Category Archives: enewsletter

Travel Writing Workshop

When: Saturday 18th June, 10.30am-4.00pm
Where: The Newsroom, The Guardian 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA
Cost: £85.00
A day of two intensive workshops:

Travel Writing – How to do it and how not to with Dea Birkett, the Guardian's Travelling with Kids columnist and author of Serpent in Paradise and Off the Beaten Track

Fact, Fiction and Creating a Traveller's Tale with Rory Maclean, author of Falling for Icarus and Stalin's Nose

The workshops are followed by practical writing sessions. Participants should bring pen and paper – they will be expected to write! The emphasis is – whether you are a beginner or already have some writing experience – on developing skills which can be applied to both articles and books. Our aim is that, by the end of the day, each of you will have the tools to produce a publishable piece of travel writing.

For further details and application form contact: travelworkshops@deabirkett.com

For further information:

Iberia Contemplating Low Cost Arm

Spanish airline Iberia is considering buying or setting up its own low cost airline. More than 50 million foreign tourists visit Spain every year, increasingly arriving on budget airlines such as Ryanair, easyJet or Lufthansa's Germanwings. Watch this space!

Have you got a tale to tell?

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

Meeting News from London

Our first speaker was Denise Heywood, who stepped in at short notice, and gave a talk titled Bombay to Borobudur. Denise took us on a journey from Bollywood in India to Raffles hotel in Singapore, we saw pictures of saris, flowers, markets and Christian cathedrals. Denise finished with the tale of Mr Raffles who the hotel is named after and who discovered the Borobudur temple lost in the jungle

After the break Tim Burford gave a talk on Alaska, a journey of 2300 miles along the Alaska Highway. Tim took us from Vancouver, at the start of the Canadian Pacific railway and then across the White Pass, visiting gold rush towns on steam engines over trestle bridges and glaciers and old mines.

Forthcoming London meetings:

Saturday 2nd July – 3.00 pm – Concert Artistes Association,20 Bedford Street,Covent Garden, London WC2

NB – change of meeting place and time for July and September.

This is the last meeting before the August break, when we'll be back in September. There will be an examination of Members Slides comprising eight mini-presentations from Globetrotters members.

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

Ukraine Changes Visa Rules

The Ukraine has announced the temporary implementation of the visa-free entrance regime for EU and Swiss citizens.

This means that from 1st May 2005 till the 1st September 2005 EU and Swiss passport holders will be able to enter the Ukraine without visas for the period up to 90 days. For more information, see:Ukraine Visa

Journalism Not a Safe Profession

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, (CPJ), murder is the leading cause of job-related deaths among journalists worldwide. The Philippines is the most murderous country of all, followed by Iraq, Colombia, Bangladesh, and Russia.

CPJ studied more than five years of death records starting January 1st, 2000, and found that the vast majority of journalists killed on duty did not die in crossfire or while covering dangerous assignments. Instead, 121 of the 190 journalists who died on duty worldwide since 2000 were hunted down and murdered in retaliation for their work, including for reporting on government corruption, crime, drug trafficking, or the activities of rebel groups.

Meeting News from New York

We are sorry to say that for the time being, New York meetings are suspended as Laurie really needs a helper. If you have some time to spare and are based in or near NYC, please contact Laurie on the e-mail address below.

For details of forthcoming meetings email newyork@globetrotters.co.uk or register for email updates, click here at our website.

New York meetings are held at The Wings Theatre, 154 Christopher Street (btw Greenwich St and Washington St), to the right of Crunch Fitness, in the Archive on the first Saturday of each month at 4 pm.

Iris Recognition at LHR

Project IRIS is being introduced at Heathrow's Terminals 2 and 4 at the end of April 2005 before being rolled out to other UK airports, and is aimed at anyone not holding an EU passport who regularly travels through Heathrow. They will be invited to have their iris patterns photographed and stored in a database upon departure. Those passengers can then use special automated security check-points which scan their eyes, avoiding long lines for non-EU passport holders when they return to the country. The new security system aims to replace face-to-face passport control interviews and reducing long queues at the immigration counters.

Whale Spotted In Tokyo Bay

A grey 10m long whale swam into an industrial part of Tokyo Bay in early May, causing much surprise. Only 12 sightings of the mammal have been confirmed around Japan since the 1960s. It is rare for grey whales to be sighted in Japan, much less in the capital's congested waterways a spokesman said. Grey whales travel about 20,000 km during their annual migrations between the sea off the coast of Vietnam to Russia's far eastern Sakhalin Island.