history, a crate of champagne will just about convince anyone

to do anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah convince anyone to do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah More so than cash crazy collection calls CRA debt don't know who to turn to let the debt fixers at Maria Ricard and associates help you become debt-free call four one six five three four 27 77 today to book your appointment Maria Ricard and associates has been helping people for over 20 years Let the caring professionals at Maria Ricard & Associates has been helping people for over 20 years. Let the caring professionals at Maria Ricard & Associates give you a new lease on life. Make a free, no obligation appointment today at Maria Ricard & Associates, 416-534-2777.

I'm Alice Levine. And I'm Matt Ford. And we're the hosts of Wondry's podcast, British Scandal. Pray good fellow, please join us in our latest, most gripping series. What on earth are you doing? Well, speaking in Tudor English, you know, because we're doing Anne Boleyn. So I thought it would help people get in the mood and take them back to the court of King Henry VIII. Now, if I know British Scandal listeners, and I think I know British Scandal listeners,

they will be reeled in with talk of treachery, sexual jealousy, backstabbing and treason. There is a lot of that to be fair, but at its heart, isn't it just a traditional girl meets king, girl loses king kind of story? Yeah, with a divorce, a nation altering religious reformation and the show trial to begin all show trials. So listen to the story of Amberlyn now follow British scandal, wherever you listen to podcasts and binge entire seasons early and ad free on one three plus.

Now on the way, Eva was propositioned by Tuareg chief who asked for her hand in marriage and offer 30 camels as a sweetener But Eva had the other ideas. She would go on to marry the Baron von Blixen instead It was remarked the British woman's magazine the Sphere an astonishing feat adding that one is only to look at the map and use a modicum of imagination to realize that missus Eva Dixon and accepting the bet and Starting her journey had about as much chance of arriving at a destination safe and sound and on time as the proverbial snowball in the underworld. And yet she did.

She adapted recently invented techniques such as lowering tire pressure to cross sand to complete the journey. Then she joined a rally race to Monte Carlo almost immediately afterwards. She had a lot of bottle, let's put it that way. And I think she needed a rest. But anyway, the men let me do all the heavy work on the way she cheerfully told

the press. She also succeeded again on a wager in driving from Paris to Stockholm without a rest. I wouldn't do that now. As if all that was not enough, in 1934 she returned to Africa to join scientific ventures in Kenya, Uganda and Congo. Then she was a war correspondent in Ethiopia when the Italians invaded. And finally in 1937, she set off to drive the Silk Road from Stockholm all the way to Beijing, which was a long, as you can imagine, very difficult journey.

So she drove alone. She traveled through Germany, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Syria, Iran and on into Afghanistan, where she was warned about the upcoming dangers, particularly in light of the outbreak of war between Japan and China. Better, she was told to head to India instead, which is what she did. So Kolkata rather than Beijing became the end of her journey. There she fell ill and spent time in hospital.

It's your classic drive through India shortcut. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Use that one. Her illness prolonged by treatment with arsenic. They were bunkers in the 30s. Oh, my goodness. Ever the event. Also, the thing, she We'll use that one. Her illness prolonged by treatment with arsenic. They were bonkers in the 30s. Oh my goodness. Ever the adventure... Also, the thing...

She's got to come home. Yeah, that's a really good one. You can't jump on a fly. You get to the end. What's she going to do? Go on Skyscanner? Anyway, ever the adventure and gambler. She made a bet with an Englishman she met on Kolkata that she could beat him on the

return home to Europe. He would travel by boat, she would go by car. All was going well until late March 1938, by now nine months into her travels. She was in Baghdad and had gone out for dinner. On the way back to her hotel, she misjudged a bend and her car overturned. She died instantly at the age of 33. No! Ah man! A friend later recalled her as a great spender, adventurous, brave, full of life and fun. She just loved to cause a sensation. She was, in the end, well Darryl has finished his research by saying she was in the end

one of life's natural adventurers. She was actually anti-Tom Crane. About 50 years before he was born, She was the opposite to Tom Crane. Well, the universe is all yin and yan. It's about balance, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's how we choose to remember her on this podcast. But yeah, what a woman. Incredible. I genuinely think I might have a new hero. That is just, what a legend. That's remarkable. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. It's a bit of a sad end though, isn't it? You'd think what she's doing is so dangerous.

Just in the illnesses you could get back then. And overturned cars. What finishes her off? That's so sad. Also, there must be times on a big drive like that where you think, I don't fancy it today, actually. How fun is a big drive? Like, we drove to Cornwall a few months ago and that was horrendous. Yeah, yeah, too far.

