Latest news with #SophyRoberts
BBC News
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Sophy Roberts hosts talk at Sherborne Travel Writing Festival
For bestselling author Sophy Roberts, the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival will be a chance to connect. The first few lines of her latest book, A Training School for Elephants, describe the landscape of her Dorset as the travel writer admits, "for all its beauty and all the people I love that live here, I have a very restless spirit".This spirit has taken her across the globe, as a journalist and author, and she is now preparing to share it with readers. It's the third year Sherborne Travel Writing Festival has been held in the town, hosting award-winning writers in talks for more than 200 event means a lot for Sophy, who has decades of experience in the industry."Just because my work takes me far away doesn't mean I'm not without my anchors in community, that's why I like this festival," she explains."I find the audience is so engaged, passionate, curious. It makes you feel good about this shared curiosity for what lives beyond our very pretty Dorset."Sophy says it is also important to her as it is an opportunity for her loved ones to gain some insight into her life. She continued: "For them to be able to be in the room, in a talk that immerses them in the life I have been pursuing for five years, it means a lot to me." Authors speaking at this year's festival, which runs until Sunday, include Ann Morgan, Barnaby Rogerson, Kapka Kassabova, Xiaolu Guo, Jonathan Lorie, Alexander Christie-Miller, Mevan Babakar and Horatio year's event will also see the launch of a £10,000 travel writing prize for a published British or European author. Sophy, who will be talking at the festival at 19:00 BST, said the prize is "exciting recognition for the genre", acknowledging the cost of travel writing."[It] is really high, one way of doing it through a book advance but that money runs out really quickly." Despite the expenses sometimes associated with travel, Sophy feels it is an exciting and "challenging" time."It's really important to question a genre that's colonial in its bones. What's happening now is a very exciting recalibration of that privilege, with new and diverse voices."Understanding places we're not from, cultures we don't belong to, politics we don't understand - whatever it might be - this is a space where those connections occur through the written word." You can follow BBC Dorset on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Yahoo
A horseback safari in the wilds of Zambia
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The sight of lions "lurking" in the grass lends a certain edge to most African riding safaris – but there are places where you can take in the continent's magnificent landscapes on horseback "without feeling like prey". One such is Simalaha, said Sophy Roberts in the Financial Times. This roadless, 18,000sq km community conservancy on the banks of the Zambezi River in Zambia was founded in 2012 by two local Lozi chieftains, in collaboration with the Peace Parks Foundation, which works to rewild ecosystems stretching across national borders in southern Africa. Many species have been reintroduced, including roan antelope, eland, sable and giraffe. So far, however, there are no big cats, and recently a Zambian couple, Gail Kleinschmidt and Doug Evans, launched riding safaris here – the only tourism operation in the area. Most guests of Zambian Horseback Safaris fly into Livingstone, next to the Victoria Falls, and travel to Simalaha by boat – a glorious journey along the "colossal, swirling" Zambezi, past "belching" hippos and "fat" crocodiles "basking on bone- white sands". The accommodation consists of four tented guest rooms on wooden stilts, each with a terrace facing a waterhole, and a kitchen hidden in a copse, where a Lozi chef, Henry Mununga, cooks up "spectacularly good" food (including flame-seared steaks, nasturtium and green leaf salads, and homemade ice cream). The 25 horses graze freely as a herd, and guests ride out twice a day – morning and evening – to beat the "sizzling" midday heat. Simalaha is on the Zambezi's flood plain – this is "big sky country" – and when I was there, shortly before the rains, the light was often magical. There was lots of wildlife to see, including galloping herds of wildebeest; and plenty of time to chat with local villagers and cattle herders, or just to take in the heart-stopping views across the landscape, punctuated with "islands of waxen baobabs" and "lines of grazing game". Safarious ( has a seven-night trip from £3,270pp, excluding flights.
