South Yorkshire times, July 18, 1960
Food Fit for royalty on this Icelandic Trip !
Throughout his 2 1/2 weeks to of Iceland, Conisbrough naturalist Mr James Griffith and his party enjoyed food fit for royalty, but this will never truer than when they ate the Duke of Edinburgh’s lunch.
3000 miles trip.
Mr Griffith, who returned from his 3000 mile trip on Monday, told the “South Yorkshire Times,” “We had heard that the Duke was to visit Iceland at the same time we were there, and he did, in fact, arrive at the airport while we were waiting for a plane back to the Icelandic capital Reykjavik. The airport had laid on a special luncheon for him, but apparently he arrived early and had a couple of sandwiches instead – so we had his lunch.”
Mr Griffith and is 11 companions from America, Germany, Sweden and Britain, were there to study the countries bird and plant life. The trip was arranged through the Icelandic tourist bureau and Mr Griffith commented, “it was very well organised, indeed – we saw just about everything we wanted to see, with the exception of one particular eagle.”
In the capital.
Mr Griffiths flew out to Reykjavik from Glasgow a day ahead of the main body of the party. This gave him an opportunity to look round the capital.
“I was very surprised with Reykjavik,” he said, “there was a great deal of new building to be seen, and you would find the old type of corrugated iron building on a concrete foundation, right next to a new “skyscraper” block.”
Then it was onto into the wilds for the travellers, will spend the next three days. On the South Coast study Shaw and click birds.
The following week was spent on the West Coast, and included a visit to a whaling station where Mr Griffiths had its first view of the “scientific” dissection of a whale.
The party then turned south across some of Iceland’s lava deserts.
Really Amazing.
“These were really amazing places,” said Mr Griffith, “if you can imagine one of our slag heaps flattened out, it was like that. Although very little grows there, there was some wonderful plant life
“It was interesting that some of the plants we saw originated in America. They probably drifted across on the sea, or perhaps the seeds were carried there on the feet of birds.”
It was on the return journey from the north that their path crossed with that of the Duke of Edinburgh.
The official exhibition ended in Reykjavik, Morrissey Griffith and four companions went on to islands off the coast to see an active volcano, and later he flew alone to Greenland for a single day, and their visited a primitive tribe of Eskimo discovered in 1884.
The Conisbrough dentist was more satisfied with his trip. His final, was, “now I only hope all the photographs come out.”
He has already been invited by the Doncaster ornithological society, which he is an active member, to lecture on this tour