Review written by:  Norma Vaughan

It  was a pleasure to listen to John Loveridge talk about his adventures and misadventures today.  No  notes,  no reading aloud,  no power point,  the lectern was only there for him to lean on.   He simply had a charming chat with friends, all 34 of us, aided by photographs.

The first part of his talk  was about hiking various parts of the Appalachian Trail in the USA, which he did on more than one occasion and in several different locations.  He met people from all walks of life while camping out in either his tiny tent or in rather primitive but welcome community huts along the way.  His brushes with wildlife ranged from alligators who roared their mating calls in the night, to long fat black snakes that sat on the trail and refused to move out of the way.

The trail attempted to sabotage him several times.  At one point it presented him with two raccoon-like black eyes, and at another it inflicted six broken ribs upon him, but it was something very like pneumonia that  eventually caused him to come off the mountain.  He didn't bother with details like seeing a doctor. 

After the tea break, our intrepid adventurer described his time spent paddling a canoe for a thousand miles down the Mississippi River.  During that trip, last year, he celebrated his 70^th birthday.  He described beavers who flopped into the river, bald eagles who soared overhead, hundreds of snapping turtles and Asiatic carp that jump into one's canoe.  He even valiantly fended off a recently released female prisoner who also wanted to jump into his canoe. 

That trip suffered an inconvenience when the canoe sunk in St Louis with all of his belongings in it.  A series of barges in a flooding fast-moving river crushed it.  Accident prone though he seems to be, John wasn't injured in the episode.  What did he do next?  He went straight out and bought a brand new canoe, reprovisioned himself and continued paddling down the river.  He ran out of time shortly before reaching his destination of New Orleans.   What did he do with his canoe?  He swapped it with an astonished young couple for a lift to a bustop, whereupon he caught a bus to New Orleans just to say he had been there.    John's next adventure is to paddle the rivers of France.

 Photo:   Courtesy of John Loveridge (pictured left) with friends on the Appalachian Trail. 

Back to Photo Stories