A UNESCO World Heritage site – Rapa Nui National Park is a protected Chilean wildlife area located in Easter Island, which concentrates on the legacy of the Rapa Nui culture.
John Brinkley – Mumbai to Agra by train, bus and plane
A pre-Covid journey with a small group of travellers from Mumbai to Agra via Kolkata, Darjeeling and Lucknow
A study tour of Hanseatic Cities, covering some of the history and geography of the Hanseatic League including cities in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.
Jo Crotty — Travels from the Great War to the Cold War
Jo is an enthusiast for 20th century history and politics and has travelled the world visiting sites that have shaped the recent past
We would ask that anyone with respiratory symptoms participate via Zoom.
The Zoom meeting opens at 14:15 with the talks starting 14:30-14:45 BST (London time see Event Time Announcer for local times), please join early so we can deal with any issues with joining, if you have issues please try updating your Zoom client first, we are very limited in what we can do once the meeting has started.
We would ask that anyone with respiratory symptoms participates via zoom.
The zoom meeting opens at 14:15 with the talks starting 14:30-14:45 BST (London time see Event Time Announcer for local times), please join early so we can deal with any issues with joining, if you have issues please try updating your zoom client first, we are very limited in what we can do once the meeting has started.
Speaking on Saturday, June 8, 2024 (on the 2nd Saturday) we have :
1st: Joe Sheffer – The Road to Oxiana.
When Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021 Joe Sheffer had been covering Afghanistan for nearly a decade as a cameraman and journalist. He decided to start taking tours to the country and his company – Safarāt – became the first foreign travel company offering tours in the new Afghanistan.
Three years later, Afghanistan is experiencing a tourism renaissance unseen since the hippy trail – spurred on by YouTubers, vloggers and travellers looking for adventure. But is travelling in Afghanistan ethical at the moment, or does it prop up a repugnant regime and should you think hard about visiting? Is the country’s sudden glut of tourists a disaster waiting to happen, or simply an important source of income for Afghans hungry to work and keen to show off their country to foreign guests?
Joe will have just returned from Nuristan – a place made famous by the writings of Eric Newby, and Wilfred Thesinger – will be presenting on his latest work in the province.
2nd: Mary Fogarty – Northern Greece: in search of Macedonian roots.
Last September Mary went with Australian Macedonian Victor to find his family roots in northern Greece. They arrived in Thessaloniki, where Victor was very taken with Alexander the Great (considered by Macedonians to be theirs, and by Greeks to be theirs!). From here it was a bus journey up to Florina, near the border with Macedonia, where they hired a car and took off into the mountains to visit the many villages where his parents, grandparents, and ancestors were all born. Here, despite the fact that they were clearly in Greece, it was interesting to discover that everyone was still speaking Victor’s parents’ old dialect of Macedonian …
Driving over the border to Northern Macedonia (ignoring bear warnings and the car hire’s disapproval), they visited Bitola and Lake Ohrid, a blissfully beautiful place where Mary longed to stay but no, after a few idyllic days, it was back to the old village for a Greek wedding, which went on all day, finishing up in a gigantic, Las Vegas-style ‘wedding reception hall’: here, 850 guests watched displays of fireworks and endless Greek/Macedonian dancing and horn playing; Mary took to drinking copious amounts of retsina and Coke, which was the ‘go to’ drink of the evening.
On the final leg of the journey, they took a six-hour bus journey down the backbone of Greece to Athens, where Victor was overwhelmed by the ancient Greek architecture and Mary by meeting a famous film director. Their last staging post was the heavenly island of Hydra, where mules have replaced cars, and the sea was the deepest blue … here Mary went swimming and Victor developed a chill, which was the beginning of another big drama …
Date & Time: [meetingdate]
Doors open at 14:15 in London and on Zoom with the talks starting around 14:45 (London see Event Time Announcer for local times), please arrive before 14:45 and switch your phone to “do not disturb” or silent.
We would ask that anyone with respiratory symptoms participate via Zoom.
Admission costs:
£7 for members. (Members can access a ticket code below or from the members area.)
The format is talks by eight to ten speakers for ten minutes giving a fast-paced journey around the Globe.
There are five talks before the break and four to five talks after the break, with each speaker having around 10 minutes to speak.
Speaking we have:
Colin Hales – Building a plane and flying it around the world, but not succeeding.
Peter Payne – Chinese skiing and ice festival
Rosemary J Brown – Peak encounters: Pakistan and Patagonia
Will Linsdell – My Top 10 Travel Photos.
