1st: Anthony Britton: A summer 2024 road trip to the Aegean, via the Carpathians and the Black Sea.
In June 2024, Anthony and Julia set off on a long round road trip to Eastern Europe. They explored their Polish roots, visited World Heritage sites in Romania, discovered what King Charles likes about the Carpathians and trailed the Black Sea coast to the Aegean. They met families who remember the Cold War and those whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change.
2nd: Speaker to be confirmed
Date & Time: Saturday 1st March 2025
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 early so we can deal with any issues with joining.
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.)
Olivia McGregor was the recipient of the Royal Geographical Society’s 2024 Neville Shulman Challenge Award and will be talking about her journey to the savannahs and rainforests of Guyana.
Olivia travelled to The Lost World, one of the last wildernesses on Earth, a land steeped in exotic myth and legend that served as inspiration for Jurassic Park. Among its inhabitants were the Makushi people, indigenous to the region, with a rich culture dating back 11,000 years.
The Makushi people are at a crossroads, caught between traditional ways of living in close connection with their natural environment and the influences of the modern industrialised world. Olivia will talk about how they are adjusting and the implications of this for everyone. Their survival could be humanity’s own.
Date & Time: Saturday 1st February 2025
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 early so we can deal with any issues with joining.
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.)
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: Saturday 8th June 2024
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 early so we can deal with any issues with joining.
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 four to five talks before the break and four to five talks after the break, with each speaker having around 10 minutes to speak.
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: Saturday 4th January 2025
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 early so we can deal with any issues with joining.
We would ask that anyone with respiratory symptoms participate via Zoom.
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: Saturday 6th July 2024
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 early so we can deal with any issues with joining.
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.)
Jay went to Peru in 2008 to explore its fascinating history, its current situation, and the fabulous scenery of the Andes range. Leaving crowded Lima, she went on to visit the vast Lake Titicaca with its islands, where indigenous Quechua-speaking campesinos live; also the floating sedge islands which are home to fishing families. A ride northwards along the Andean range then took her to sprawling Cuzco, once the capital of Peru. Here, modern buildings mix with older ones and ancient dry stone walls.
From Cuzco, she took the train to Aguas Calientes on the Urubamba River, and from here it was a bus up the steep switchback road to Machu Picchu far above. The remains of this world-famous Inca city reveal its architecture, terraces and Sun Temple.
Following this spectacular visit, the tour bus descended down towards the Pacific Ocean, taking in Colca Canyon, and then the old colonial city of Arequipa with museums illustrating Peruvian history and customs. At the coast, she visited giant sand dunes, took a boat to a sea lion colony and then returned to Lima.
From here she took a bus north to Ecuador, arriving in Quito to find the Mayday demonstration in full swing. After this came an unwelcome surprise…
2nd: Nick Marchant – A Toast To Georgia
A land of beautiful landscapes and passionate people, where guests are ‘gifts from God’, I tell the story of my five trips to this dramatic Caucasus country, from its post-Soviet and civil war chaos in 1996 to its modern 21st century West-leaning democracy. With Russia to the North and Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iran to the South, it has always been at a critical juncture in geography and civilisation.
Visiting mostly the same family over almost 30 years, I describe how the country seems to have changed. A country steeped in tradition where the custom of ‘toasting’ with friends and family at a table laden with their delicious cuisine and local wine is a wonderful, joyous way of celebrating life. What characterises the Georgian people and what might survive of that character? And how might I have changed as a result of my three decades of friendship with this fascinating country and people?
Date & Time: Saturday 2nd March 2024
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 early so we can deal with any issues with joining.
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: Mark Weston – Life and Death on Africa’s Greatest Lake.
Mark Weston, author of The Saviour Fish (a Daily Telegraph Travel Book of the Year in 2022), will discuss what it was like to spend two years living on remote Ukerewe Island in the Tanzanian half of Lake Victoria.
