Once more a party of boys and staff headed for the beauty and magnificence of the Peloponnese, staying as always in the village of Mycenae from where in 1200 BC Agamemnon set off to recover Helen from the Trojan Paris and where in 1876 AD Heinrich Schliemann revolutionized archaeology by discovering royal graves and astounding treasure.

From this base the party visited many sites, both the well known, such as Epidauros and Corinth, and the less so, such as Orchomenos and Mantineia, all fascinating and revealing in the way they vividly create a picture of a society and way of life stretching back between four and two millennia. Big hits too were the towering castles and hill cities of the Frankish and Byzantine periods.

Modern Greece was also well to the fore; the cuisine was sampled with relish, the towns such as Argos and Nauplion explored, the engineering of the Corinth canal witnessed at close quarters and the vagaries of the road system - particularly their renewing of it - experienced at first hand.