If you have a travellers tale that your aching to tell. Then why not visit the “Travel Sized Bites” section of the Website and share it with the world. Travel Sized Bites

EXPLORE 2002 For anyone planning an expedition, EXPLORE 2002 – the place to be is the 26th annual Expedition Planning Seminar that will be running on 16-17th November 2002 at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in London.

The seminar covers all aspects of planning an expedition including lectures on medical issues, insurance, PR, communication, mapping etc and also workshops covering all environments from polar to jungle to mountains or deserts!

This is the place to find inspiration, contacts and practical advice that you will need to head into remote and challenging environments. For more info and a booking form visit: www.rgs.org/explore

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Doctors aiming to make a cheap and effective malaria drug available across Africa have been awarded a $1.5m grant by the Gates Malaria Partnership, based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which was established with $40m from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000.

Experts will look at the best way of using the anti-malarial drug Lapdap. Tom Kanyock, manager of product development for TDR, said: “It appears that Lapdap would offer a safe and effective low -cost alternative to the drugs currently available. Both drugs which make up Lapdap have been around for a long time, and used for other things”.

Cote d'Ivoire (a.k.a.Ivory Coast) is a developing country on the west coast of Africa. The Foreign & Commonwealth office advise against all holiday and other non-essential travel to Abidjan and against all travel to any other part of Cote d'Ivoire at this time. Abidjan is calm but tense. There is a curfew from 2000 to 0600, due to be reviewed on 30 September. The northern towns of Bouake and Korhogo are still held by rebels, but the government has begunmilitary operations to re-take them.

Click here for FCO website

­ Less than one in 10 people are estimated to have been on an international flight

­ China is expected to unseat France as world’s most visited country by 2020

­ 16% of foreign trips are in East Asia – up from 1% in 1950

Sources: IATA, Worldwatch Institute

The Museum is housed within the Bank of England, at the heart of the City of London. It traces the history of the Bank from its foundation by Royal Charter in 1694, to its role today as the nation's central bank. Displays include: gold, bank notes and a reconstruction of the 18th century office. In addition, inter-active systems allow visitors to look behind the doors of the central bank or to examine the intricacies of bank note design and production, and a computer-driven simulation gives visitors an idea of what it is like to deal on the US Dollar/Sterling spot market.

The museum is open Monday to Friday, 10.00 – 17.00 and admission is free.

Historical Bank of England Trivia

Ø The Bank of England was founded in 1694 by a Scotsman, William Paterson, and the Bank of Scotland in 1695 by an Englishman, John Holland.

Ø The monarch's portrait didnot appear on Bank of England notes until 1960.

Ø The highest value bank note issued by the Bank of England was the £1000 denomination. It was last issued in 1943.

Ø The fiver (£5) is the longest running denomination of Bank of England note: it was first issued in 1793.

Ø Bank of England notes were not wholly printed until 1853. Until that year they were still signed by one of the Bank's cashiers.

Ø Kenneth Grahame, the author of children's book, The wind in the Willows, was the Secretary of the Bank of England 1898 – 1908. The book was published in 1908, the year in which he retired from the Bank. It is possible that some of the characters in the book were based on those people he knew and worked with.

Bank of England web site

Mexican airports are returning to normal operations after Hurricane Isidore battered the country on the weekend. The airport authorities estimated that 89 flights at Cancun, were cancelled because of the hurricane, but no damage has been reported and the airport is now operating normally. One man died at Cancun Airport.

For true 007 fans this exhibition at the Science Museum in London will display a vast collection of objects, costume designs, storyboards and images. See Oddjob's killer bowler hat and Rose Klebb's flick-knife shoe. Visitors will have a real behind the scenes look at the work of the creative and technical teams of these world famous films. Special themed areas will allow fans of Bond to gain a sense of what its like to be the special agent. Visitors must embark on a 'death-defying stunt' and negotiate 'the mirrored maze in the villains lair' before they are granted secret agent status! The exhibition runs from 16 October 2002 – March 2003. For more info, visit:

London Events: Pearly Kings and Queens Harvest Festival

If you’ve never seen them, this is your chance: if you are in London 6^th October, you will be able to see the Pearly Kings and Queens. They are traditional Cockney costermongers. The altar and the pulpit of St Martins in the Fields, Trafalgar Square are arrayed with the fruits of the earth, and a Pearly King or Queen reads one of the Lessons, while the congregation sings the hymns of the harvest season.

