Speaking this month we have:

1. Members Slides : Around the world in eighty minutes. 10 presentations of 10 slides This month we have a fast paced journey around the Globe..

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

Admission costs, £3 for Members and £6.00 Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and we do not sell advanced tickets, please just come on the day, the doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk session lasting approximately 40 minutes.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

If you would like to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Globetrotters London meetings and to be sent email reminders prior to the meeting, please sign up here.

There is no meeting this month.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Jeanie Copland – on to Ho Chi Min (Trans Siberian Part 2).

   Having travelled the Trans Siberian railway from Moscow, via Mongolia, to Beijing; now continue on China’s railways to Nanning, crossing into Vietnam to connect with their reunification rail network – “adventuring en route!!”.

2. Russell Maddicks – Ecuador: Where to Visit After April’s Earthquake

   Ecuador is one of the most interesting and rewarding countries to visit in the Americas. A small country blessed with a hugely varied geography – encompassing Andean peaks, Amazon rainforest, Pacific beaches, and the wildlife-wonderland of the Galapagos Islands – it has been described as a microcosm of South America. On 16 April a 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated communities along the northern Pacific coast and a massive relief effort is still underway. Meanwhile, the rest of the country is operating normally and more than ever needs tourism revenue to help fund the rebuilding on the coast.

   Russell Maddicks, the author of the “Culture Smart! Guide to Ecuador” will give an illustrated presentation explaining the current situation on the ground, why you should visit now, and a taste of the country’s main tourism highlights.

3. Olie Hunter Smart – Kayaking the Amazon.

   Olie has a passion for travel, culture, adventure and photography, stemming from a trip to Belize in 2002. Since then he has continued to explore the world, spending two months in a village on a remote island in Indonesia, as well as travelling through parts of Northern African and Europe. In 2013 he took a break from the advertising world, backpacking his way overland through 16 countries across four continents, exploring and photographing different environments, cultures and landscapes along the way.

   In 2015, Olie and travel companion Tarran Kent-Hume completed an expedition to walk and kayak the length of the Amazon River, from its most distant source high up in the Peruvian Andes to where it enters the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil. The pair travelled over 4,000 miles fully unsupported, carrying all their own gear, food and supplies for the four and a half month journey.

   Find out more at www.oliehuntersmart.com or @oliehs

   

   

   

   

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

Admission costs, £3 for Members and £6.00 Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and we do not sell advanced tickets, please just come on the day, the doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk lasting approximately 40 minutes.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

If you would like to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Globetrotters London meetings and to be sent email reminders prior to the meeting, please sign up here.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Elizabeth Gowing – The Rubbish-Picker’s Wife: an unlikely friendship in Kosovo.

   This is the story of living and learning – being confused and comforted – with the excluded Ashkali people of Kosovo; an account of the challenges and delights of what happens when you find your community but it’s a long way from home.

   Hatemja, a rubbish-picker’s wife, lives in the poorest community in the poorest country in Europe. When Elizabeth Gowing is befriended by her, the women learn with, from and about one another. How can you find the best rubbish pastures for scavenging? How can you free children to go to school rather than to go out begging? How do you then convince the local school to accept them? Can mayonnaise deal with head lice? How best to teach the 36 letters of the Albanian alphabet? How would Facebook help evacuate a family from a rat-infested hovel? How do you make baklava? And through it all, how do you maintain a precious friendship that’s helped you find out the best you can be?

   To find out more visit Elizabeth’s website www.elizabethgowing.com or Twitter.

   The Ideas Partnership’s is the charity, which Elizabeth co-founded to work with the rubbish-pickers and their families and whose work is included in the talk: visit their website The Ideas Partnership or their Facebook page.

   Elisabeth’s book is The Rubbish-Picker’s Wife; an unlikely friendship in Kosovo.

   

   

2. John Pilkington – Europe & Russia: What Next?

   Our president reports that passions are running high in Ukraine and the breakaway states of the Caucasus. Vladimir Putin’s adventures in Ukraine took the West by surprise. But John thinks in some ways they followed a pattern that goes back more than a century to the legendary ‘Great Game’ between Russia and Britain in Victorian times. Since the Soviet Union’s break-up, Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia have become Russia’s ‘forgotten’ satellite states – unrecognised and unheard of by most outsiders. Now Donetsk and Luhansk have joined the list, and Russia has full control of Crimea.

