Around Britain Without A Plane

The Alps are crowded... near Woolwich

2012-01-29T10:20:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to get that crowded Alpine feeling in a London meadow. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs)

I've written about walking the Capital Ring on a recent post, but on this weekend's bid to complete the 75-mile footpath the author Colin Saunders made me laugh with a photo captioned: "You could imagine yourself transported to the Alps as you approach the mountain hut at the top of Oxleas Meadow."

I was looking forward to this, not least because it means I don't need to pop over to Beckton to climb the old waste spoil site from the gas works, better known as the Beckton Alps (for more good ideas about trips around London, low and high points see this interesting blog).

So when we did reach the famous view of the cafe - as you can see from my photo - it really did look like the Alps at its busiest as there were 150 walkers taking a breather at the top of Oxleas Meadows. In theory it's a good place to stop - one of the highest spots on the Capital Ring footpath boasting views over South-East London and away to the North Downs. It's just normally there aren't so many people here in kagouls and backpacks. We'd let the walkers surge in front of our modest group of four as I picked up a dog poo at the top of the wooded hill that winds down and then back up to the so-called mountain hut.

We thought we'd lost them. But even in "mountains" that are almost offering a Swiss/Italian/Austrian/Slovenian/Croatian/Bosnian/Servian/Montenegran view (see map below) this isn't easy...

I love walking, and I love everyone else walking - but crucially walkers aren't allowed to walk at the same time as me! This is a family failing: my dad was such a misanthropist that we only really went out on long walks when it was raining hard. I'll never forget the wet Sunday when this unluckily coincided with a sponsored walk (of hundreds of ramblers) heading in the other direction. How my Dad cursed them!

On this occasion I got so panicked by the crowds (fearing we might be associated with them) that I managed to fall into a muddy ditch, and lose the dog lead. I managed to find the lead but when I returned to where Nell had been guarding my rucksack was told that another dog had just come up and wee'ed over it. Lovely. And then somehow Nell's hot chocolate (fortunately cooling) got tipped over our dog...

No wonder my kids were laughing at the self-inflicted misfortunes caused by my fear of being made to step along with a crowd.

Over to you
Are there places you love but don't go to when the weather is good, simply because you too loathe the crowds, or change of atmosphere? Or is this just silly?

World's best long distance walks

2012-01-25T11:12:00.001Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to use your walking shoes to take you over the horizon - and away to Rome and even Santiago de Compostela. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs)

My family is so very close to finishing the Capital Ring - a 70 mile (126km) route circling London. Sometimes I worry about finishing it - we'll end the joy of discovering new bits of London. Highlights include the Brent reservoir used for a long-ago Olympics, the art deco 1930s splendour of Eltham Palace, a peep into the grand schooling of Harrow School and the endless views of London from hills you didn't know existed. Honestly it's like tramping over the seven hills of Rome.

To compensate my loss there are some wonderful long-distance paths around the UK (and nearby) that could perhaps be revisited and allow me to dream up being in another place altogether.

Five best long-distance walks

Camino de Santiago de Compostela - the route of St James (patron saint's day 25 July). I've met people who have walked this in the sharp winds of April with a baby on their back. I've seen the film with Martin Sheen and son, The Way, and long ago I stayed in the stunning parador (hotel) at Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. Somewhere in the back of my mind I want to try this 780km journey too, but it's one that will have to wait for the children to leave school. Indeed if you go past the cathedral you can end at Finisterre, which Medievals thought was "the end of the world". More info at this website.
Walk with the Romans along Hadrian's Wall. We've nearly managed the whole 135km, just a short two, maybe three, day section left between Newcastle and Hexham. The May half term is pencilled in, but we may have to give up on this idea as Nell, 10, is very wary of cows and they will certainly be out in the fields by then. Bulls and all. See a previous entry on this blog here about the moment we reached the end (before quite completing the beginning).
West Highland Way - runs 152km from Glasgow to Fort William uphill. Well, as good as uphill. It's midge heaven and the few chunks I've tried out (along Loch Lomond for instance) are remarkably free of snack shops which makes walking more of a slog. Perhaps this is the one that best echoes Camino de Santiago de Compostela?
Coast to Coast - success! Pete and I spent three years popping up and down to the Lake District in order to walk Alfred Wainwright's fabulous 190 mile path (sorry, it has to be miles in respect to AW's memory) from St Bees Head over to Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire (dreamt up in 1973, more info here). I'd never heard of Wainwright when Pete first suggested the idea. Now I am willing to watch reruns of his extremely slow TV programme, just to get back in the zen mood of walking through the Lake District with my eyes mostly on a compass rather than mountain tops...