Date: 6 Oct 2002

Location: St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, Trafalgar Square, London, WC2N 4JJ Tel: (020) 7766 1100

Website: St Martins in the Fields

The Dead Sea is falling by about one metre (3ft) a year due to declining rainfall, and an increase in the amount of irrigation water being taken from the River Jordan. Water flows in from the River Jordan and other sources, but there is no outflow – it simply evaporates, concentrating the salts in the water into brine. Environmentalists warn the salt lake could vanish by 2050 if nothing is done.

Israel and Jordan announced at the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg that they have agreed on a plan to build an $800 million pipeline to pipe water north from the Gulf of Aqaba in Red Sea to the Dead Sea.

It’s Real Beer Week in British pubs this autumn. 33 family run breweries that have each been in the business from 100 to 300 years want to encourage more people to try real ale. The 33 brewers, are staging the first ever Real Beer Week in British pubs this autumn (September 30 – October 6). If you are not sure you would like the beer on offer, many pubs will provide a no-obligation free taste on request. For more info, visit: Family Brewers

The AUC (Air Transport Users Council– the UK airline watchdog) recently issued a list of the 20 most complained about airlines. They said there was “little evidence” that airlines were showing “any real concern about the impact on passengers of damaged, delayed or lost luggage”. Lost luggage, flight cancellations and problems with tickets – particularly for those booked over the internet and by telephone – were among the most common complaints.

The AUC said it was especially worried about budget airline Ryanair which, it claimed, often displayed a poor attitude towards its customers. Overall, Ryanair was the third most complained about airline – receiving 77 written complaints, compared with 117 for the biggest carrier, British Airways, and 110 for Air France.

The top 10 are as follows:

1) British Airways + subsidiaries: 117 2) Air France: 110 3) Ryanair: 77 4) KLM + subsidiaries: 53 5) Easyjet: 42 6) MyTravel (formerly Airtours):39 7) Britannia: 33 8=) Air 2000: 32 8=)Go: 32 10) BMI British Midland: 29

The Beetle says she is pleased to see Ryan air in the list, and is not surprised to see most of the other low cost carriers all represented.

Under 30?

A member of Globetrotters Club? Interested in a £1,000 travel award?

Know someone who is?

We have £1,000 to award each year for five years for the best submitted independent travel plan.

Interested?

Then see our legacy page on our Website, where you can apply with your plans for a totally independent travel trip and we'll take a look at it. Get those plans in!!

A number of boat tours and ferries operate on the Thames. Below is a selection of the trips you can take.

Catamaran Cruises offer tours with commentary, leaving from Waterloo and the Embankment. Waterloo: from 10.45 until 17.45 every hour (except 14.45) Embankment: from 10.15 until 20.15

Westminster: from 14.30 until 21.30 every hour

Circular Cruises offer return trips from Westminster Pier (Victoria Embankment) as far as St. Katherine's Pier in the Docklands. Cruises depart every 30-80 minutes with an option of getting off at London Bridge Pier. You can also take boats the other direction to Hampton Court, Kew, and Richmond.

City Cruisers offer a range of trips, including service between London Bridge and Westminster Pier, and a Pool of London hop-on, hop-off shuttle, calling at St. Katherine's Pier, Butler's Wharf, HMS Belfast, London Bridge City Pier, and Tower Pier.

Note: with commentaried cruises the crew will pass a hat at the end of the trip and you will be expected to toss in a quid or two as a tip, so make sure you have some change!

Source: Britain Express

Absolutely a true story: the pilot of an SAS plane, on a domestic flight in Sweden, called up an airport control tower for clearance to land and found no one at home.

No one realized that the controller at Kristianstad Airport had not returned from vacation and the plane was left to circle for 30 minutes while a replacement was found.

The Dash-8 aircraft, on a flight from Stockholm with 30 passengers, eventually landed safely and the Scandinavian airline said there was never any danger to the plane or those on board.

Airport officials said that a scheduling mix-up was responsible for the incident and the absence of a controller was not noticed until the SAS pilot called the control tower.