We had to stop at my mum's in Bath. Yeah, I mean, you know, I would... Broke it up. Yeah. When I lived in Cardiff, I would go as far as Leeds. Okay, yeah. But, you know, it was public transport if I had gigs any further north than Leeds. The other thing that I think about briefly is, so it was her soon-to-be husband, this baron chap, who bet her to drive across the Sahara, is that right? What their marriage must have been like. Constantly betting insane things. Yeah, also I just can't imagine if they'd had kids that had done the basics. kids that had done the base six.

You know, school run, ensuring there are enough nappy bags, all of that kind of this. So the fundamentals that you have to do as a parent, I just can't imagine them getting that stuff done. Unless they combine them. I bet you about, you know, a box of champagne, you can't drive a moped down the nappy aisle and grab six mugs before going out the fire exit. Maybe they could buy them too. Do you know what? Fair play to her. She's my hero. Right.

It's 1802. Let's imagine Thomas Jefferson. He's reading a travel log, possibly by candlelight. It was by the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie who journeyed across Canada from Montreal to the Pacific and it ended with this triumphant moment in Mackenzie's book. Mackenzie having crossed the continent, carves his name into a rock near the western shore. Jefferson reads this and he felt the old fire stir, the dream of a continental America stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, charted and claimed by Americans themselves not by

Europeans. Now Jefferson a year later in 1803, is in a position to act on that dream and he makes the Louisiana Purchase which changes everything. The Louisiana Purchase, when I first heard about it, blew my mind. I don't think it's come up on the podcast before. Do you know much about the Louisiana Purchase? I know nothing about it. Zero idea what is about to be purchased. I knew a bit of this, but when I read Citizens and when I got into my kind of Napoleonic French history, I understood this, but I'll tell you what it means.

So France under Napoleon had been struggling to hold onto its North American territory, so France had a bit of what is now America. With war brewing in Europe and a costly rebellion in Haiti draining his resources, Napoleon saw an opportunity for a quick win. He was going to cash in. He offered to sell the vast stretch of land known as Louisiana, not just the modern day state but a massive swathe of the continent stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico nearly to Canada.

And he quoted a price of 15 million dollars and Jefferson said yes. And with that signature, the United States doubled in size overnight. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. So France owned a huge chunk of America and sold it to America to basically resolve some of their economic issues because of the wars they were in. And they were struggling to hold onto territories elsewhere. 15 million for Louisiana would not be a bad deal today. That's like a championship level right back. That's such a good point.

Or like a 30-year-old attacking midfielder from Syria. Yeah, yeah, because you worried about resell value. I suppose you worried about resell value with Louisiana, who's going to buy it. So Jefferson says yes, he pays the 15 million dollars. America now owns this huge stretch of land that was previously owned by France. But the key thing is this land that he'd bought was mostly unmapped and unexplored, at least by white Americans. Obviously you had some Native Americans knocking around, but there was no, it wasn't very well mapped. No one knew exactly what the United States had just bought. And that, Jefferson

decided, was a job for science, for sovereignty, and for the two men he trusted to carry it out. It sounds like a job for Dion Dublin on Home's Under the Hammer. He's just turned up at a tennis toast in Nottingham. And he's like, I know it's on at £18,000, which is very cheap, but I don't know what I'm going to find when I open the front door. It's like an episode of Home's Under the Hammer where they buy the house at auction, but haven't been to it. Yeah.

Well, there was this American series where they would go to basically old garages, which is what the cover was called, and they'd bid and then they'd open up and go, there's either a portion there or just a dead rat. Was it like American Pickers? Yeah, something like that. You had no idea. You'd fling it open and find out what you'd won basically. Quite exciting actually. So Jefferson created the Corpse of Discovery and he appointed Meriwether Lewis, his private secretary and William Clark, an experienced frontiersman to lead it.

Their mission was triple-barreled. You have to explore the Louisiana territory that's just been bought. You have to establish an American presence, symbolic, scientific and strategic. And you have to find a direct water route to the Pacific before the British or Spanish could get there first. Wow. So it wasn't just about exploration. They're there to basically build a nation

while doing so on foot, effectively. So the corpse would travel 3,700 miles, crossing the Great Plains, the Rockies. Is it a corpse or is it a core? Well, I've gone with- If it it's a corpse it's even more impressive. I've gone with corpse and I'm sticking with it. Are you imagining a sort of Weekend at Bernie situation? American flag draped over him.

