After a decade working as a museum-geologist and university tutor the author spent twenty-five years organising and leading natural history expeditions, introducing others to the floristic and wildlife wonders of some of the world's wild places of which the 'lost' mountains of North-west Greece is but one of many. From the arctic to the Sahara and the Cantabrians to the Himalayas, those explorations nurtured a personal affinity with the natural environment seeded during formative years in the English countryside and mountains of Wales. Childhood quests for Emperor moths and Merlin on the Stiperstones and Long Mynd, and for the saxifrages of Snowdonia were the prelude to searches for Musk Oxen and Snowy Owl in the tundra, Houbara and Bibron's Agama in the Sahara and rare rhododendrons and primulas in the Garhwal Himalaya. The author now divides his time between Wales, the east Aegean islands, and Lycian Turkey, the subject of further writings.