Thanks for all the feedback from the Colin Thubron lecture. By general acclaim, it was a wonderful event!

Thanks also for your many donations to the Shiva Charity which supports the school in Nepal that is named after Ginette. You donated £433.10, Colin donated his fee of £350, which we matched, and Giles Woodward of Barcan Woodward is donating a further £200. That brings this year's total to £1333.10p.

Link: http://bristolexplorers.com/news/events/bristol-explorers-drinks-11th-march/

A  quick reminder that Bristol Explorers Drinks will be on Thursday 11th March at the Square Club, Bristol.

From 6.00 - 7.30pm we will have an informal Mountain Expedition Brainstorm for anyone interested in hatching new mountaineering adventures or for those looking for advice, sponsorship or crew to join their ongoing plans. There’s no agenda, just a group of mountaineers and climbers getting together to see what they come up with. The plottting will be hosted by seven summiteer Rhys Jones

This will be followed from 7.30pm til late by the usual mix of planning, chat, tall tales and inspiration amongst adventurers and explorers usually fuelled by a few drinks.

Link: http://bristolexplorers.com/news/bristol-explorers-first-women-to-row-around-britain-looking-for-final-crew-members/

Bristol Explorers are looking for a female sailor or rower to join the first women to row around Great Britain.

Bristol Explorers are putting together a crew of four women to row a minimum distance of 2010 miles around the coast of Britain.

The crew will be a part of the Anglo American Boat Race 2010, which starts from Tower Bridge on 1st June 2010. The journey is expected to take between 30 – 40 days. Crew members will be rowing a minimum of 12hrs every day.

Please email belinda@bristolexplorers.com if you are interested in joining the crew or in joining our on-land support team

Link: http://www.mountain-heritage.org

A day of presentations, films, readings and debates with people who have made adventure the centre of their lives including Sir Chris Bonington, Ed Douglas, Colin Mortlock, Adele Pennington and Doug Scott.

Adventure films will be used in each session to highlight aspects of the themes.

Tickets on sale in early January: £29.50 (£24.50 concession) for the entire day (includes refreshments) or £14 (£11 concession) for individual sessions – morning, afternoon or evening.

Further information at the Mountain Heritage site

The 2010 Wilderness Award has been made to Kerry Burns and Ants Bolingbroke Kent for their project, "Black C 90"

We had a fantastic response to the Award this year; the best ever. Making a decision was very hard and we hope that some of the unsuccessful applicants will appear as speakers in our next series.

Some of you will remember Ants from her previous Wilderness appearance, recounting her tales of driving a tuk-tuk from Bangkok to Brighton. This time, she and Kerry are intending to circumnavigate the Black Sea on Honda 90 motorbikes.

In coming to our decision we were conscious that this is an area of the world that we haven't really featured in our series. It's politically unstable, economically critical and absolutely fascinating...