A tip from the cantankerous AW: "If you must take a companion, take one who is silent."

I was quite upset when an energetic friend and her husband managed to cycle 225km on the C2C (a very similar route) in a weekend - the time it took my lumbering feet seemed to add to the magic of the journey. But if you are less hardy, but still speed-inclined try the 12-20 day holidays run by this group.
Across India - isn't this what Gandhi did in some form of anti-British protest involving salt? Have you seen the size of India?

Over to you
Where have you walked in the UK that makes you think you could be somewhere else in the world?

Staying warm in Sweden

2012-01-20T15:33:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how those clever people in Sweden can still enjoy sitting outside a Stockholm cafe (without a patio heater) even when the weather is freezing. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs)

To make sure my family is never tempted to turn on the central heating at different times to the specified 7-8.30am and 6-9pm (I think this what Pete has agreed to), there are four rugs in the sitting room that can be used to drape around the body creating a wigwam of heat. Unfortunately when our dog was younger he enjoyed chewing them and the result is a home that looks as if it has been blighted by giant moths. In the dog's defence, he does look cute when he sticks his head through one of the holes he made...

Wrap up warm
I told this story to my friend Julie on a recent two-day trip to her home, which is near Bath. It made her remember how she'd admired the rugs used by Stockholm cafe goers. To stay warm at an outside table they don't light a gas-guzzling, climate change destroying garden heater. Instead they use a rug that's been left on the back of the chair. When they've finished a smorgasbord of conversation (or more likely, a dagens ratt/dish of the day) they fold up the rug and put it neatly back over the chair.

What a great idea - why can't more cafes and pubs (never mind home owners with patio heaters) do something similar in the UK?

Over to you?
How do you stay cosy during an outdoor winter picnic?

Japan's cute little things

2012-01-19T10:32:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how we pretend to visit Japan. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs)

My lovely cousin Stacy grew up in Canada but now lives in Japan where she is married to Motoki. They have a little boy, Joji - and one day I hope we'll all meet. Until then my family gets the benefit of knowing a tiny amount about what it's like to live in Japan from a "local". They take a new year holiday near Kyoto (it sounds so exotic). They use high speed trains. They coped after the shocking 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

A gift from Japan
Sometimes we get surprise parcels - the most recent was a treasure house of things children like - and I imagine things Japanese people like. You can see from the photo that there are toffees wrapped in dice packaging, teeny pencils (ideal for the Borrowers), a scented rubber with an emory board on the side just in case you need to repair your nails, and rose-flavoured sweeties that were truly delicious. Nell, 10, certainly thought so! Cute is certainly a winner for girls.

