✨ Welcome back to our series, TravMedia's Travel Writer of the Week! ✨

Each week, we'll be shining a spotlight on one of the incredibly talented, passionate, and inspiring Journalists or Editors from our amazing community.

This week, we'd like to shine the spotlight on freelance travel journalist - Tom Chesshyre.

We hope you enjoy - happy reading !!

Where are you based?

I live in Mortlake in London, close to where the Boat Race ends – and not far from Richmond Park.

What outlets do you write for? Who is your audience? What are your travel specialties?

These days I mainly write for the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, although I am officially a freelance. I've been here since late 2018, after spending 21 years working on the travel desk of The Times. I do four days a week, editing and writing. My specialties are train travel, skiing, hiking and consumer reports. I also write travel books – 14 and counting. Some of these have been about long train journeys and others about hikes – across the Lake District, along the Thames and, most recently, the Peak District for my new book 'Wild Peaks: On Foot Through England's First National Park'. Other books have been about crossing northern Africa after the Arab Spring, the dark side of the Maldives, and the low-cost airline revolution.

Are you in-house or freelance (or both)?

As described above, I am very much bedded to the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, though not officially on staff.

What are your professional pet peeves?

Regarding being sent information by PR companies, this would be when people try to squeeze something as a reply that does not quite fit a TravMedia request, or ask a follow-up question to clarify something (there's very little time to reply as we work to incredibly tight deadlines), or – after publication – ask if information has been used or whether the article can be sent as a PDF as the PR has missed it.

In your past professional life you were …

I worked on Sky Sports as a scriptwriter and on The Sporting Life racing paper as a reporter, and also did shifts/sports reporting for The Independent, where I was once 'young sportswriter of the year'.

Where would you like to return to?

Canada – for a coast-to-coast train ride (not that I have been on a train in Canada before).

What's on your bucket list?

Visiting Antarctica, Madagascar and Bhutan.

Where do you travel for fun?

I love visiting European cities, for the rich history and cultures – so many treats awaiting that are just a couple of hours away. Hiking in the UK is also a big favourite, staying at hostelries along the way.

Your funniest (or most harrowing) travel story is …

Being hijacked by a local militia in Benghazi in Libya was pretty harrowing.

What advice would you give your younger professional self?

To tag on a couple of days to each trip to have some 'down time'.

What nugget would you like to add that we haven't touched on?

Travel writing should be about the writing. Those who go into to it to travel, with the writing secondary, have it the wrong way round.

How best should people contact you?

Via email at the Daily Mail or via my website tomchesshyre.co.uk

• Tom Chesshyre's latest book 'Wild Peaks: On Foot Through England's first National Park' was published by HarperNorth last week [March 26].