For information on Ontario meetings, please contact Svatka Hermanek: shermanek@schulich.yorku.ca or Bruce Weber: tel. 416-203-0911 or Paul Webb: tel. 416-694-8259.
The Ontario branch meetings are held on the third Friday of January, March, May, September and November. Usually at the Woodsworth Co-op, Penthouse, 133, Wilton Street in downtown Toronto at 8.00 p.m.
Fellow travel enthusiasts Footprint books have generously offered eNewsletter readers a summer surprise to help us all with our travels, whether we’re planning or actually setting off…if you read the following instructions, it should all be fairly self explanatory. At this point I should say that you should read the fine print and for our non UK based readers, you should make sure you understand any currency & shipping costs, before you place your orders.
The Ant
“Hello there,
We would like to offer the readers of your monthly newsletter a discount off our guidebooks – would this be something of interest ? Footprint would like to offer you an 15% off all their
guides, all you have to do is:-
Best wishes
Hannah”
Channel 4 (UK) are producing a new landmark documentary series about the growing number of British families putting day-to-day life on hold to see the world with their children.
Through the films we hope to highlight just how rewarding, educational and most importantly possible it is to go travelling with the kids.
Our hope is that the programmes will inspire more parents thinking about this kind of trip to actually take the plunge and get involved around the world. We also want to highlight the positives of this kind of experience has on a family unit and the educational benefit for children. Each family would be left with a unique travel-log of their journey.
We would not plan to be with the family the entire time but would provide them with a camera to record the events with us dropping in at certain key points along the way.
We hope to follow five families in the series and whilst we have already started filming with four we are still looking for one more to be involved who could be leaving anytime up to 2010.
I am trying to cast the net as wide as possible in the search for families and simply want to spread the word so that people can get in touch with me if they are interested.
It’s like a needle in a haystack trying to find people so any suggestion or help however small would be very gratefully received.
Kind regards
Naomi Elkin-Jones
Assistant Producer
Twenty Twenty Television
20 Kentish Town Road
London NW1 9NX
Tel: 0207 2842020
NaomiElkinJones@twentytwenty.tv
Hot off the press the club has just received this email from one of its own speakers – read more and click the link to find out what Peter is up to…The Ant
Dear all,
I spoke at the Globetrotters club [London branch] during the March meeting this year about my Long Ride Home – bicycle journey from Japan-UK.
I would just like to inform you that on August 16th I am beginning my next major two-wheeled adventure. The Big Africa Cycle is a solo and unsupported expedition from England-South Africa – 15,000 miles and 25 countries, give or take. I have a website for the trip at www.thebigafricacycle.com – it would be a pleasure to share my experiences with members again on my return [and as I travel along].
Many thanks for your help.
Kind regards, Peter Gostelow
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Regular contributor Mac ruminates on the world of travel & some of his adventures along the way J This time round he answers some questions on his various travels and what has stuck in his mind along the way…
This time round he visits Tonga via reading – You Cant Get There From Here : A Year On The Fringes of A Shrinking World by Gayle Forman. Below are some of the highlights that caught his attention…
According to the larger world Tonga is always mid eighties and partly cloudy even when the rain is hammering the palm trees and the waves are pushing twenty feet. Tonga tags itself as “The Land Where Time Begins” being the first nation falling west of the international dateline. A more appropriate moniker would be “The Land That Time Forgot”
English is widely spoken in Tonga but many Tongans openly dislike Westerners When Nick and I had taken an exploratory bike ride around the island a few days earlier every other person we passed had yelled Falangi, a derogatory term meaning “white person. A few kids had even thrown rocks.
Quite a few Tongans I had met treated me with cool disdain or even outright aggression an anti Westernism I might have expected but actually would not experience in places like Cambodia or Tanzania. In those countries there was ample reason to hate Westerners – war, colonization, silly tourists with corn rowed hair. But Tong had none of that. It is the only South Pacific nation never to have been colonized and is one of the few Polynesian islands that is rarely visited by tourists
Ikale beer in Tonga – I turned right at the expat hangout of choice the Billfish Bar cutting through the suburbs full of wood houses each with a pig or two rooting in the yard. Tongans keep pigs like Americans keep dogs except they eat them.
Enuff, Enuff. Mac
Hello all,
Spring us finally here for those of us in the northern hemisphere and it is more than welcome ! In the UK over the last few weeks I’m sure many of us have enjoyed the odd BBQ, walked through the blooming greenery and started to think of being more active…as there seems to be so much more energy around J Well in this edition we three very active members of Globetrotters to highlight through various activities, plus two articles from authors who I don’t think have contributed before. There are also the established regulars such as Mac giving his views on another subject, a request for help, a number of web sites’ links and an update on the club’s annual travel award.