Thinking Japanese: top five cute attractions in the UK

Legoland - technically not cute, but anything downsized has the potential to hit the "ahhh cute" button. That said, I've never been to Legoland, Windsor, and secretly hope I never will. Just saying.
Dolls houses - many National Trust houses boast a children's nursery with a vast dolls' house - a wonderful Georgian one is at Uppark, Petersfield, Hampshire. There's also Queen Mary's dolls house built in the 1920s, on display at the Tower of London. And in my sitting room - a cut down box serves as one dolls house. And on the other side of the room is an Edwardian detached version which Nell and I had fun painting and wallpapering to match our own house's decor.
The Sylvanian shop -is open seven days a week in a tiny street in north London. But is is ideal for anyone with an old-fashioned yen for model animal mania. See the collection of badger husbands and their hard working squirrel/sheep/wives and cute twins (you're getting the idea aren't you!) here.
Toy repair shops - hard to find, but worth the effort as the items are getting the second (or third) life they deserve.
Anime - a massive trend with older, thoughtful teens and 20somethings, see here. Every university seems to have an anime soc where members regularly dress up as their favourite animated cartoon character. You can find anime and manga cartoons in book shops.

Over to you
Where would you go if you wanted to have a day in Japan without leaving the UK?

Little taste of France

2012-01-13T17:54:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how petit France can be found slap in the middle of London. This post is by Nell May (dictated to her mum Nicola Baird, see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs)

"I enjoyed going to the creperie as it had delicious crepes (pancakes). I had a New York crepe with bacon, brie and soft egg in it. It was really yummy. I also had a delicious raspberry smoothie which had raspberries and pawpaw (papaya) in it. They also sold ice creams. Nearby there was a boulangerie, Paul, where mummy bought some bread (du pain). We got off the tube at South Kensington to go to this cafe - it's the same one my granny used to go to when she was young in London. I felt like I was in London, but then I saw the French flags and thought maybe we were near a French school.

"I can remember a bit of French, like "Oui, non and je voudrais un bon bon sil vouz plait" but I will probably do French at secondary school. It will be quite fun to learn a new language.

"It's nice to know that I don't have to go to France if I want a taste of France. That's what is so good about London."

Over to you
What's the best trip you've made in the UK that felt like you were miles away, but in fact it was still the land of the British passport? And crucially, would Nell like to visit it? Tips: her current favourite museum is the Natural History Museum, she loves skating and eating.

"It's 7am and this is the voice of Africa"

2012-01-10T17:10:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how a mistake tuning the radio alarm let me wake up in Ghana without a single uncomfortable or carbon heavy air flight (pic is of a wind-up radio). This post is by Nicola Baird

I always wake up to the Today radio programme. But thanks to a simple tuning mistake on Monday the boring, but essential, info from John Humphrys and Sarah Montague was replaced by Voice of Africa 94.3FM offering a very different world. One with music and a lot of shouty phone numbers...

I found out that allowances are going up for lepers in Nigeria, orphans will get a late new year lunch, and if you're after fresh goat meat and tilapia at better prices than Brixton Market then head to Channing Town..

I've spent about six months total in Africa (mostly Kenya but also Zanzibar and Zimbabwe), and the strange thing is that on the longer visits I used to tune into the World Service. It was so comforting hearing stories from all around the globe being explained in the crisp tones of BBC English. In contrast Voice of Africa explodes into the bedroom with energy and fun and gruesomeness - how amazing to be whisked to Nigeria and then Ghana with such ease.

If I've learnt anything about virtual travel, then it is make sure that you listen to the local radio station, wherever you are. As Voice of Africa puts it, "it always seems impossible until it's done". Enjoy the speediest flight you'll ever make just by jiggling with the radio dial. Or tell your DAB what to do.

Dreaming up a Polish feast

2012-01-08T13:23:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how a trip to Harrow took us via Poland and Lithuania. This post is by Nicola Baird

Potatoes are always cheap, right? Wrong - how about heading to a Polish food store to find ones with real mud from home, or rather from Poland or Lithuania? That's what you can do in west London. Of course in the UK we are long used to getting potatoes from all over the world, the first new potatoes in supermarkets are often from Israel, but there is something truly forlorn about needing the taste of home-grown potatoes.

Don't let that stop you from having a good look, and perhaps a taste too, of the goodies on offer in one of these stores. I left with delicious apple and spice chocolate covered biscuits (more like a Jaffa Cake) and also a large poppy paste breakfast roll. Heated up this had an almondy-taste which my kids found a bit strange, but the adults in the house enjoyed enough to be going back for more. Given the amount of elderly poppy seed I have in my store cupboard at the moment, this certainly gave me inspiration beyond lemon and poppy seed cake, or poppy seed bagels.

