Lobster Bob's Scenic Tours

Scrubbing Squad Limited

Lobster Bob's Scenic Tours is the daily travel podcast for children aged 4 to 11 who would like to see the world without leaving the kitchen. Lobster Bob spent 35 years fishing off Los Roques, Venezuela, has been almost everywhere since, and got most of it wrong the first time. He now runs scenic tours from three vehicles: La Mula (Registration number LAM-001-VE) the four by four for Land, Nellie (Hull registration number PZ 1953 N) the boat for Sea, and El Cóndor (Tail number YV-528) the bush plane for Air. 528 real destinations. Every fact true. Every tour earns a stamp. A new tour every single day: - Vehicle stories: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. - The story behind a Bob'ism: Every Tuesday.- Postcards from Lobster Bob: Every Thursday. - Where in the World: A quiz on Saturday. - Lobster Bob's Logbook: Every Sunday, where nothing happens, slowly. Lobster Bob smells slightly of fish. He does not apologise for this. Subscribe at lobsterbobspodcast.com for your weekly round-up and free resources.

Episodes

  1. Sep 6 ·  Video

    E7: Lobster Bob and the Count

    Say hola to Lobster Bob He guessed about twenty. Somebody else had the real number. It is Sunday, the one day Lobster Bob is not flying, sailing or driving anywhere. He is sitting in Hernán's shop in La Candelaria, Caracas, where the air smells of glue, old paper and the coffee on the hot plate at the back. Hernán is the man who binds Lobster Bob's logbooks: he stitches the pages together by hand and puts them inside a cover of real leather. Today's is dark red, because red leather lasts and green fades. The radio is off. The radio is never on while he sews. While Hernán works, Lobster Bob tries to add up how many books have been made for him over the years, and says his guess out loud. Hernán puts down the needle, walks to the shelf, and comes back with a small notebook of his own. Sixty-eight. Every one written down: the day it came in, the day it left, the colour of the leather. Lobster Bob has carried those books across six continents. Hernán has carried the number. Nothing happens in this story, and that is the point. Your child will learn what a bookbinder does, hear how a whole shop can go quiet for counting, and take away one question to think about at bedtime: what did you notice this week that you did not expect to notice? Then their own logbook starts, one line or one drawing at a time. Follow free wherever you listen, and grab your free Explorer Pack at lobsterbobspodcast.com - the Paper Passport and My Logbook page, ready to print. Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you.

    E7: Lobster Bob and the Count
  2. Sep 4 ·  Video

    E5: El Cóndor and the Sulawesi Volcano

    Say hola to Lobster Bob El Cóndor and the Sulawesi Volcano It did not explode. It cleared its throat. El Cóndor, YV-528, is a bush plane bought at an auction in Caracas and named after the Andean condor, the largest flying bird in the world. The condor rides the air instead of fighting it, and Lobster Bob spent three years learning to do the same. On the morning of this story, at the airfield at Manado on the northern tip of Sulawesi, in Indonesia, he does his walk-around, touches the small nick on the propeller blade the way he always does, and takes off south along the coast, past a mountain everyone thought was asleep. Then a column of grey ash rises off the summit, taller than the mountain itself. Ash is rock ground as fine as flour, and an engine that breathes it in stops being an engine. Lobster Bob turns away and drops towards the sea, and El Cóndor does what her namesake does: she finds the air going her way and rides it home, engine steady, nose level, never hurrying. They land with fine grey dust on her wings. A mechanic offers to smooth out the nick. Lobster Bob says no. You will learn that Indonesia has more active volcanoes than any other country on Earth, why volcanic ash is so dangerous to aircraft, and how a condor can cross a sky almost without flapping. Nobody explains the nick. Nobody ever will. Subscribe free wherever you listen, and grab your free Explorer Pack at lobsterbobspodcast.com - the Paper Passport and My Logbook page, ready to print. Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you. ‍

  3. Sep 3 ·  Video

    E4: Lobster Bob and the Rock at Uluru

    Say hola to Lobster Bob A postcard from a rock that does not belong to the person looking at it. La Mula, LAM-001-VE, carries Lobster Bob into the centre of Australia, to Uluru, the sandstone monolith rising 348 metres above the desert. It appears on the horizon forty kilometres out, a low shape, then a larger shape, then the only shape there is.  At the cultural centre, in thirty-eight degree heat, the woman at the visitor desk hands him a leaflet explaining what visitors do and do not do here. The climbing chain went up in 1964 and came down in 2019, after the Anangu had asked for thirty-five years. Lobster Bob was never planning to climb. But he catches himself about to ask whether the rule applies to him, and he does not ask.  That is the failure, and the postcard. He walks the base instead, past waterholes and rock art, sits at Mutitjulu Waterhole for forty minutes, and watches the rock turn from brown to orange to deep red as the light drops. You will learn who the Anangu people are and why the climb closed, why Uluru changes colour through the afternoon, and the fact to carry to school: the Pyramids of Giza are four and a half thousand years old, and people had been living at Uluru for tens of thousands of years before the first stone was laid. Follow free wherever you listen, and grab your free Explorer Pack at lobsterbobspodcast.com - the Paper Passport and My Logbook page, ready to print. Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you.

    E4: Lobster Bob and the Rock at Uluru

About

Lobster Bob's Scenic Tours is the daily travel podcast for children aged 4 to 11 who would like to see the world without leaving the kitchen. Lobster Bob spent 35 years fishing off Los Roques, Venezuela, has been almost everywhere since, and got most of it wrong the first time. He now runs scenic tours from three vehicles: La Mula (Registration number LAM-001-VE) the four by four for Land, Nellie (Hull registration number PZ 1953 N) the boat for Sea, and El Cóndor (Tail number YV-528) the bush plane for Air. 528 real destinations. Every fact true. Every tour earns a stamp. A new tour every single day: - Vehicle stories: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. - The story behind a Bob'ism: Every Tuesday.- Postcards from Lobster Bob: Every Thursday. - Where in the World: A quiz on Saturday. - Lobster Bob's Logbook: Every Sunday, where nothing happens, slowly. Lobster Bob smells slightly of fish. He does not apologise for this. Subscribe at lobsterbobspodcast.com for your weekly round-up and free resources.