Reviews and news about our meetings in London.
September London Meeting
Our first speaker of the new season was Mark Stratton, who showed us the Plymouth-Dakar rally. [link] This is a light hearted race where the vehicles are supposed to cost no more than 100 pounds and have no more than 15 pounds worth of modifications done to them. The route takes the drivers from Plymouth down into Spain, across to Africa and eventually via Western Sahara and Mauritania to Banjul in Senegal. The 7000km taking around 3 weeks to complete. The vehicles included a working ice cream van (ice creams are good for border guard bribery!) as well as more usual cars. Some vehicles don't make it and are abandoned, only to be seen a few days later being driven by a local. The ones that do make it to the finish are auctioned for charity, 134,000 pounds was raised last year, the only unsold car was an East German Trabant!
Our second speaker was Globie Martin Wright who cycle trip took him the wrong way around Australia. Martin's slides showed us some of the more quirky things to be seen on the way including old outback mining machinery and a house on the back of a large lorry. All before Martin rode across the Nullabor doing his best to avoid the many road kill kangaroos and the 50m+ road trains that have been known to suck unfortunate cyclists underneath. The leaning trees of Western Australia showed why Martin was going the wrong way! Up in Northern Territory we saw the prison boab trees and giant termite mounds that dot the landscape. The quirks ending in Queensland with a 70m wall made out of everything and anything including car parts and old motorbikes.
By Padmassana
May, June and July Meeting reviews
Reviews of the meetings that took place during the eNewsletters hiatus are available to read in the archive
- http://www.globetrotters.co.uk/newsletter/archive/2260
- http://www.globetrotters.co.uk/newsletter/archive/2259
- http://www.globetrotters.co.uk/newsletter/archive/2258
Coming Next: Saturday 7th October
Rory MacLean will be talking about: The Magic Bus. Rory retraces the Hippie Trail of the 60's and 70's, Istanbul to India revealing how the trail transformed the travellers lives and the countries it travelled through and changing travel – for ever. After the break, Sheila Paine will be giving us her insights on Afghanistan in a talk entitled: Return to Afghanistan; Sheila was smuggled into Afghanistan, hidden under a burqa, at the height of the Mujamedin in 1992 She has recently returned to see what has changed.
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. There is no London meeting in August, but we will be back in September. For more information, you can contact the Globetrotters Info line on +44 (0) 20 8674 6229, or visit the website: www.globetrotters.co.uk