Yeah, okay, core, let's go core. Corpse or core? What do you want to do? I think core. Alright, let's go core. Alright, I'm going core. I'm switching to core. In case there's anyone easily shocked listening, let's make it core. So along the way, they would try to smooth encounters with native nations using specially minted peace and friendship medallions, gifts from Jefferson himself,

cast by the US Mint, bearing his face. The expedition began on the 14th of May 1804 launched from Camp Dubois in Illinois heading up the Missouri River. They were 30-some strong, they kept journals, drew maps, collected samples, documented wildlife, measured geography. Everything was for Congress, everything was for the future. So August 1804. Now I'm going to read a little section of one of the notes that the guys are taking as they're going deeper into these unexplored territories. And this is very misspelled given it's August 1804, but I'm going to do my best to kind of translate it.

Mosquitoes very troublesome. The prairies contain cherries, apples, grapes, currants, raspberry, gooseberry, hazelnuts and a great variety of plants and flowers not common to the US. What a field for a boatance and a natuallist. Natuallist? It's written natiallist. A naturalist. Yeah, a natuallist.

He'd have been pulling his pants off. A natuallist and a corpse walking through Louisiana. That's a really weird joke. What I love about that is like the wonder is so clear. Can you imagine? Absolutely. Like you're seeing plants, fruits, things you've never seen before and some things that are common and some things that are just blowing your mind.

We fucking own this now. Yeah. What a lockup. And also beyond that, if you have the sort of mindset where you're OK with the idea that anything could be coming, you know, every corner could be something brand new and you're not petrified by that, then that just must be an incredible,

what a life-giving thing that must be. What an experience. From Wondery, this is The Spy Who. This month, we open the file on Oleg Lenin, the spy who saved MI5. Lenin's actions changed the course of the Cold War in the 1970s, a Russian who defected to Britain after being caught in a love affair that shook the world. His actions triggered the biggest removal of spies by any government in history. It's a story of an overstretched security service in need of a win and a covert plan to bring catastrophe to Britain's streets. Follow the Spy Who on the

Wondery app or wherever you listen to podcasts or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who Saved MI5 early and ad free with Wondery+. I'm John Robbins and on my podcast I sit down with incredible people to ask the very simple question, how do you cope? From confronting grief and mental health struggles, to finding strength in failure, every episode is a raw and honest exploration of what it means to be human. It's not always easy, but it's always real. Whether you're looking for inspiration, comfort,

or just a reminder that you're not alone in life's messier moments, join me on How Do You Cope? Follow now wherever you get your podcasts, or listen to episodes early and ad free on Wondery Plus. How Do You Cope is brought to you by Audible, who make it easy to embark on a wellness journey that fits your life with thousands of audiobooks, guided meditations and motivational series. So by late August, they were in today's Nebraska, by North Dakota where they built Fort Mandan to survive the coming winter and obviously North Dakota we're heading into winter it gets bitterly cold temperatures dropped to minus 40. Food was scarce morale dipped. No way.

The nature is freezing. I wonder to what extent they knew it was going to get that cold. Yeah. Was it minus what? Minus 40. That is not fit for life. No, no. There's no need to. Yeah.

Just cross that off the map. On Christmas Day they rallied, however. They had musket salutes, brandy rations, hoisted flags, there was music and dancing. One wrote two violins and plenty of musicians. By new year, the Frenchmen were dancing on their heads. Spring came, April 1805, they broke camp and continued west. And soon after, this is the thing I would be scared of, they encountered their first grizzly bear. And this is what's especially terrifying. It took 10 bullets to kill it. Oh my God.

Lewis wrote, it is astonishing to see the wounds they will bear. Oy, oy, oy. Was that a pun by the way? Yeah, oh yeah, well done. Yeah, the wounds they will bear. Then late May, the Rocky Mountains come into view. Gee whiz.

Or joy, they're delighted, the Rocky Mountains. And then dread, because they were kind of expecting some gentle hills that had been suggested by maps they had seen. But these were snowbound, brutal, wide, the greatest challenge of the journey. Still, by November, they had made it through. They arrived at Grey's Harbour, and they thought, this is the Pacific. However, they're 20 miles short. There was great joy in camp. They write, we are in view of the ocean, this great Pacific Ocean.

We've been so long anxious to see. They wrote, obviously, never 20 miles to go. 20 miles later, a few days later, they saw it for real. The Pacific. Remember that thing, that speech I gave 20 miles ago? Yeah, just that. Just imagine that again, because it was quite impactful when I speech I gave 20 miles ago? Yeah. Just imagine that again. Because it was quite impactful when I said it, what 20 miles about. I don't want to say it again because it wouldn't feel as good. Just imagine that.

Yeah. They set up winter camp, they wrote in their journals, collected samples, traded with coastal native nations. They marveled at the moonlight. They heard tell of a beached whale and sent a team to collect oil and blubber to get through the season. And then in spring, and this is the thing with all these travel adventures, you've got to go home. So in spring they turn around, brilliant.

