Earth Beat, 17 June 2011. From luxury camping and visiting motorway rest stops for inspiration, to sailing across the Pacific in a boat built of recycled plastic, we ask how travel changes the way we see our environment.

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Why we travel
Does travel broaden the mind? Host Marnie Chesterton asks Pico Iyer, a veteran traveller and venerable travel writer for Time and Harper’s, and the author of too many travel books to count.

Maeve's travel plans
We hear from an aspiring traveller – a ten-year-old - who’s saving up to go to London in a few months.

Eyes of wonder
Pico Iyer responds to Maeve and all aspiring travellers, and discusses what happens to him when he stays at home, or in one place, for too long.

Motorway poetry
Marnie speaks with Joel Stickley, a member of Aisle16, the UK’s top poetry collective, about a journey they took a couple of years ago to find enlightenment in the mundane… the gas stations of motorways.

Nothing is boring, everything is authentic
Pico Iyer responds to the idea of embracing the dull and defends the idea of going to McDonald’s wherever you are - to understand local culture.

Why here?
Camping. It’s one of those things that tends to divide people – love it or hate it. Earth Beat producer Ashleigh Elson visited a campsite high up in the French Alps and asked the people there why they had travelled all that distance, by plane, train, car or on foot - just to pitch a tent.

Escape from distraction
Pico Iyer responds to the campers and tells us that his ultimate vacation is turning things off.

Glamping
So what if you want to spend time outdoors, but you hate sleeping on the ground in a rain-soaked tent? There’s an answer. It’s a new trend called glamping. Earth Beat’s UK correspondent Allis Moss went to a glampground in the heart of the English countryside to see what it was all about.

Plastiki
Time to leave all things luxurious and swap the spacious bed for a tiny cabin and head far out into the ocean. Or at least that’s what an intrepid crew of ten did for four months. Their mode of transport was the Plastiki, a catamaran made from plastic – 12,500 recycled plastic bottles to be precise – which took them from San Francisco to Sydney - 8,000 nautical miles. Marnie speaks with Jo Royle, the skipper of the all-male crew.

Justifying the carbon footprint
Pico Iyer addresses how travel has changed with the awareness of carbon footprints and how travel itself is about increased awareness and the exportation of consciousness and conscientiousness.

Envirominute
Should all destinations across the globe be easily accessible to us? One country has purposely put up barriers to prevent mass tourism, but now that seems set to change - as this week's 60-second round-up explains.

How we impact the world
Pico Iyer concludes by telling Marnie about the mutual benefit of contact between traveller and local.

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