Following on from member Charlie Egan’s book launch and my request for reviewers – I’m pleased to say I’ve had three replies and The Killing Snows has already been sent out. Hopefully I’ll be able to let you know the reader’s views over the next few months. In the meantime Charlie has been busy promoting via being involved in the first ever National Famine Memorial Day on 17 May at The London Irish Centre in Camden. This has included working with John Dunne at London Irish Theatre on programming some interesting famine-related work around his play at The Old Red Lion Theatre, 418 St. John Street, London EC1V 4NJ. www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk
Member Karen Neale has been exhibiting pictures from her latest book, London in Landscape Vol II , at the Barbican Library, 2nd Floor, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS and various visitors have sung her praises yet again in capturing the essence of what London life can be about. See Karen’s web site for further details http://www.karenneale.co.uk
And hot of the press we have a letter from Jennifer Barclay, currently experiencing a Greek island lifestyle on Tilos in the Dodecanese. For those that haven’t heard of her, Jennifer spoke to the London branch about how she ended up in Korea and what she came to enjoy about that very different society.
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That’s all for now…enjoy being busy yourselves and writing in with your travels J
The Ant
Paul Whittle – Land of Gold and Green, a journey through Burma, aka Myanmar. Burma gained its independence in 1948 and since 1962 has been run by the military with an iron rule, the only threat to its continued dictatorship being Aung San Suu Kyi winning the 1990 election, but never being allowed to hold office. The country is 90% Buddhist. Paul showed us the capital Yangon, where the public buses are made from 60 year old truck chassis. From Yangon you can take the steamer up the Irrawaddy river to Mandalay with its Pagodas and Kyaiktiyo gold rock said to be precariously held in place by a hair from Gautama Buddha. Paul travelled around Burma using a hired steam locomotive, which would stop whenever a photo opportunity arose. Paul showed us the beauty of Inlay Lake, with its famous “Jumping Cat” Monastery and also the UNESCO listed Bagan with its 2200 temples.
Brazil Bunch – Tony Annis & five friends (three of the six being Globetrotters’ members) travel across to the western Brazilian state of Acre, in order to spend time with the Ashaninka people and sample life in their communities along the rivers & forests for Peru/Brazil border. Whilst not professional speakers or authors, these enthusiastic travellers showed us a range of adventures as they left the modern state behind and headed up river in a small convoy of powerful motorboats. Whilst not quite Bruce Parry in Amazon, they did get a chance to gain a unique insight into a way of life that is rapidly changing.
Polly Evans – “Mad dogs and an Englishwoman”. Polly travelled to Canada’s Yukon Territory to learn about the Huskies who take part in the 1000 mile Yukon Quest sled race. First Polly spent time with Frank, who invented the race and his son Saul who have 108 Huskies in training. She learned about the dogs, how they each have a personality and like to “live” with their friends and their rather gruesome looking horse meat in hot water diet! The race itself runs from Fairbanks in Alaska, via Dawson where the Mushers have a 36 hour rest, before continuing to the finish at Whitehorse. Each team set out with 14 dogs and are allowed no outside help, though they can drop off injured dogs at “Dog drops” and pick up supplies along the way, though they must finish the race with at least 8 dogs, which the fastest sleds manage in 10 days. During the race Polly watched, a bad storm occurred resulting in the Military having to use helicopters to rescue over 88 dogs and their Mushers. After the race Polly had a go at dog sledding, as she said you end up with lots of photos of dogs behinds!
More information at www.pollyevans.com
Our second speaker was John Mole whose talk was called “I was a potato Oligarch!”. When Russia changed into a free market economy John thought he saw a gap in the market between McDonalds and Pizza Hut, something quintessentially English, his own version of the now defunct “Spud-U-Like” chain to be called “Jackets Moscow”. After getting a grant he set off to try and find the best potatoes Russia could grow, visiting farms, looking at Spuds and learning Russian along the way. Alas John’s plan was thwarted by the Russian Mafia, where everyone from the Police, Fire Brigade, Local council all want paying off, the Russian mafia demanded 10% of his takings, which was the equivalent of 80% of his profit, so the whole thing was a no starter, but made for a great story.
More information at www.johnmole.com/oligarch
For details of the forth coming meetings of the London branch, December 2008 through to July 2009 – http://www.globetrotters.co.uk/meetings/lon09it1.html.
London meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden at 2.30pm the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend. There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh in September. For more information, contact the Globetrotters Info line on +44 (0) 20 8674 6229, or visit the website: www.globetrotters.co.uk.