Quite how, and how far, the influence of Richard Demarco reached over our journey did not become apparent to me until well after I had returned. At the outset he and his colleagues from Edinburgh had come to the quayside to wish us well, and perhaps they expressed a frustration that they too were not climbing aboard. In fact we would in all probability never have left our homes but for the Edinburgh Art Journeys instigated by Richard in the 1970's.

As a young man I spent the late 1970's and early 1980's working at Arnolfini in Bristol. It was then newly in its forth home in the Bush building on Narrow Quay. My job was to help produce the publicity for the extensive and highly innovative programme of Visual Arts, Music, Dance, Cinema, Performance, Jewellery that was then on offer. I also was the organisations photographer. There were many highlights - two days walking around Bristol with Barry Flanagan looking out for, and photographing, vernacular urban sculptures being just one.

As a young group I think we took pleasure imagining ourselves as part of a vanguard in British artistic culture. At 10.40 each morning we met over coffee to discuss events and share stories, and I now recall in 1980 how news of the circumnavigation of the British Isles by The Marques filled us all with awe.

Richard Demarco on the Marques 1980.

It was such a radical and wonderfully wild and ambitious initiative, a rolling gang of artists, intellectuals, musicians and writers cavorting like a group of troubadours across the high seas. There was not one of us young hucksters in Bristol who did not wish they were on that ship.