Did you know that you can listen to many of your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds?

Like Desert Island Discs, where you can hear castaways like Cher, Gareth Southgate and Nick Cave,

and enjoy longer versions of the music they've picked.

Good things come to those who don't wait.

Listen to your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds.

The Scotland Outdoors podcast from BBC Radio Scotland.

Hello and thanks very much for downloading this podcast.

I'm Mark Stephen.

Where I live in Aberdeenshire, it's pretty green, it's lush. I mean, it's a world away from where our guest on this edition has chosen to make her home and explore in much more detail. Before we get to her, I will introduce my companion for today, Ms. Helen Needham.

Hello, well, we're going to be transporting you imaginatively to northern Africa and the Sahara desert, which seems like a completely different planet from where we are here in Aberdeenshire.

Alice Morrison is an explorer, an adventurer, a writer and TV presenter from Scotland originally,

but she now lives in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

Alice, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you very much for having me.

Right, we're going to have to come clean here about your exact location today.

Where are you?

At my parents' house.

I came home for Christmas to see them because I haven't seen them since March

and I'd been doing expeditions and being locked down in Corona in Morocco.

So I came home, really happy to come home to see them.

And then, of course, on the 26th of December, because of the new UK variant,

Morocco closed its borders to anyone flying in from Britain and they're still closed.

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