In Conversation with Simon Parker

Simon Parker is an award-winning British travel writer who has written for The Telegraph and produced documentaries for BBC World Service.

He chronicles his enormous cycle ride across the United States in his new book A Ride Across America: A 4,000 Mile Adventure Through the small towns and big issues of the USA. Over the course of his journey, Simon took in 11 states over 10 days and unearthed often overlooked parts of America.

Simon will be joining us at Wimbledon BookFest to discuss his new book in conversation with award-winning journalist and commentator Chris Blackhurst. You can get tickets here.

Before the festival, Simon caught up with us to discuss his work.

You’re a travel writer, author, filmmaker, public speaker, and broadcast journalist. Whether it be broadsheet newspapers or YouTube vlogs, your work seems to coalesce around very human themes. What is it that you find so rewarding about getting to the heart of human life?

I’ve read a lot of stories about brave and often male adventurers who try to travel as quickly or as far as possible. I find these get boring very quickly and as a journalist that’s just not the sort of thing I want to create. My main focus is going off on big expeditions, often on my bicycle, and using that as a means of meeting hundreds of fascinating people. So that’s what my new book is all about; A Ride Across America: A 4,000 Mile Adventure Through the small  towns and big issues of the USA. A 4000-mile journey through 11 states, which took me 10 weeks. Essentially, I’m moving very slowly, sometimes only seven or eight miles per hour. But I’m meeting an absolutely incredible cross-section of middle Americans. I’m interviewing homeless people, librarians fighting book bans, Nebraska farmers, and people campaigning for nuclear disarmament. The whole idea is that I want to concentrate on long-form journalism and slow journalism in quite a fast-paced world and I think especially in the lead-up to this presidential election, there is a desire to look at America with a little bit more consideration rather than just the quite frantic, polarised, and sometimes quite toxic nature of social media. That’s why I was drawn to go off on a slow-moving journey and write a book about it.

This notion of the “often-overlooked middle Americans” is a phrase you use quite often. What do we in Britain lack or lose in our comprehension of America when we don’t have exposure to those people and only encounter the cosmopolitanism of DC, New York, and LA?

American culture is so ubiquitous in all of our lives. As Britons on a daily basis we’re consuming American music, we’re watching American TV shows, we’re watching American movies, and often we don’t give it a second thought. Because of all of that I feel it’s very easy to look across the pond and think that you’ve worked America out. It just seems like one of those countries which is so predictable. What I wanted to try and do was go there and try to refresh some of those stereotypes. From a British perspective, most people will only ever go to the same two or three places. We go to Los Angeles. We go to Disneyland in Florida. We go to New York. But actually, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg; there is a whole other enormous country there. I wanted to try and get under the skin of middle America and try and meet some of the fascinating people who live there.

You previously travelled the US in the run-up to the 2016 election. Was it the political dynamic of 2024 with the potential return of Donald Trump that motivated you to travel the US again? Or was it a different urge that led you to go back and explore the hidden elements of American society again?

In 2016 I sailed and cycled halfway around the world for a BBC documentary that was all about trying to get around the world as quickly as possible. In hindsight, I think I kind of missed the point of that journey. I just felt like I was moving too fast, like I was racing to get to the next place. That’s exactly the sort of journalism that I don’t want to create. As years went by, I kind of thought to myself, well, if I’m going to go back and do it properly, I need to go and do it now. And when better to do that than in the lead up to the presidential election. It was fascinating to speak to people in 2016 about what might happen in America and the very toxic foundations upon which that election played out. I think that toxic level of culture war has pretty much existed in the United States for the last eight years now and if there was ever a time that I should get back there it would be right to do it ahead of this election.

It’s very interesting to hear you talk about the concept of slow journalism. Slow travel certainly seems to be increasingly interesting to people in an age where travel has become comparatively easy. When you’re going about your travels, how typical is your journalistic work? Are you pitching for interviews in advance or is it more transient than that?

