Welcome to The Greek Project 2025
2025 marks ten years since our very first Greek Project tour to Salonika! A lot of water has passed under the bridge since those heady days. Uppermost in our minds then was the economic crisis in Greece. Vast political shifts notwithstanding, the crisis has not so much gone away as become more complex. But then one might say, from the vantage point of the mid-2020s, such complexities now touch us all. And, of course, it’s hardly just economic. Questioning of tourism, even eco-tourism, which has risen to the surface especially in ‘hot’ Mediterranean destinations, is perfectly legitimate, not least when set against a much more all-embracing climate crisis.
In the Greek Project we can’t and wouldn’t want to be ignoring these realities even while we look ahead to forthcoming tours, wonderful participants and potentially exciting new vistas. While our enthusiasm remains undiminished, we hope our clients will want to deepen their understanding not only of the historical but contemporary Aegean world, and its trials and tribulations. Equally, we would like them to join with us in recognising that the climate emergency is not just some other problem, for somebody else, in some other time and place but intrinsic to ourselves.
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Last year was a great year for us in Ioannina, a city we’ve come to appreciate and indeed love. We’ll be there again this coming May as our base from which to more fully explore the historical, cultural, culinary and linguistic highways and byways of Glorious Epirus. And Ioannina will also be our welcoming destination for this year’s week-intensive Elementary and Upper Elementary Adventures in Greek Language (2) course in September.
If your Greek language is a little more advanced our ever popular Adventures in Greek language (1) course for intermediate and more advanced learners will be taking place in May, this time in Thessaloniki. And while this city for us is the place we think of as home, Ellie actually has a home that precedes that, as she was brought up not in Salonika but Xanthi in Thrace, totally off the beaten track of tourist destinations but a wonderfully vibrant city in its own right. So, once again, we are delighted to offer, this September, our Thracian Homecoming immersion in a world of forgotten, multicultural communities, dramatic mountain vistas – the Rhodopes – the avian-rich Vistonida delta, and much more besides. Meanwhile, we are planning our first Greek Project foray to Crete in spring 2026! If this sounds enticing please get back in touch and we’ll put you on our list to receive further details.
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We conceived our first not-for-profit study-tours to express solidarity with a country in adversity. That intention has not diminished. Each tour throws up aspects of a country – and peoples – whose physical beauty, cultural depth and exuberance for life have to be set against an often troubled recent past and austere present. But instead of shying away from these realities our head-on engagement with the histories, languages, cultures, cuisines and precious yet extremely fragile environment of the region has paid dividends in the rewards to our participants.
Our featured tours for 2025 are yours for the viewing. And don’t forget too to have a look at our tailor-made tours aimed at realising your own educational, recreational or fact-finding passions and agendas.
You can also follow us on facebook and Instagram.
We look forward to your company!
Ellie and Mark
Thanks are also due to Ilias Michailidis at Riverland for the kayaking pic in the title caption as to Andrew Kerr for the pic of Eugenia’s band also in the title captions, and for the Nestos river pic in the Thracian Journey caption. Visit andrewkerrphotography.org
ps Covid remains with us so we ask potential participants to please read here before committing to travel with us.
2025 Programme
What makes us different?
The Greek Project began as a conversation between friends. Partly that was about the economic crisis, and how we might do something small to promote ordinary Greek people in their hour of need to an audience that already knew that there was something more to Greece than its negative press.
But that proposition raised a more general question about the nature of modern travel. How does one get to know any country in a more than a skin-deep way? Why is it, for instance, that when one goes on a guided visit of some really stunning place, what one invariably gets to hear is banal, the resulting impression being that ‘tourism’ nearly always plays safe, shying away from the difficult, problematic – but often most seriously interesting things about a country’s past? And why is it always so difficult to genuinely encounter its living people other than in a superficial manner?
Tailor-made Tours
If you have an idea for a study-tour tailor-made to your group, circle or college department, why not get in touch with us by clicking on the enquiry form below? We will scope your idea on request and while we can organise a bespoke tour for any number of people however small, prices become comparable with our featured tours with a minimum of ten guaranteed participants. Tailor-made tours can be organised as a long-weekend, a short or full week, or longer.
Telephone: 07899 637284
Or send us an email