Unique Polish foods include birch and bilberry juice, cow candy, dried mushrooms and pickled garlic. You could spend a lifetime learning about the clever ways Poles have devised to preserve food, and of course potatoes are an important item too featuring in borscht and cabbage soup. And then there are pierogi (filled parcels boiled or crispily baked). It may be hearty peasant/hunter food, but what could be more warming on a cold winter's day? Now all I need is a few Polish friends to help me explore Eastern European cooking. Any offers or recipes?

From Warsaw life:

Bigos – A traditional stew native to Poles and Lithuanians, bigos is considered to be Poland’s true national dish and its composition can vary from region to region, village to village and restaurant to restaurant. This hunter’s stew is a staple of every Polish family so be sure to sample it during your stay. Fresh or fermented cabbage forms the base of the meal to which either whole or pureed tomato is added alongside cuts of meat mainly, but not exclusively kielbasa or pork and finished off with honey and mushrooms. The dish is traditionally accompanied with rye bread or potatoes and is typically served on the second day of Christmas. Its high concentration of vitamin C, the ready availability of cabbage and general heartiness made it a classic and nutritionally fundamental dish during centuries and centuries of cold winters. Wash it down with shots of ice-cold vodka for the authentic experience.

Want to find out more?
For a huge amount of Polish and East European info in London - mostly history, themed bars, vodkas, restaurants and food stores see here. Some more good recipe code-crackers from Warsaw life here.

Great British resolutions (via Jamie Oliver's pub)

2011-12-29T15:49:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how a trip to Jamie Oliver's dad's pub (the Cricketers) inspired 2012 thoughts about travel. This post is by Nicola Baird

I love Jamie Oliver - at every stage of his career. As a cheeky chappy. As a dad. As the boss of a posh restaurant near Old Street (Fifteen) that was ridiculously hard to find. I think his 30 minutes meal guide is ace. And his new British book looks fab too, although I've only flicked through it.

Ministry of Food memories
But the thing I remember best about him, is the apparent sense of total, agonised, furious failure he felt when he couldn't get Britain's school children eating better. The tabloids understood the power of a shot of mums sneaking burgers into their children's school after junk food had been banned. That picture (burger gate?) was designed to not just undermine Jamie's healthy school meals, but his reputation.

This thought has been helping me dream up a new year's resolution.

Or at least Jamie's bounce has helped - he picked himself up, sorted it out, had a go in the US, and then got back to his real talent - talking up a good cooking show. An d this happened thanks to a detour to the Cricketers pub at Clavering (run by his mum and dad) on the Herts/Essex border. It's a very posh place. Or put it another way Jamie didn't learn his Mockney accent in this bit of north west Essex. And sadly we didn't get to eat there because dogs aren't allowed inside - so it was bags of crisp (posh crisps) out in the cold... (see pix above of Pete, Lola, Nell and Vulcan; my mum wouldn't come as she said she had a bad vibe about the trip!). It's the ideal spot to serve gourmet pub grub and put the world to rights.

Bit of a twizzle
Have you heard of Dave Hampton - the ambitious carbon coach, who hopes to do for fossil fuel use what Jamie did to turkey twizzlers - who was interviewed in the Ecologist mag recently about how greens shouldn't be so up tight. We're not responsible for everyone (and especially their non-green behaviour) he says. The interview is here. But below is a quote that resonates... (Jamie, you can take note too).