He will describe his adjustment to island life, his encounters with Ukerewe’s notorious witches, his nighttime expeditions with the illegal fishermen of his neighbourhood, and the rise and fall of the Lake Victoria Nile perch industry, which has impacted the lives of more than 20 million people. He will also share the ancient recipe of the island’s last banana beer brewer.
2nd: David Lee – In search of the real Ho Chi Minh Trail – when would you turn back?
David’s talk concentrates on a journey in pursuit of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a series of tracks and trails from North to South Vietnam used in the Vietnam War. We were a team of six riders on enduro motorcycles, and our route was met with many obstacles which we overcame by building bamboo bridges, crossing a swollen river by floating motorcycles on rafts, crossing dense bamboo jungles, and then sleeping on a riverbank next to hungry leeches and soulful-sounding frogs.
David has been going to Southeast Asia for over ten years in search of trail routes and themes for his company, RAMS Adventures.
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 early so we can deal with any issues with joining.
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: Brian Anderson – The High Life – the altiplano of Peru, Bolivia and Chile
Brian Anderson is a Wirral based, tutor, lecturer and travel photographer. For over 35 years he has travelled to 66 countries and territories around the world. North to South, from the North Pole to Antarctica, and East to West, from Japan to Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Based on his trips to South America in 2019 and 2023, he now takes us in this new talk, to the Andean altiplano (high plains) of Peru, Bolivia and Chile.
In a richly informative, colourful presentation, Brian shares with us the otherwordly landscapes and the amazing wildlife that survives in this barren, high altitude (14,000 – 16,000 ft asl) region.
We will also meet the proud indigenous people – the Aymara and Quechua – who live in these high altitudes, and look at their unique and colourful culture which is rooted in the remote environment.
This talk is a must for lovers of travel, diverse cultures and wildlife.
My journey from Long Covid to the northernmost point of Europe
Following an 18-month battle with Covid-19 and Long Covid, Neil Pitts decided that he needed a challenge. So, in the winter of 2022, he and two friends attempted to ski the length of Norway. A journey that took more than 3 months.
This long-distance route, known as the Norge på langs, is approximately 2,500km long. Only one or two people complete it during winter each year. Most fail.
Neil’s presentation, which includes images from the journey, not only describes this incredible challenge but also gives an insight into the obstacles he had to overcome just to get to the start line. Plagued by the effects of Long Covid and injuries prior to the trip, he had also never been on Nordic skis.
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 early so we can deal with any issues with joining.
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.)
AGM: The club AGM starts at noon (card-carrying members only)
Speaking at 2.45 pm we have:
1st: Sheila Robinson – Uzbekistan
In the 1970s Douglas and Sheila Robinson spent 18 months travelling overland in Asia. Two children and nearly 50 years later we are still exploring. In 2017 we spent just under a month in Uzbekistan. Travelling by plane, trains, buses and cars we went to the Aral Sea (what’s left of it), the ancient cities of Khiva, Bokhara and Samarkand, the desert at Nurata and a mini trek in the mountains. It is a fascinating country with some of the friendliest people we’ve ever met.
2nd: Jim Holmes – English Breakfast and the story of Ceylon tea
The slopes of Sri Lanka’s southern mountains are clothed in neat rows of low bushes that produce one of the country’s greatest exports, tea. The famed ‘English Breakfast’ name is known the world over, and disputed, but the story of tea in old Ceylon is far less refreshing. I toured hillside tea estates, factories and met the villagers who still hand pick this everyday product to bring you the true story of the UK’s favourite hot drink. From its beginnings in 1824, tea still goes through a growing and drying process that is little changed in 200 years, this is an industry steeped in tradition and the often questionable roles that colonialism set in place.
Introduction:Jim Holmes
Jim Holmes is a professional documentary photographer that has lived and worked around the world for over 30 years. Assignments have taken him to over 50 countries where he worked extensively on humanitarian projects for numerous international agencies. Making S.E. Asia his home for over 20 years he used this base to work around the region for commercial and not-for-profit clients. Jim has also worked on the visual documentation of large river hydropower projects, as well as for well-respected travel guide and educational publishers.
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 early so we can deal with any issues with joining.
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.)
