For me travel is the best way of getting new ideas. Sometimes they come directly from an experience (The Sign of the Seahorse was inspired by my first experience of scuba diving in Martinique) or something I have seen (a sail-like lampshade on a hotel wall in France inspired the idea of a ‘Snailing Ship’, which became The Legend of the Golden Snail).
Other times simply being away from normal life allows my mind to wander in an imaginative receptive way, and that’s when new ideas sneak in.