Tune in for childhood Strand native’s new TV series

Trekking, traveling, globetrotting and exploring are among many adjectives that apply to Darley Newman. The creator, host and producer of the multi-award-winning “Equitrekking” PBS program will take readers around the world on a new series premiering on broadcast TV this winter across the country.

“Travels with Darley” will air 7-7:30 p.m. Fridays with new episodes for the next eight weeks on ETV across South Carolina, including WHMC-TV 23 of Conway and WITV-TV 7 of Charleston. The debut episode for this week will take viewers to the Guadeloupe Islands, in the French West Indies.

Two installments will span parts of South Carolina, going to Greenville, Travelers Rest, Anderson, and Belton on Feb. 12, and visiting neighborhoods, food and presidential history in Columbia on Feb. 26. Other stateside visits will include Kentucky, Virginia and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Newman, who grew up in Myrtle Beach from age 4, said this new series started in early 2014 with video shorts on the AOL On Network.

“We always knew wanted to bring it to PBS,” she said by phone last weekend from home outside the nation’s capital, drawing similarities to the horseback riding vantage points and immersion with local residents in each place espoused on “Equitrekking.”

“One of the things that made ‘Equitrekking’ so great,” Newman said, “was meeting the everyday people, and how they all have a passion for something – a passion for the area, arts, food, or whatever it is we’re talking about.”

Newman drives home the exploratory and educational value of the array of locales covered.

“I hope you’ll feel like you’re coming along on a journey with us, and learn something new,” she said, “and seeing some of the South Carolina sites, say, ‘Oh, my gosh; I didn’t know that was there.’”

Bicycling on Greenville County’s Swamp Rabbit Trail on a former rail bed, as well as in Arkansas and Belgium, yielded extra outside joy, Newman said, because many such paths are newly built in locales with an emphasis on encouraging more people to experience quality time through healthy outdoor recreation.

“You want to be active because it’s so much fun,” Newman said.

With the first of two Caribbean episodes airing this Friday, she said the lay of the land allows the combination of “beautiful scenery and beaches,” with “cultural heritage tied into it, including her snorkeling, hiking in an active volcano, and taking a dance class, although she hopes her childhood dance teachers in Myrtle Beach will not fret at her bid with this fun, Zumbalike activity, but simply laugh at this “getting out of my comfort zone.”

Newman said amassing the footage for this series takes less time than the homework for “Equitrekking,” without her valued film and production crew traveling by caravan with horses.

Filming for the second TV season of “Travels with Darley” began in mid-autumn, in Great Britain – including singer Shirley Bassey’s homeland of Wales – with three episodes already in the editing phase, with hopes for telecasts this summer, Newman said.

Realizing that packing so much content into half-hour segments takes so much cutting down for “seeing the best of each place,” Newman said viewers “will love this new series” and meeting “people from all over the world.”

The second episode, playing Jan. 22 – Maryland’s Eastern Shore” – will focus on family travel, especially parents traveling with young children, said Newman, thinking about a dear friend with daughters ages 5 and 3, and taking in such sights as beautiful beaches, and wild horses on the Assateague Island National Seashore.

Even beyond “Equitrekking,” horses still have a role with Newman, happy in her saddle to spotlight special places, in “Travels with Darley.”

This story was originally published January 14, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Tune in for childhood Strand native’s new TV series."