What was the highlight of your year (2011)?I think the highlight is me fully getting, for the first time maybe, that I am not responsible for anyone else's life or behaviour -and that I am only responsible for my own! Gosh, it feels good saying that, I have been living in this fantasy world where I believed it was up to me to save the planet and if that is a mental illness it is quite a common one - we all know of campaigners who seem to believe that everyone else is wrong and they are the only ones who are right! But if we go around clearing up our own mess and being positive about our own lifestyle, other people will start copying us and picking up their own carbon ‘litter' too.
Dave Hampton/carbon coach, interviewed in Dec 2011 Ecologist

Looking back at 2011 is a terrible time for those of us at Mayhem Corner to look back on our carbon use. We did after all travel to the other side of the world by plane - although at least we stayed there for three months. Sorry nonetheless.

In addition, somewhere along the way this year I'd forgotten about the joys I get from trying to live simply (or as Pete puts it simply live) with an eye/ear and eco-kerchung on the planet.

When all around are telling you that austerity is bad, it's easy to forget (assuming you have enough to cover mortgage, food and other essentials) that you don't need to be doing spending overdrive in order to have a darn fine, sustainalbe life. And that's where Jamie Oliver, comes back in. He's a bloke with a dream and vast ambition to get Britain eating better using every type of media (have you seen his apps or his mags?) who has discovered that his success is better if he cheer leads rather than criticises. I want to be like that too.

And if all this hurts your head the Cricketers has a splendid solution. Its low timber beams are bound in padded leather to prevent accidents. So here's to not ducking the obvious, especially if you are already living the green dream. Good luck and happy days for 2012.

Saffron Walden: love the dark ages

2011-12-28T18:10:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to immerse yourself in British history, just by a trip to an Essex market town. This post is by Nicola Baird

800 years ago history had a story-telling blip. There was no one around who wanted to write stuff down or, if they did, they clearly put their books in the wrong storage depot. So when you get to a town like Saffron Walden, in Essex, which started life as a small settlement (possibly) in pre-Roman times and then progressed to being a market town (from 1141) to a rather fab place to visit where the houses are painted in shades of ice-cream flavours and the post-xmas rubbish gets put out in Waitrose bags. I bet Tunbridge Wells gives off the same sort of comfort zone...

But Saffron Walden has a secret, and it's not the Devil's Fingernails in the pic. It's a site once seen that leaves you asking far more questions about all of our ancestors. Here's why.

Saffron Walden has 15,000 people. It's not far from Cambridge. It's always been on my list as a must-see destination and yet it's taken years for me to get there probably because its train station was shut in 1964. Nearest stations are Audley End and Newport, plus a bus or taxi ride.

Once you've got there though it's easy to stroll around. The tourist information centre has a free walking guide which leads you around the biggest church in Essex, past Oliver Cromwell's HQ (yet another), over RAB Butler's grave (remember him - born in India, a consumate politician perhaps, "the best PM we never had" and in 1944 gave us a great education system), past a plethora of pretty houses with beams and plaster, mouldings and stories (see photos).

It can take in the Old English Gentleman, a CAMRA pub, that allows dogs in one bar, and children in the other. Sensible: albeit a problem for a family like mine with children and a dog...

Sodding mystery
It can include a Norman castle with fabulous ruins, and an award-winning museum - purpose built for the job which has a famous ethnography collection including Innuit (eskimo in the display and Nell's 21st century version in the photo) kit and plenty of memories for Oceania fans (such as my family). Oh yes, and the guided walk takes in a skateboard park, and a restored Victorian garden, known as Bridge End. Through it I found out the town had been a melting pot for Quakers, philanthropists and politics. Learnt that it's a stone's throw from lovely Audley End and the miniature railway. But bizarrely nothing much seems to be known about England's oldest turf maze, created 800 years ago and still in amazing shape on the far side of The Common.

Nell, 10, lay down in the centre of the maze. Lola, 13, stalked around the turf paths trying to figure out the pattern muttering "I've got it!". Pete was puzzled why it wasn't fenced off or made more of a feature. Maybe it's obvious: the turf love-knots (if that's what they are) have to compete with saffron (the yellow powder on the stamens of the crocus) that gave Saffron Walden it's name, so maybe it is clear why this particular British curiosity plays second fiddle to a flower.

