PAULINE welcomed two new members and a visitor to our October meeting.

Members were reminded of several forthcoming events including the Group carol concert at Bisley on Wednesday, December 3 and our Christmas dinner at Birdlip on December 9.

The day course on basket making is on Saturday, January 31 and at our A.G.M. in November there will be our usual auction of wrapped and anonymous Christmas presents.

Members volunteered for serving teas, running the raffle and giving a vote of thanks at meetings in 2015.

Patrick Howell gave us a most interesting talk on the journey that he and his wife took with a party from Britain to Hong Kong and back in 1984 which took five weeks.

This was a very long journey from England travelling by train, ferry and train to Moscow and then across Asia on the Trans Siberian Railway for three and a half thousand miles. He then went on the Mongolian Railway across the Gobi Desert to China and Beijing, (Peking)south to Canton and eventually to his final destination of Hong Kong.

He encountered many adventures on the way including being woken in the night in the East Zone in Berlin by soldiers who searched their compartments.

Patrick stressed that little or no photography was allowed anywhere at risk of having his camera confiscated and not returned.

In Moscow he stayed in the hotel built for the 1980 Olympic teams and where he had a most interesting time exploring the Kremlin which is a city within a city of sixty acres.

His train journey continued to Irkutsk on a brand new train past Lake Baikal which, at four hundred by sixty miles and a mile deep, is the largest freshwater lake in the world.

After crossing the Gobi Desert and staying in yurts he eventually arrived in China where photography was allowed and the country had only just recovered from the Cultural Revolution and everyone looked happy.

He then journeyed to Beijing where there were few cars or busses and nearly everyone travelled around on bicycles.

Here he visited The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and saw the Terracotta Warriors of which, at that time, only three had been discovered.

The next stop was Canton in the south on the Pearl River and lastly to his final destination of Hong Kong where he and his wife could fulfil the object of this long and interesting journey to meet up with their son.

The only boring part of this amazing trip was the fourteen hour flight home.

Patrick was thanked by Glenys.