Island stories

Martin Clunes sets sail on a 10,000-mile trip around the Pacific

- SEAN MARLAND, STEVEN PERKINS, ALISON SLADE

After previous trips around the islands of Britain, plus to the US and Australia, Martin Clunes now embarks on a voyage to some of the Pacific Ocean’s most beautiful islands in a new three-part series.

Packed with stunning scenery and fascinating history, the trip was inspired by an old book the Doc Martin star’s father gave him when he was a boy.

‘My dad gave me Kon-Tiki and I by Erik Hesselberg, which is about an expedition to the Pacific,’ explains Clunes, whose actor father Alec Clunes passed away when the star was aged just eight.

‘Dad was a pacifist, so he would try to engage me in anything that wasn’t warfare or gun-based as a boy. I adored the illustrations in that book and it’s nice to think that I’ll be re-creating a small part of it here.’