   In 2015 John met people on both sides of these disputed borders, and promises some surprising insights.

   More at http://www.pilk.net

   

   

   

   

   

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

Admission costs, £3 for Members and £6.00 Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and we do not sell advanced tickets, please just come on the day, the doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk lasting approximately 40 minutes.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

If you would like to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Globetrotters London meetings and to be sent email reminders prior to the meeting, please sign up here.

Speaking this month we have:

1. John Hare – Three wild camel surveys in the Gobi desert undertaken in 1999, 2005 and 2011.

   The first survey traversed some hitherto unexplored sand dunes near the northern Tibet escarpment that led John Hare into two undiscovered valleys and a fresh water spring that held pockets of wildlife that had no fear of man.

   In addition to observing 169 critically endangered wild camels, the expedition also observed the Tibetan ass, Argali wild sheep, wolves and bears at extraordinarily close quarters.

   On a return visit six years later, John Hare discovered that illegal miners had entered the area and in their search for gold had poisoned the spring and the vegetation with potassium cyanide and shot the wildlife.

   The third and most recent trek highlights what has happened since then The talk concludes with an illustration of the highly successful captive wild camel breeding programme which the charity that John Hare founded, the Wild Camel Protection Foundation, initiated in Mongolia.

   Find out more at www.wildcamels.com and johnhare.org.uk.

2. Charlie Walker – A Long Way Home

   In 2010 Charlie set off by bicycle and returned 4.5 years later with 43,000 miles behind him. His journey included walking 1,000 miles across the Gobi desert, horse-trekking 600 miles through the Mongolian steppe and descending a little known tributary of the Congo river by dugout canoe. His talks recount some of the highlights and challenges of his adventure.

   Find out more at Charlie’ss Website: www.cwexplore.com, Twitter and Facebook.

   

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

Admission costs, £3 for Members and £6.00 Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and we do not sell advanced tickets, please just come on the day, the doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk lasting approximately 40 minutes.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

If you would like to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Globetrotters London meetings and to be sent email reminders prior to the meeting, please sign up here.

This month we have:

1. AGM : The clubs AGM starts at 1:00pm (card carrying members only), then at 2.30 the meeting begins

Speaking this month we have:

2. Jeremy Perrin – All you need to know about the Camino de Santiago

3. Jon Beardmore – The Great Game – 30,000 miles across Central Asia

   In 2013 Jon set out to retrace the 200 years immortalised in “The Great Game” – a term for the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia.

   Through interaction with the local people and landscapes, the aim was to compare the historical version with the modern day. He travelled from London to Russia along the Silk Road, through the “Stans”, China and SE Asia returning via India, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey and finally back to Europe.

   His aim: to find out if Central Asia is really as dangerous as we’re led to believe.

   Links to the film website: www.thegreatgamemovie.com, https://www.facebook.com/TheGreatGameMovie/ and https://twitter.com/TheGreatGame30k

   Charity Links: Charity Fundraising Page

   

   

   

   

   

   

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

Admission costs, £3 for Members and £6.00 Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and we do not sell advanced tickets, please just come on the day, the doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk lasting approximately 40 minutes.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

If you would like to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Globetrotters London meetings and to be sent email reminders prior to the meeting, please sign up here

Speaking this month we have:

1. Daniel Evans – Footsteps Beyond the Pond

   Daniel has a special interest in the cryosphere (cold environments) and received a scholarship from the Royal Geographical Society when he was just 17 to travel and study in Alaska.

   After two months working as a field assistant at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, he undertook a tour of the US West Coast, absorbing the culture of Washington State, Oregon and California before heading up to Canada.

   Daniel has always had a passion for Geography, fostered no doubt from being brought up exploring his home county of Norfolk. With a desire to learn more about how the planet operates, Daniel is currently in the third year of his BSc Physical Geography degree programme and aspires to go on to achieve a Masters and PhD.

   Daniel is a keynote and after-dinner speaker to Rotary Clubs, the Woman’s Institute, schools and colleges across the country. He has also lectured at the Royal Geographical Society and many conferences. Recently, he was awarded the Ivan Palfrey Trophy for services towards the wider geographical community.