Doreen Tayler – Gran Canaria
Deborah Brunati – Exploring Catalunya
David Redford – Nakhchivan
Sheila Robinson – Morocco
Ian Bailey – World Trip 1980-81
Jay Ginn – South India
By tradition, we follow this meeting with a New Year Party post-meeting.
Everyone is invited to bring food and wine or soft drinks (we are not allowed beer or spirits) and participate!
Date & Time: [meetingdate]
Doors open at 14:15 in London and on Zoom with the talks starting around 14:45 (London see Event Time Announcer for local times), please arrive before 14:45 and switch your phone to “do not disturb” or silent.
We would ask that anyone with respiratory symptoms participate via Zoom.
1st: Gerry Mulligan – Adventures around the world in Nelson a converted Land Rover Defender.
After two bouts of Hodgkins Lymphoma Gerry decided to see the bits of the world he had not been to already, while he still had a chance, following a long held dream he bought an old Land Rover Defender and converted it for travel. Now after six years he has visited 82 countries in “Nelson” the defender, including driving from Scotland to China and back, a circuit of South America and has just returned from a nine month expedition around all the bits of Africa that are not currently at war. His journeys are serialised in Land Rover Monthly. In his talk Gerry will share some of the highlights of his travels and the key things he has learnt about preparing and successfully completing these expeditions, well nearly successfully as two days before the end of his travels the steering broke on his truck and it crashed badly in a Park full of lions….
2nd: Eloise Burnett – Overland across China to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
In Summer 2023 I took 8 a week sabbatical, starting with a flight to Shanghai and a high level plan of “China and let’s see how far we can get”. The trip ended up being a patchwork quilt of the most extremes in natural landscapes and human settlement, all the colours of the Silk Road and the barriers of human conflict making our trip more interesting and chaotic. The talk will cover the way i discovered then abolished my prejudices on China, driving along the Afghan border spotting Taliban fighters, trying to understand the ‘Stans’ and the travel style of ‘making it up as we went along’.
Date & Time: [meetingdate]
Doors open at 14:15 in London and on Zoom with the talks starting around 14:45 (London see Event Time Announcer for local times), please arrive before 14:45 and switch your phone to “do not disturb” or silent.
We would ask that anyone with respiratory symptoms participate via Zoom.
Admission costs:
£7 for members. (Members can access a ticket code below or from the members area.)
1st: Nicholas Mackey – An Irishman in Northern Mesopotamia
Nicholas Mackey explores the ancient wonders of Antakya, Dara, Harran, Mardin, Gaziantep, and Diyarbakir, peeling back the layers of empires, cultures and peoples that have shaped millennia.
Nicholas Mackey is a writer and photographer whose lifelong passion for storytelling and visual exploration began in childhood when he received a camera as a gift.
A published author and Royal Photographic Society’s 2021 Documentary Photographer of the Year nominee, Nicholas has exhibited at the Royal Academy, London.
He is currently a Photography Writer for Arts Etc. magazine and his latest project, An Irishman in Northern Mesopotamia, intricately weaves travelogue, history, ideas, poetry and captivating photography.
2nd: Elspeth Beard – – A pioneering solo round the world motorcycle trip in the early 1980’s
ELSPETH BEARD is a motorcyclist and award-winning architect. In 1982, at the age of just twenty-three, Elspeth Beard left her family and friends in London and set off alone on a 35,000 mile solo adventure around the world on her 1974 BMW R60/6. In an age before email, mobile phones and satnavs, and with no sponsorship or support the journey took two and a half years covering 35,000 miles. She rode through North America, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Europe.
Returning home in 1984, Elspeth finished her architecture degree and in 1988 brought a derelict water tower, which she spent seven years converting into her home. She runs her own architectural practice, specialising in creating and remodelling interesting and unusual buildings. She lives in a converted Victorian water tower in the southeast of England and still enjoys riding her collection of motorcycles, which includes the trusty BMW R60/6 which carried her around the world.
The talk by Leon McCarron has had to be postponed.
Date & Time: [meetingdate]
Doors open at 14:15 in London and on Zoom with the talks starting around 14:45 (London see Event Time Announcer for local times), please arrive before 14:45 and switch your phone to “do not disturb” or silent.
We would ask that anyone with respiratory symptoms participate via Zoom.
Admission costs:
£7 for members. (Members can access a ticket code below or from the members area.)