Over to you
Is there a place you know that undersells something you think is amazing? If so, do let me know - or tell me what you love about Saffron Walden so I can make sure I treat myself to a second trip.

Portugese pony power

2011-12-21T11:21:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to look at a horse and find yourself longing for all things Portugal... This post is by Nicola Baird

Do you like horses? If so, you may already know about the Olympia Horse Show, held just before Christmas in London. It's a massive show jumping contest (prizes minimum of 10K Euros for each of the two contests we saw & pic of the grey is Depardieu ridden by Guy Williams, a GBR rider who won the Renault Christmas Mawsters on 17 December 2011) with an endless display of other crowd-pleasing horsy activities.

I've started to make it a pre-Christmas treat for my daughters and we usually hook up with an aunt or two (pic shows Kaz, Lola and Nell). Normally I come home impressed by the ways the top riders have changed. Twenty to thirty years ago, training was an extra cigarette and another pint. Now it is pilates, proper low GI diets, and lots of emphasis on the rider being supple and fit. The result is obvious: World Cup horses - and their riders - can jump higher.

But this year I came home longing for a Lusitano. This amazing Portugese breed - often grey - has a rocking horse canter and is known for being agile and calm. There have even been debates in the horse world about whether it is possible to fall off a Lusitano (duh! of course you can).

The Lusitano were originally used for war and bull fighting - and at Olympia we got to see eight blokes show off their horses' incredibly calm athleticism with the aid of long scary rods and war-like music. The atmosphere was lightened by two women riders, wearing long trousers that were cut as wide as skirts (in the Edwardian manner) demonstrating that these horses work as well for either sex. That said the Portugese men's bond with their horses was supposed to be so close, and so enviable, that this is where the birth of the idea that centaurs existed. It's all fascinating stuff on wikipedia.

Next up was the Lorenzo, the Flying Frenchman - who swapped his grey Carmague ponies for the Lusitano so he can give a really death-defying display of horsemanship. He stands one leg on his left pony, the other on the right pony with six or eight in front of him, controlled entirely by long reining. He can turn, weave between poles and even jump, see this video (experts can note the switch in breed perhaps?). Quite amazing to watch - and again only possibly because of the Lusitano. Oh, how I want one, and I'm sure a little one, say 15.2hh, would fit into our garden if I converted the chicken shed into a stable.

As must be obvious Olympia brings out the child in me, the one that never actually said "Daddy I want a new pony now!"

The joy of Essex

2011-12-12T11:27:00.001Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Take a mini break to Colchester for culture, oysters, history and views that are often Italinate (even in a damp mid-winter). This post is by Nicola Baird

Colchester is a market town with a big history. As Camulodunum (translation - fortress of Camulos [a Celtic god of war]) it was once the capital of Britain. It was a vast Roman colony and even now the materials used in the Norman castle give you the impression you are mid Mediterranean, maybe Florence with the warm terracotta tiles on the castle's narrow bricked towers and the strange white elephant watertower, known locally as Jumbo. It's the history that is exciting though: it was viciously destroyed by Boudica and her Celtic allies (who also destroyed London and St Albans); fought over in the Civil War, and has more traditions about oysters than you can serve up with Lee and Perrins....

Despite all these stories it’s not a traditional place to head for a wedding anniversary weekend. Strange because it surely compares with Lille or Bath or Winchester. Indeed the staggered reaction from a friend who used to live there, and my aunt who is based in Essex - but does her best to avoid Colchester - suggested I might regret letting Pete pick the venue. But that's the point of Aroundbritainnoplane, getting to know the UK better.

Turns out that Colchester offers an astonishing history trail (and thanks to the choice of B&B and restaurant Pete and I had a lot of fun too). The Norman castle is the biggest in Britain - because it was built on foundations made by the Romans. The foundations are 3,000 years old, and when the Normans arrived these were already 1,000 years old. When I think about the subsidence in the two Victorian homes I’ve lived in this seems puzzlingly brilliant engineering.

