Paul Hudspith’s Journey from Civil Service to 79 Countries and Counting
A veteran cabin crew member with 20 years in the industry and a passionate traveller, Paul Hudspith shared captivating stories from his extensive travels. His journey began with a solo trip at age 16 and evolved from a career in civil service to a global aviation career. Paul has travelled to 79 countries and brought his Brompton bike along to over 50 of them. Beyond his professional life, Paul is passionate about cooking, gardening and spending quality time with his family.
His passion for travel began when Paul was 11 when his mother asked him to go to the shop for vegetables. Instead, Paul smashed his piggy bank and went to Manchester Airport with about £20. He asked the lady at the bus station where the furthest place he could get to with his money was and she sold him a ticket to Thurso in Scotland. “I ended up in the far north of Scotland. I’d befriended this kid, a bit older than me, 14, who joined the bus in Glasgow, and we hung out together. My mum, when she found out, went ballistic. But that just fuelled my appetite for travel.” His mum never got her vegetables…!
At 16, he solo travelled Scandinavia for 3 weeks and ended up in North Cape, right at the top of Norway. Even though he was solo, he met lots of people along the way on trains, planes and in hostels. Paul highlighted that "even when you’re solo traveling, you’re never really alone."
Paul now takes his Brompton bike on his long-haul flights. “Take a folding bike, stick it on a plane and you have complete freedom to explore,” he says. Originally, he sent a fairly sarcastic email to the CEO of Brompton Bikes, Will Butler-Adams, that read, “I’m an averagely paid flight attendant, but if you give me one for free, I’ll take it around the world and showcase it.” To Paul’s disbelief, he was invited to the HQ in London and spoke with Will and Dominic Raza, now a close friend of his, who was Brompton’s marketing manager. After Paul pitched his case, they brought up a bike from the factory floor and gave it to him. “I was in shock, I was shaking. A guy off the street has just basically blagged an £800 folding bike.” He then knew he had to meet their expectations, so he started producing his YouTube videos and they loved them. They painted the bike in British Airways colours and it’s been to 57 countries and counting.
The most memorable trip Paul has done as crew was to Beijing, China in 2016, which is usually a two-day layover. However, due to this being a Christmas trip, it was now 10 days. He had planned to go to one of the coldest places on Earth, a city called Harbin, famous for its ice festival, as it is typically minus 24 degrees Celsius. Nora, Paul’s partner, hates cold places and was expecting Paul’s flight schedule to be to Singapore, Mauritius, etc., but she ended up joining him on this trip. “On Christmas Day, we flew to a city called Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, found a guide to take us four days across Inner Mongolia to a city called Baotou, which is a bizarre city”.
His favourite place from his off-duty travels is Greenland. “Icebergs, glaciers, just an amazing landscape. I went in July, and it doesn’t really get dark at all. The sun doesn’t really set”, Paul says. It is evident he is drawn to colder places; however, he continues to say he absolutely loves Hong Kong. “You’ve got this hugely busy, compact cityscape, skyscrapers, hundreds of apartment blocks, people crammed into this space. There’s loads of colour. And then just literally on the doorstep of all this are these hills and mountains that you can go and escape to within minutes.”
One of his not-so-favourite places would be Kuwait. “I would say if I didn’t go back to Kuwait again, I wouldn’t lose sleep,” he explains. It’s nothing against the place, but Paul had minimal time there and found it difficult to be entertained, although he did enjoy the indoor fish market.
Paul was pleasantly surprised by Nigeria. “I didn’t really know what to expect in person, and the media perceptions had been largely negative. But when I got there, I found the Nigerian people to be very friendly, very welcoming.” Furthermore, Paul explains how he has been couch surfing for about 16 years, staying in over 100 cities, and one of his best hosts was in Lagos, Nigeria.
On Paul’s bucket list was to travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the opportunity came to tick it off his list. To avoid other tourists, he hopped on the MV Rus, a Russian cargo ship with 20 drunk car dealers, a lot of used Toyotas, and about 15 other travellers. Once he arrived in Vladivostok, he then boarded the world’s longest scheduled train to Moscow. “It took 7 days, we stopped at 72 stations, and I ate a lot of Russian comfort food.” To kill boredom, Paul spent a lot of time socialising between carriages, blocked out time for chilling, reading and would edit all his photos and videos of his trip so far.
Paul has a “loose” rule that he never cooks the same thing twice. He expresses his love for Japanese food and Middle Eastern cuisine. “You can travel through cooking and you can cook through travel.”
Alternatively, if Paul wasn’t a cabin crew member, he reveals, “I’d probably be doing jeep tours in Guatemala”.
His advice for anyone looking into travelling is to keep an open mind. “Do not rely on what people say, what you read on Facebook, what they say in guidebooks. Don’t rely on these things. Take them into consideration. But the ultimate judge of a place is you when you get there.”
You can see more of Paul’s travels through his YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@bromptonglobetrotter and Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/explore_this_earth