   Additionally, in his own time, he produces documentaries to inspire young people to study the landscape around them, writes essays and publishes all of this work on his blog: geographywithdan.blogspot.co.uk

2. Jacqui Trotter – Israel.
3. Unfortunately Alan Palmer has had to cancel.

   Alan Palmer – Diverse encounters in India's North-East Frontier Agency – Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Assam.

   Alan Palmer previously presented for us at The Globetrotters Club three years ago when he delivered an illustrated talk about his experiences of trekking through the High Atlas and Ant-Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Having first visited the country in 1979 and having regularly trekked there since 1986, he was in a good position to do so. More recently, he has focused upon the rich cultural diversity of North East India.

   During the course of two seasons in 2015, first through the deluge of the summer monsoon and then under the clear, blue skies of winter, Alan crossed the mountainous tribal regions of Arunachal Pradesh (inadvertently almost straying into Bhutan), traversed the plains of northern Assam, and then sought out remote traditional villages in Nagaland (accidentally wandering across the border into Myanmar, Burma).

   Alan will present an illustrated talk to us about his recent travels, focusing upon the remarkable ethnic and cultural diversity of the people he met in this remote corner of North East India.

   Alan is author of “Moroccan Atlas – The Trekking Guide” (Trailblazer Publications 2010, second edition 2014).He has also contributed to Pakistan and The Silk Road (both by Insight Guides). In 2012 he formed his own company, Yak Travel Limited, planning and organising fully personalised treks and 4×4 tours for individuals and small groups in Morocco and North East India.

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

Admission costs, £3 for Members and £6.00 Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and we do not sell advanced tickets, please just come on the day, the doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk lasting approximately 40 minutes.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

If you would like to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Globetrotters London meetings and to be sent email reminders prior to the meeting, please sign up here.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Nathan Millward – From Sydney to London and beyond. Dorothy Revisited

   English traveller and author from Mansfield in the Midlands having ridden across the world by 105cc motorcycle named Dorothy and now back home in England, living in suburbia.

   Married last September in Las Vegas during another impromptu motorcycle adventure, proving that it’s not about the number of countries you visit or amount of miles that you cover. It’s instead about moving forward in life, however that happens to be represented.Talking about the trials and tribulations of the road and what travelling and adventure means to me now that I have two women in my life.

2. Adam Lang – Sea and Sardinia – D.H. Lawrence’s Hidden Sardinia

   Five years ago I discovered ” Sea and Sardinia ” by DH Lawrence on an untidy shelf at Scriveners bookshop in Buxton, Derbyshire. Although I was not aware of the book it proved a very sound investment for just a pound. It coupled well my interests in Lawrence and Sardinia .

   In January 1921 DH Lawrence decided to take a break from living in Sicily and visited Sardinia with Frieda,his wife, whom he called the QB ( Queen Bee).He found a ” strange stony Cagliari ” with a street ” like a corkscrew stairway”. It was only a 6 day trip starting in the capital Cagliari and travelling third class on a narrow gauge steam train through the rugged interior.

   Lawrence and Frieda saw and spoke to a diverse range of people enabling him to write this little known Travel book which gives an illuminating and fascinating account of Sardinia and its people post World War One.

   130 years on from Lawrence’s birth in 1885, I attempted to retrace his and Frieda’s journey in the much more agreeable month of June with my partner Elizabeth,a ceramicist. Our trip showed how in many ways the island,its scenery, its life are little changed in a century.

   I am a published freelance writer,a former London Secondary Headteacher on ” a mature gap year ” with a passion for travel, education, the arts, music, sport and history.

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

Admission costs, £3 for Members and £6.00 Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and we do not sell advanced tickets, please just come on the day, the doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk lasting approximately 40 minutes.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

If you would like to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Globetrotters London meetings and to be sent email reminders prior to the meeting, please sign up here.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Denise Heywood – Sir Stamford Raffles Art Collector & Discoverer Of Singapore

   Raffles, whose name is synonymous with a luxury hotel rather than the greatest Buddhist temple in the world, was the enlightened 18th c colonial administrator of Java. This lecture tells the story of Raffles, a scholar and polymath. It looks at the objects he collected, reveals the temple, Borobudur, he uncovered in Java, shows Singapore, which he chose as a centre for trade and reflects on the legacy of his travels and life.