We took a taxi from the station to Trinity Street where we were staying in a house once owned by John Wilbye, the man who invented madrigals in the late 16th century. I always ask taxi drivers the three best things about the place where they work, often with interesting results. The woman we’d picked was an utter down.”There’s nothing good here. It’s just cold. There’s shopping, but I don’t like that, except in Williams & Griffin (a department store run by Fenwick).” When pushed she admitted there were some pubs, but these were occupied by squaddies and students so we wouldn’t want to go there… Well we did, the Purple Dog was fine, and most pubs seem to offer real ale.

Within 100 metres of exiting the taxi – she couldn’t drive to the front door because of the excellent pedestrianised shopping lanes (sort of like Brighton) off the High Street a lady in Tudor garments had invited us to watch a Tudor dance being performed in the CO1 community centre run by a charity that finds things for teenagers to do. Irresistible, and though Tudor dances are reasonably staid, it was fun watching a performance of Ding Dong Merrily on High (originally a dance) and the anachronistic doubletake of spotting a Tudor dancer sit out with mobile and a mug of latte. Could spots like this have inspired Damon Albarn from Blur?

Top 5 highlights of Colchester (other than the zoo)

Colchester Castle – stunning Roman collection which is labelled for maximum enjoyment for anyone who knows Essex or interested in Boudica. It costs £6 to enter but offers at least an hour of displays. You can also book a £2.50 tour of the Roman foundations of the Temple of Claudius which Boudica destroyed (along with 20,000 people) and go on to the castle ramparts for a 360 degree view across today's town.
FREE A walk that takes in the old Roman wall by the Hole in the Wall pub and a vast red-brick retired Victorian water tower known as Jumbo. Then head the other way and find the Old Seige House which looks Tudor but has many red painted bullet marks on its inside and outside walls – marks from the conflict between Cromwell’s troops and the Royalists. Finish off with a patrol of the incredible new arts centre, Firstsite. In fact Firstsite might be a reason to go to Colchester - it's as good as The Baltic up in Newcastle upon Tyne.
There are some nice parks, including the castle gardens which also has the FREE toy museum beside it, all a few strides from the shopping streets. Look carefully between and in stores and you’ll see Roman memories everywhere. We ate a good dinner (with frighteningly speedy service) at the Lemon Tree which boasts a massive Roman wall between the dining rooms.
A place to get curious about: allegedly Humpty Dumpty was a canon parked at St Mary in the Wall during the Civil War conflict (find it near the Mercury theatre). And there's the Dutch Quarter where in 1806 Jane Taylor is claimed to have dreamt up Twinkle Twinkle Little Star... and it's old name, Camulodunum may have been the basis for the nursery rhyme Old King Cole. As for the TOWIE craze back in Brentwood (and the nation's sitting rooms), well I could see no evidence other than a canvas tote in a super tacky shop that boasted "I've been vajazzled".
Pick the right Sunday in December (11 Dec 2011) and then you can enjoy the Christmas market which has the high street closed to traffic.

More info about things to do in Colchester here. More info about Colchester at wikipedia here (including references in two Dr Who episodes, Moll Flanders and 1984!)

Lisbon 1 Durban 0

2011-12-09T10:45:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here is a short news report on which gets more news coverage: the ministers meeting at Durban (on climate) or squabbling over the Lisbon Treaty (money). This post is by Nicola Baird

I've been a poor sleeper for years, ever since I had children really. So this morning about 6am - after finishing the novel I was reading and messing on Facebook - I started looking on the web for info about the COP17 talks at Durban. These are important climate talks, not unlike the ones that hogged the world's attention when they were in Copenhagen. There is so little to find, although I did uncover a shocking post from Reuters about how the failure of these talks looks set to drown island states, with first on the list being Tokelau. In contrast the meltdown of the Eurozone (thanks again Cameron for messing things up) had headline after headline.