23rd of September, 1806, they arrived back in St. Louis. And Lewis wrote to Jefferson, in obedience to your orders, we have penetrated the continent of North America to the Pacific Ocean. And they came back with sea otter pelts, skins and skeletons of bighorn sheep, mule deer hides, dozens of plant specimens and nine native vocabularies. Jefferson was delighted with this. His dream of a transcontinental United States envisioned not in fantasy, but in data and maps had become real.

And not by European explorers, this was important to him. It was done by Americans. Both Lewis and Clark were made governors of Louisiana and Missouri respectively. The core of discovery were national heroes. And yet, there's a crucial detail to all this that for years went uncelebrated. They would not have survived without native help.

Food, shelter, horses, knowledge of the terrain, safe passage. It was native nations again and again who gave them the tools to continue, especially in the mountains. And without that aid, the expedition likely would have died there frozen in snow and obscurity. And yet, get this, of all those 30 or so men who went on this expedition, only one person died from appendicitis. Wow. Yeah. It's astonishing really, isn't it?

It's the coming back, isn't it? Like when I cycled from London to Brighton for the British Heart Foundation, I was driven back by my friend Dave and his Nissan Leaf. And that's going to struggle with the Rockies. Yeah. So charging points off with the Rocky Mountains. That's amazing. What incredible people to be able to do that. Just the resilience. I just, there's no great shock to this, but I just, I couldn't do that. But also it's such a shame that those first Americans weren't given the credit they deserve for helping, you know, the core of discovery.

Exactly. Yeah. Wow. Absolutely. Wow. Would you like, here's a note to end on. I've just sent you the coat of arms for Meriwether Lewis. This is his coat of arms. Yes. And it is, Darrell, our historian, said, you've got to talk about this. Who would like to describe the coat of arms for Meriwether Lewis, which I've just sent on? Completely perplexing. It looks like something AI would come up with for the coat of arms of a small Welsh town because it's- Do you want to describe it, El? It's a dragon, but the dragon is sort of sitting behind the shield with another picture of a dragon on

the shield. But that dragon is eating a man's hand. A severed hand, yeah. A severed hand. Which I'm imagining is your severed hand. Remember we discussed at the very top of the show that your hand would type ahead of you and get you in trouble. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My hand said something absolutely horrendous and the dragon thought I cannot have that. This is the go-and-after that.

This is the new breakfast show team on GB News, isn't it? What a crazy, what a crazy flag. Amazing. I quite like it though. I'd love that on a football shirt. Absolutely. Yeah, sort of Spanish, so second division kind of vibe. You're like, are they, have they ever been in La Liga? Not really. Quite a weird fan base. Before we wrap up the show, I think this question is not always applicable, but I think it probably

is here. Of the three stories we've heard today, which is the greatest adventure? Is it mine, which is a bit of canoeing across Belgium and France? Nope. Is it Elle's? Remind us Elle, what was yours again? Well Eva, I mean she had so many, but she drove an aided it across the Sahara desert, also on her own. I think that's the big one.

Yes. And Chris? Well, like exploring brand new territories across North America, coast to coast. I'm gonna go with Ava because it's simply her choice to do it for the hell of it. The one thing I'd say about that is it is braver but I think it's less interesting. Okay, interesting. Because if you're driving across the Sahara, you've seen one bit of desert, you've seen it all. It's just sand. It's just sand.

The thing with Ava, when you think of the countries she drove through, one bit of desert, you've seen it all. It's just sand. It's just sand. More sand. The thing with Eva, when you think of the country she drove through, she couldn't possibly have spoken all of those languages. Yeah. So you just think, how was she getting by? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. You are right, though. Deserts are rubbish, aren't they? Yeah, deserts are shit. It's a beach without the best bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what a desert is. The ice cream store. Yeah, exactly does. It's a beach without the best bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it does. The ice cream store. Exactly, yeah. Well, there we have it. That is Adventures and Journeys. I love that episode. Thank you once again for our brilliant historian, Dr. Daryl Leeworthy, for helping us put together this episode. He's brilliant. And when you support the show and write lovely things and lovely reviews about the show,

you're also supporting Daryl, who is a fantastic component of this. Thank you for listening, guys, and we will see you next week. And don't forget, if you want more I Want A Time right now, we've got an extra couple of subscriber episodes in the last month, which is Your Letters, extra correspondence you sent us in June,

and Tom has just done a fantastic episode on how mummies were made in ancient Egypt. Plus, there are so many bonus episodes, plus episodes early, ad free, all that good stuff, become an Oh What A Time full-timer. To do that, go to owhatatime.com. But otherwise, we'll see you next week for more history. Goodbye, bye. Love ya. Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

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