Speaking this month we have:

1. Members Slides : Around the world in eighty minutes.
   • Liz Cooper – Ecuador: The curse of Floreana
   • Zara Taylor – Albania
   • Sameen Damghani = Dancing in the deserts of Iran
   • Gavin Fernandes = Portraits of the Silk Road 2012
   • Jacqui Trotter = Naples
   • Simon Banks – ChongQing, China
   • Brian Lawrence – Hippy Trail 1966/7
   • Mary Fogarty – Algerian deserts: Saharawi people
   • Philip Ferguson – Holy Places in India
   • Sue Learoyd – Antarctica

(The order of speakers may change on the day).

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.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Mary-Anne Bartlett – Art Safari
2. Carol Jones – Kayayo Girls of Ghana

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.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Francesca Jaggs – Volunteering, Ayurvedic medicine and exploration in Kerala, India.
2. Barbara Brooks – From glaciers to the driest desert on Earth – Argentina and Chile

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.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Neil Harris – Miao and Hmong Festivals and lifestyle.

   The Miao from SW China and the Hmong of Laos are related ethnic minority groups, their festivals show similarities, especially in the traditional dress worn by females. The Maio have many different clans, these identifiable by the headgear worn by the womenfolk. Mainly through photographs the talk will illustrate these differences and show elements of their lifestyle.

   Neil Harris, an enthusiastic traveller, is a retired Meteorologist and long time member of the Globetrotters Club. He is as keen photographer and an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society.

2. Jason Lewis – Expedition 360: The First Human-Powered Circumnavigation of the Earth.

   He survived a terrifying crocodile attack off Australia’s Queensland coast, blood poisoning in the middle of the Pacific, malaria in Indonesia and China, and acute mountain sickness in the Himalayas. He was hit by a car and left for dead with two broken legs in Colorado, and incarcerated for espionage on the Sudan-Egypt border.

   Described by the Daily Mail as “the most remarkable adventurer in the world today,” Jason Lewis shares tales from his upcoming trilogy chronicling the first human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth—biking, hiking, and inline skating five continents, and kayaking, swimming, rowing, and pedalling a boat across the world’s oceans—and what wider-reaching lessons in sustainability can be drawn from life in a tiny boat thousands of miles from land.

   “This is a delightful and funny adventure; it is also lonely, dangerous and frightening.” — The Times

   Find out more at jasonexplorer.com or follow Jason on twitter: @explorerjason.

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.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Linda Howard – A Very Long Train Journey: From Moscow To Beijing
2. Kevin Brackley – Mysore – Exploring outside the bubble

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.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Two mini talks
   • Sylvia Pullen – Greek Idyll
   • Barbara Brooks – French Polynesia
2. Gavin A. Fernandes – Stories from the Silk Road

   Our first speaker is long term club member, photographer and regular speaker Gavin A Fernandes who won a place on an overland trip travelling across central Asia last summer.

   Stories from the Silk Road 2012 – tales from an overland journey from Turkey to China across central Asia featuring shrines in Iran, gas craters in Turkmenistan, wild horses and glaciers in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and riots in Xian… and being followed by a Japanese film crew making a travel documentary…

By tradition we follow this meeting with a New Year Party post-meeting everyone is invited to bring food and drink and participate! (We have permission from the church for you to bring wine, but beer, cider and spirits are not allowed)

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.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Alan Palmer & Lynda Corry – Trekking with mules through the High Atlas and Anti-Atlas Mountains of Morocco
2. Jane Wilson-Howarth – Travel Health

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.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Jonathan Kaplan — Surgical travels in Nepal
2. Michael Middleditch — Into the Klondike

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.

Speaking this month we have:

1. AGM : The clubs AGM starts at 1:15pm (card carrying members only), then at 2.30 the meeting begins

2. Hilary Clark —  Dancing backwards in high heels

   Hilary Clark has been passionate about dance since childhood. She took classes in ballet and various contemporary styles until her mid-thirties when a course of lessons in the Alexander technique started her on an inner journey of discovery and development. She trained and worked as a complementary therapist, as a psychosynthesis counsellor, and as Head of Education and Training for the Faculty of Homeopathy where she was asked to organise a milonga to follow the gala dinner at the Faculty’s bi-annual congress. Knowing little about Argentine tango yet determined to dance at the milonga, she enrolled on a beginners’ course in Bedford and was soon captivated by the dance.

   Her trip to Argentina earlier this year, funded in part by the William Wood Legacy Award, combined her love of dance, enthusiasm for travel and interest in the beliefs, rituals and customs of other cultures. From Buenos Aires, where she took one-to-one lessons with a local teacher, danced at several milongas and learned something about the “codigos” of the tango, Hilary travelled by bus to north-west Argentina to discover the history, culture and folk dances of the Andes.

3. Derek Brown — Travels around Europe by Boat.

   After Derek  retired he got the sailing bug and after buying a boat in Holland motored it down the Rhine and on the Danube all the way to Istanbul, traveling 3,750 kilometres, during which time they passed through ninety-four locks. The journey crossed Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania before eventually ending up at their final destination, Istanbul, in Turkey.

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.

Speaking this month we have:

1. Paul Archer – How to drive a black cab up Everest… and other useful tips

   Paul has arranged various expeditions since he was 17.  Most recently, his ‘It’s on the Meter‘ expedition was a full circumnavigation of the world in a black cab, taking in 50 countries, over 43,000 miles and gaining two Guinness World records.

2. Eric Hayman – Up Africa ’74.

   Eric Hayman has always been a traveller. From half a dozen schools and homes he joined the army. Postings took him to Germany and the Middle East. After demob in 1964, he helped his parents at their Eastbourne hotel before working with horses around the UK. Then his itchy feet took him to the southern African kingdom of Lesotho.

   By early 1974, Eric had spent five years there. From running a country hotel, he worked on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, before being a UNDP field geologist. The end of this contract coincided with that of a teacher/volunteer who, like Eric, wanted to travel back to the UK overland.

   They left Lesotho in April 1974 with, as far as Botswana, an ex-pat doctor working in Maseru’s hospital and an ex-pat employed by the Lesotho government. The journey would take them both up through Africa; they went their separate ways after Cameroon, but met up again in London in 1975 – and again in 2007.

   By road, rail and river, both pushed northward, Eric working as cook’s “boy” on a cargo ship from Dakar to Grimsby. His yet-to-be-published book-length illustrated account of the six-month journey – “Up Africa ’74″ – is available on DVD.

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.