Geri Halliwell-Horner on Why She Always Visits a Bookstore While Traveling

Geri Halliwell-Horner may best be known as the Spice Girls’ Ginger Spice, but her true girl power trait is her fearless curiosity with which she explores the world—and it’s a quality that comes in handy during her global travels. 

“I’m Miss Curious,” the singer, author, actress, and mother of two said to Travel + Leisure on a call last month. “I don’t care what it is. I think everything’s interesting.”

She truly leaned into her intrepid spirit with Rainbow Woman, a show that launched on YouTube in 2020. In the series, she went on a “girl power adventure of discovery” and experimented with everything from beekeeping to camping. Some things she, admittedly, liked more than others.

“I actually think camping is quite suffocating when you’ve got that canvassing over your head,” she said. “I found it a bit claustrophobic.”

Instead, she prefers a simple alternative: making camp in the open, like she once did in the Arabian Desert outside of Dubai. “I sat at the top of this hill of sand and looked up at the night sky, and it was flooded with diamonds,” she said. “The stars seemed so close to me. It was the most enchanting thing.”

Halliwell-Horner never shies away from an adventure, and she’s perfectly at home with a low-key getaway, like sipping tea by the ocean, as well as more intense undertakings, such as mountain climbing. Some of her favorite travel memories include a hike on Cape Town’s Table Mountain, as well as an ascent up an Austrian peak where she ran into an unexpected snowstorm.

“It was a bright sunny day, so I went up in my shorts, but by the time I got to the top, there was a snowstorm!” she said. “There was a little hut, and the man there gave us some nice hot food, but we got stuck in the blizzard.” 

But, as Halliwell-Horner put it, all the trouble was worth it in the end. “I wrote a good song afterward,” she said.

The British icon is best known for her time as a pop star, but she’s a successful author as well. Her young adult fantasy novel, “Rosie Frost & the Falcon Queen,” landed on the New York Times Best Sellers list in 2023. She says she often uses her journeys as a source of inspiration.

“I’ve been writing for so long, so an idea can be for a song, which is almost like a coffee espresso shot,” Halliwell-Horner said. “For a book, it’s a feast to make you feel the power of words.”

For example, she has a fascination with Tresco, an island located 28 miles off the Cornish coast in southwest England. The island has a unique subtropical microclimate, which helped spark the idea of Bloodstone Island, a Jurassic Park-like place filled with endangered species. Meanwhile, a visit to Mount Fuji fueled the plot of the second book of her series, “Rosie Frost: Ice on Fire,” available for sale as of April 8.

During the writing process, ideas popped up during all points of her travels, even mid-flight. “For this book, I wrote down ideas on the evacuation instructions in the back of the seat pocket and a sick bag because I just didn’t want to forget it,” she said. “I’m always taking notes and writing things down. I don’t even realize I’m doing it.”

However, this isn’t Halliwell-Horner’s first go-round with being a successful author. While promoting her first book series, Ugenia Lavender, she toured all across the U.S. and always made sure to make a stop at her favorite kind of store in every city: a bookshop.

“It’s almost like I need an adult to grab me by the scruff of the neck to pull me away since I start looking at all the other books thinking, ‘Oh, that looks interesting,’” she said. Halliwell-Horner adds that she almost always has a book on her, and she’s usually in the middle of four different books of various genres at any time.

She loves visiting bookstores when she’s home in the U.K., too. One of her favorites is Daunt Books in Marylebone, which she said is a must-visit for all book lovers. She especially loves second-hand bookshops as well. “Dusty old books have a funny smell about them that I find quite comforting,” she said.

To Halliwell-Horner, travel and reading are inherently linked—they’re both transformational in nature. “If you’ve traveled the world, you’ve always got a book on you,” she said. “Sometimes, our minds become like a muddy pond of stagnant, muddied water, but if you actually clear it out, you know exactly what’s right for you.”

That kind of change fuels the plot of “Ice on Fire,” which is set during a volcanic eruption—a metaphor for personal growth and the power of things beyond our control.

“Sometimes we are that exploding volcano that’s going to erupt, and then sometimes it’s the peaceful, beautiful ocean,” she said. “What I like about travel is that it’s a conflict between science and nature, man versus Mother Nature. Who’s in charge? When I travel, I get my answer right in front of me. The roar of the sea, the tumbling vast rocks thundering down the side of a mountain—that’s who’s in charge!”