Source: Airwise.com

We think that all Globetrotters should go and visit the new Frommer’s Budget Travel site on MNSBC. There are some great articles, a notice board for sharing tips, posting issues and asking the editors questions. For more info, visit: Frommers Budget Travel and check it out.

Air Canada and Australia's leading carrier, Qantas, will both reduce flights over the next two months to Taiwan because they say they cannot make enough money from them.

Canada's new low fare airline, Calgary based Zip, (owned by Air Canada) took to the skies in September, launching short haul domestic routes in the west of the country, flying initial services between Edmonton, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Calgary.

Rumours abound in Oz that Singapore Airlines may revive Australia’s failed domestic operator, Ansett. Sir Richard Branson’s Oz based Virgin Blue (been going 2 years now) picked up much of Ansett’s business when it went bust.

Talking of Virgin Blue, they have applied for permission to fly to Hong Kong and are pursuing plans to start flights to New Zealand, and possibly Bali.

Still in Australia, Australian, Australia’s newest low fare operation, (owned by Qantas), is to start services to Japan next month from Cairns. The first two routes will be to Nagoya and Osaka and it plans to be serving six Asian destinations with its four aircraft before the end of the year. (A good bit of competition may provide us Globetrotters with more routings and lower costs!)

Cathay Pacific have announced plans to resume flying to mainland China. They have applied for routes to Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen but has not said when it is likely to start services. The only Hong Kong airline currently serving China is Dragonair, in which Cathay has an 18 percent stake.

Boo hoo! US Airways have announced that they will no longer be serving free alcoholic drinks on their transatlantic flights to economy class passengers.

Delta Air Lines is cancelling its daily non-stop flights from its Atlanta hub to both Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro due to losses made on these 2 routes.

BAA, the world's largest airport operator, reported a rise in traffic at its seven UK airports, and says that it has won the backing of local planning authorities to raise passenger capacity at London Stansted to 25 million.

A GBP£250 million (USD$391 million) scheme aims to make Stansted, one of the country's fastest growing airports, capable of handling an extra 10 million passengers by 2010.

Bet you didn’t know that England, yes, England as in the UK, produces wine!

Heart of England Fine Foods and Heart of England Tourist Board have just produced a new brochure outlining vineyards to visit in Herefordshire and Worcestershire.

Some 95 vineyards, located throughout the UK, are open to the public and a number of these are in the Heart of England region.

‘The Wine Trail' lists a number of vineyards at Astley, Frome Valley, Bodenham, Coddington, Halfpenny Green, Tiltridge, Lulham Court and Wroxetter.

Many vineyards are in beautiful parts of the region, making it viable to tie in a visit to a vineyard with a trip to another attraction.

For further information or a copy of the ‘The Wine Trail' contact HEFF on 01746 785185, Fax: 01746 785186, or E-mail: office@heff.co.uk

Source: Britain Express

The other day, a group of London based Globetrotters started talking about slang and direct translations from one language into another. This lead to Olwen, a Welsh language student, telling one of us of a Welsh colloquialism that made us laugh.

In Welsh, the word Microwave becomes a microdion, and an oven in Welsh slang is “Popty.” So guess what’s a microwave?

It’s a “Popty Ping”

Ben, from the US asks: does anyone have a good idea for a small, inexpensive hotel, apartment anywhere on the Riviera where I can stay for a few weeks in February 2003? I will be on the Costa del Sol during January and take the train to France. My plan is to fly to Paris early in January and return to USA sometime late in February. In between I will travel by train. To contact Ben, e-mail him on: BenDukes@msn.com

John from Wales says he is planning his first trip to south west China. Can anyone tell him the best time to travel is in the Spring? Has anyone any experience they can share with John? If so, please e-mail John on jjd2428@hotmail.com

Marie from France asks if anyone can help her find a website concerning accommodation in monasteries. If anyone can recommend any websites or other info and contacts, please contact Marie on: mariegus@club-internet.fr

(Marie, the Beetle says as one suggestion, you search on Paradores in Spain as these hotels are often based in coverted old forts, castles, convents and monasteries.)

Need help? Want a travelling buddy or advice about a place or country – want to share something with us – why not visit our Mutual Aid section of the Website: Mutual Aid