A little bit of both. Most of the voices were discovered at random. Probably about 20 % of them; those people who represent large organizations, people working for charities, city mayors and so on. It’s always good to reach out to those people in advance so they know you’re coming. But the other 80 % of the people in this book are just random people who I met along the way. Honestly, I didn’t meet anyone that didn’t want to speak to me, which is quite remarkable. I’ve carried out journalism in well over 100 countries and it’s not uncommon for someone to tell you that they don’t want to speak to you, especially when they find out that you’re a journalist. But in the United States, where because of the Second Amendment the notion of freedom of speech is taken so seriously, people are always desperate to give you their opinions on things. I uncovered all sorts of stories which I think many people are ignoring, often because those stories are quite difficult to report on. Storied from the homeless people on the side of the road or the train drivers traveling across Nebraska are not ones that we normally hear. There is something about just being a British journalist on a bicycle in America that means that people open up to you in this is fantastic way and they give you these wonderful candid and honest soundbites.

Do you think British journalists have an advantage when reporting in America on account of Americans having a warped perception of Britain? Do you think that affects your journalism?

I think that being a British journalist in America almost gets you a slight leg up because people often gravitate towards you. They’re so fascinated by what you’re up to and there’s this great sort reverence of Britain amongst many Americans. They see us as these twee, distant cousins. Most Americans are very, very proud of their big, brash culture. But many are equally fascinated by the fact that their ancestors 200 years ago came from this small island on the other side of the Atlantic. Very often you get Americans wanting to talk to you about long-lost relatives in Ireland or Scotland, or they want to talk about some of the TV shows they watch, things like The Great British Bake Off or Midsummer Murders. British television seems to translate and travel quite well because there is this fascination with Britain. And I think from a journalistic perspective, if you already have that head start, it’s just a really easy place to do journalism.

You are quite open about how mental health was a driving factor in your previous book ‘Riding Out’ and you are very honest about the impacts that your journalism might have with regards to people’s understanding of other countries and their own comprehension of themselves. Could you talk about the social good that you think exists in human journalism?

I hope that what comes across in my journalism is that actually you can overcomplicate the idea of journalism. Journalism can sound like quite a pretentious exercise but ultimately all I’m doing is traveling around talking to people and asking silly questions. Hopefully what comes across in this book is that I’m no different to anyone else and that if we can just promote a more curious existence as human beings then hopefully, we can live in a better world. If we just constantly stay curious about how different we all are rather than dwelling on all of the things that make us so different to each other. We realize that we’re all just humans at the end of the day, all just doing very similar things. So, in terms of mental health, I don’t mind talking about things like that because ultimately, I want to try and make my books as human as possible. I’m just a bloke on a bike ride. I can get high on my own ego but ultimately, I’m just a bloke on a bike ride writing books. That’s all it is. And I think if you can tap into that, then hopefully you become a lot more personable and a lot more relatable.

Having chosen to commit to a slower pace of travel and writing, what was the overarching take away from this expedition across the states?

I’d say that the United States, for all of its critics is probably the most generous, most hospitable country I’ve ever travelled in. There is a philosophy in the US of wanting to look after the weary traveller and to be fascinated in people from other countries and share your fascination for the world and for life with those people. I would also say that although America can seem very divided and polarised, and many people told me that the country feels more that way than it ever has, thankfully, and quite promisingly, many Americans are now coming to terms with the idea that in order to find some common ground, they’re going to have to unite over things that aren’t so divisive. If we dwell upon the things that we all disagree upon we’re just going to become more divided. But if we put those things to one side and think about those more generic concepts that unite us then hopefully the world can be a slightly happier place.

You mentioned that the average Brit probably only visits the same three spots in America if they ever do. Is there is there a better way to approach planning how one travel’s the US?

I would try to just go there with a totally open mind in terms of wanting to just appreciate America for what is rather than expecting it to be some sort of massive movie set in which everyone behaves like they’re on Friends. That is just a very contrived version of the United States that we all receive into our living rooms. I’d recommend heading to Middle America. Middle America and coastal America are totally different countries. Go to Middle America, and move slowly through the cornfields and the small towns and just talk. Just chat to people and let them come to you. It’s a place that doesn’t take a huge amount of effort to make friends so wear your heart on your sleeve. Be open-minded and have discussions with people and I can guarantee you that people will gravitate towards you. They’ll buy you drinks, they’ll pick up your lunch tab, they’ll offer you a place to crash and you’ll make friends that you’ll have for the rest of your life. And I still have those friends. I still have people in America that I’ve met on my trips I could honestly pick up a phone right now and talk to like an old friend. And if I was to say to them, “Hey, I’m coming to America next week, is there any chance of coming to stay with you?” They’d open their arms and their front door with gusto. It’s a country that deserves to be given a second chance rather than just being perceived as this one-dimensional place.