Our first speaker was GlobetrottersÂ’ third travel legacy winner Helen Barnhill, who recounted her trip to Nepal and Tibet, which was featured in the last issue of the Globe. Helen’s journey took her to Kathmandu where she had to arrange her onward transport to Lhasa. Helen showed us the sights of Lhasa including the Potala Palace, Norbulingka and the Barkor. Mount Kailash had been Helen’s dream and the legacy allowed her to fulfil this too as she completed the Kailash Kora. She came back via Everest base camp to the border town of Zhangmu and back to Nepal.

Bronwen Riley was our second speaker, she showed us that despite the preconceived ideas many people have about Transylvania in Romania that the area has much to offer apart from Bran castle and Count Dracula. Bronwen showed us some of the lovely countryside, castle type churches where hams used to stored in the towers and which also included cells where warring couples would be locked up to settle their differences for a week at a time, they either lived happily ever after, or one had probably murdered the other! There used to be many people of German descent in this area, said to be where the children of Pied Piper of Hamelin fame ended up. After the Romanian revolution most of the German population left for Germany. Transylvania’s forests are also home to wolves and bears.

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, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend. There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh 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.

For details of the forth coming meetings of the London branch, April to July 2008 – http://www.globetrotters.co.uk/meetings/lon08it2.html.