Travelling With Steve Coogan

The English actor and comedian on travelling with Judi Dench and running shoes.

- Joe Warwick

My first trip abroad was to Lourdes, France, on a pilgrimage with my Catholic school.

It was supposed to be about seeing the basilica where the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette, but I only remember buying a sheath knife and drinking cider.

My mother was born in the west of Ireland and so every year we’d stay with her family in a farmhouse in County Mayo, where I spent most of my summers as a child digging turf, sharpening sticks with a penknife and dodging the rain.

When I travel, I like to be organised.

I like things to be folded neatly. I used to throw everything into a case and get on the plane at the last minute, but I can’t live my life like that any more. I like to prepare because I like low stress. I need things to be serene, ordered and civilised.