Search Results for: Tim elkington

Elaine and I trained across to Poole on Wednesday, to pick up a cab to Spettisbury, where we were due to stay overnight. Walked along the old railway track behind the village, spotting very-low-flying buzzard and a skittish stoat, or similar, before pottering around the Stour water meadows, mill and the like.

Then across to Bryanston this morning, where we were greeted, among others, by Amanda Lovejoy and by the new head of school, Richard Jones. A couple of hundred students, at a rough count, took part in this Green Conference, whose theme was ‘What does regeneration look like?’. Many, perhaps most, of the students came from green and climate clubs in participating schools, a number of them from the state sector.

Spoke alongside Julia Hailes, my longstanding colleague and friend, and two of her sons, Connor Bryant (who talked about his Rubbish Project) and Monty Bryant (PeoplePower.fi). Among others taking part were Giles Davies of Conservation Capital, who has three children at the school, and Nick Radford of the Wildlife Conservation Society, working in the Congo Basin. Two prefects, Bella and Emily, had organised – and we were very impressed.

(Though we’re pondering how it might be done to even greater effect next time around.)

Across to Oxford yesterday, Sunday 26th, with Pavan Sukhdev of GIST, where I’m on the advisory board. Had taken a taxi across to Mill Hill to meet him, but then let it go – not knowing that it was meant to take us across to Oxford. (Because of the disruption from the train strikes.)

In the end, we got an electric taxi all the way.

Much of Sunday afternoon spent punting with GIST team members and friends of Pavan’s from his Oxford days. We seated at the Randolph Hotel, where I did a presentation to the first day of their formal process this morning. Delighted to be involved, though the COVID hangover cough continues to nag.

It’s quite some time since we were last in Knidos, back in 2014. and when we got back to London we made a beeline to the British Museum to visit the missing Lion.

The site has evolved substantially since we visited last. The city flourished in Greek and Roman times, closely surrounded by the islands of Kos, Nisyros and Tilos.

In the afternoon, we sailed back to Bodrum, standing offshore for some time before our captain could find a suitable final berth, under the castle walls.

I was last in Rhodes in 1959, the largest of the Dodecanese Islands, as the Elkington family returned home from our tour in Cyprus. What I remembered most were the huge fortifications and the stack of stone cannonballs. Nor did they disappoint as I had imagined they might, partly because the giant tour ships have been pushed away from the harbour, so they don’t dwarf what were equally gigantic constructions in their own day.

The scale of the tourist industry beyond the Old Town beggars belief, as we saw as we sailed in along the coast. A useful summary of relevant history of the Old Town can be found here. Elaine and I found a wonderful restaurant – the Café Auvergne – at the foot of the Street of the Knights. Highly recommended.

We were introduced to the ruins of Our Lady of the Castle, a rare Gothic church in the region, to pebble mosaics, and to some of the extraordinary defensive architecture created by the Crusader Knights. The palace of the Grand Masters is stunning, though owing a good deal to the rebuilding – and ambitions – of the Italian occupation forces in the 1930s. First time I think I had seen the dating series tracking time from the founding of the Fascist state.

At the end of our second day in Rhodes, we head for Symi, a neoclassical port town whose pastel-coloured buildings tumble down the hills on either side of its bay.

Kos was a bit of a shock when we arrived and docked within the shadow of Nerantzia castle, originally built by the Knights of St John. It is described here. Somewhat raucous by contrast with other islands we have visited. But once we got inside the castle and then out into the hinterland, to visit the Asklepieion, things settled down. The island was once famed for its wine – and for this huge shrine to Asklepios, the god of healing.

Also struck by the modern, floating shrines to Captain Jack Sparrow, of Pirates of the Caribbean fame, given that our own captain – Captain Ergun Malatyali – has much of the pirate to him. He is great company, excellent at engaging his passengers, but you only need to squint a bit to be reminded of the pirates who were such a feature of these waters for so long – and one of the key reasons that there were so many hilltop castles and fortifications.

Probably the best-known story of a pirate captive was that of Julius Caesar. As John Leonard recalled:

Julius Caesar, a prominent investor in the region, once endured an infamous kidnapping by pirates (74 BC), records the biographer Plutarch (Jul. Caes. 1,2), near the Dodecanese island of Pharmakoussa (Farmakonisi). Ultimately ransomed after thirty-eight days, during which he calmly wrote poetry and speeches, Caesar promptly hired a ship, tracked down his former captors and had them crucified.