John Pilkington, a long-time friend of brasher, has been described as "one of Britain's greatest tellers of travellers' tales". His Radio 4 programmes have won him several appearances on 'Pick of the Week' and one on 'Pick of the Year' . Last year he took a pair of Lithium XCR's on a six-month journey through the Middle East.

Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran are in the news for all the wrong reasons. Starting in Beirut, I found situations quite different from the news stories as I followed a winding route via the Euphrates, the Caucasus and the Valleys of the Assassins to finish eventually on the Persian Gulf. I met a spectacular variety of people - Druze, Maronites, Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Azeris and both Shi'ite and Sunni Iranians - and to my surprise I found families and whole communities working together to survive the harsh climate and political strife.

Iraq was fascinating of course, but it was the people of Iran who made the trip unforgettable. They must be the most warm and generous in the world - for days on end I was hardly allowed to buy any food or drink. Worringly I managed to get arrested in the holy city of Qom, but was let off and continued south through the desert to Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf, a rocky no-man's-land that hasn't changed much since Marco Polo was there in 1271. Marco Polo had been intending to take a local boat to India, but the boats looked so unseaworthy that he turned north and went overland to China instead. Have Qeshm Islanders got to grips with boatbuilding since then? Come to a talk and find out! There's more info at http://www.pilk.net/lecturedates.html

Incidentally my Lithium XCR's took a bit of a hammering towards the end of the trip in northern Iran. The ground was rough and steep and for the first time I had to do some real scrambling. Here's what they looked like at the end.