2. Alan Palmer – Travels in India’s North East Frontier Agency (Part 1) – Amongst the Headhunters of Nagaland

   Alan Palmer previously presented for us at The Globetrotters Club three years ago when he delivered an illustrated talk about his experiences of trekking through the High Atlas and Ant-Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Having first visited the country in 1979 and having regularly trekked there since 1986, he was in a good position to do so. More recently, he has focused upon the rich cultural diversity of North East India.

   During the course of two seasons in 2015, first through the deluge of the summer monsoon and then under the clear, blue skies of winter, Alan crossed the mountainous tribal regions of Arunachal Pradesh (inadvertently almost straying into Bhutan), traversed the plains of northern Assam, and then sought out remote traditional villages in Nagaland (accidentally wandering across the border into Myanmar, Burma).

   Alan will present an illustrated talk to us about his recent travels, focusing upon the remarkable ethnic and cultural diversity of the people he met in this remote corner of North East India.

   From the history of Nagaland’s head-hunting tribes to opium smoking chiefs on the Burmese border,  and from the 19th century conflicts with the early British colonialists to the battlefields of the Second World War against the Japanese plus, of course, the wonderful 10-day Hornbill Festival.

   Alan is author of “Moroccan Atlas – The Trekking Guide” (Trailblazer Publications 2010, second edition 2014).He has also contributed to Pakistan and The Silk Road (both by Insight Guides). In 2012 he formed his own company, Yak Travel Limited, planning and organising fully personalised treks and 4×4 tours for individuals and small groups in Morocco and North East India.

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

Admission costs, £3 for Members and £6.00 Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and we do not sell advanced tickets, please just come on the day, the doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk lasting approximately 40 minutes.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

If you would like to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Globetrotters London meetings and to be sent email reminders prior to the meeting, please sign up here.

Speaking this month we have:

1. David Illsley – The Ancient Kingdom of the Alpujarra of Granada.

   The peaks that tower over the ancient kingdom of Granada are the highest in mainland Spain, higher even than the mighty Pyrenees. Entrapped between their southern slopes and the mediterranean sea some 30 miles distant, lies the fabled area known as Las Alpujarras, the last exclave of the Islamic empire of Al-Andalus, secretive land which to this day remains revered for its astonishing zoological diversity, its sweeping ethereal landscapes and venerable cultural heritage.

   Just imagine: the slopes rise from the seashore to well over 11000 feet, the seasons are extreme and elemental, the thousand year old system of irrigated terraces still works perfectly, whilst there is a breathtaking array of wildflowers – up to 80% of European endemics, it is claimed – and the entire area somehow reeks of antiquity, with archaeologists suggesting recently that they have unearthed the tooth of a primitive hominid that is a mind-blowing 1.2 million years old.

   The aim of this short talk is to describe and illustrate this lovely area which I’m proud to say has been our home for almost 20 years, and to try to offer some insight into how its inhabitants have had to come to terms and adapt to such a beautiful yet challenging environment.

   David and Emma gave up the day job with the British Council in the Canaries in 1998, and after a month or so back in the UK set off on our bicycles for what was assumed would be a year off. However, they somehow seemed to get a bit carried away, and that year off has managed to extend itself, so that they now find themselves still squirrelled away in the mountains of Granada, where they run a small hotel, restaurant and multi -activity centre, together of course with their family of boys, labradors and an assortment of small animals.

   Find out more at laschimeneas.com or on Facebook.

   

   

   

   

2. Mark Wainwright – Above the clouds Mark Wainwright’s chequered career has included working as an editor, stonecutter, housing officer, and open data evangelist, among other things. In 2014 he lived for some months at the remote Tharpaling Monastery in Bumthang, Bhutan, teaching English to monks. While there he learnt to speak a little Dzongka, to avoid being attacked by bears, and to appreciate chilli as a vegetable.

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

Admission costs, £3 for Members and £6.00 Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and we do not sell advanced tickets, please just come on the day, the doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk lasting approximately 40 minutes.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

If you would like to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Globetrotters London meetings and to be sent email reminders prior to the meeting, please sign up here.