In a contest of Durban v Lisbon, the latter is clearly the outright winner. Money drives news agenda a zillion times over attempts to save the world.

And yet there is some good news around. For instance I found this news item below on the ecogeek website. It's from the LA Times. I think it is good news that investments in renewable energy topped fossil fuels last year - although as the UK isn't exactly doing this, who on earth is? There's another glitch: the enormous sum of $157 billion was also invested in new natural gas, oil and coal plants - the fossil fuels that are causing climate change...

Really you couldn't make this skewed understanding up - as I read in Rosamund Urwin's Evening Standard column yesterday we'd rather see our great grandchildren swim to school than pay just a tad more tax to try and tackle the problems of climate change now, when we actually still might be able to do something.

Investments in Renewable Energy Topped Fossil Fuels Last YearWritten by Megan Treacy on 29/11/11 For the first time, investments in renewable energy projects surpassed those in fossil fuel power plants, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Last year, $187 billion was invested in renewable energy installations, while $157 billion was invested in new natural gas, oil and coal plants. The increase in investments in the sector, even while in a down economy, has led to price drops in equipment and renewable energy power, making solar and wind power far more competitive with coal power. Renewable energy subsidies deserve a lot of credit for the spending increase: about $66 billion in subsidies were handed out last year. It's a great bit of news as another round of global talks on the climate crisis is likely heading nowhere as we speak. via LA Times

Bumped into Sengal this morning

2011-11-29T16:45:00.001Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here is a surprising idea about how to find Senegal much closer to home. This post is by Nicola Baird

All I did was take the dog on a slightly different morning route march. Amazing variety of posters up at Arsenal stadium. Special praise to anyone who knows which Gunners player this quote refers to. Strangely I posted this piece on the same day that the Guardian revealed that Youssou N'Dour plans to give up music and possibly run for president.

On a tour of 3D Africa

2011-11-25T14:18:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here are some ideas about how to get that bit closer to every country in Africa (and maybe create your own). This post is by Nicola Baird

As part of Black History Month 2011 the older children at Nell's school created a 3D map of Africa. Nell was in charge of Mali and it looks fab, she created a wonderful mosque too. When all the countries were put together (there are 52) it turned out that Nigeria had been forgotten. What an embarrassment, so Nigeria was quickly produced. Above is a picture of the children's efforts with Nell and Netta posing.

Mapping your world
There's a great idea in the brilliant Mission: Explore book that shows kids how to establish your own country. You've just got to map it, name it, establish the boundaries, sort out a flag and register it with the United Nations. Hard to believe it is that simple - but turns out that Pete (my partner/nell's dad) has long ago done that when he declared Essex an independent nation. The main demands included serving Tiptree jam at state occasions; plus all music to be provided by Ian Dury or Billy Bragg (for more Essex sillyness have a look at Pete's blog, http://thejoyofessex.blogspot.com).

Over to you
I'm curious - has anyone else created their own universe/country/breakaway state with their kids or friends? BTW, I'm not talking about real independence here, just pretend. Do share

Ready to ski?

2011-11-21T12:34:00.001Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here are some ideas about how to offer a winter sports experience - like you might have in Austria - but much closer to home. This post is by Nicola Baird

From late October, each week another Austrian ski resort opens up again after the long summer break. A good place to find out more is at this blog here. I've never skiied on snow, and only tried an artificial slope once, I think in Harrogate although xscape at Milton Keynes is far more famous, and there's the Chill Factor at Trafford with a luge run and the Snow Centre in St Albans, just 10 minutes from the train station. But last weekend on a brainstorm with the Geography Collective (working on their next Mission Explore book challenge) one of the bonding activities was to toboggan at the Chatham Ski Slope (apparently the longest artificial slope in Kent and the South East).

It seemed a shame to let the kids miss out this early winter sport pleasure so when I left the geographers, I took Lola, Nell and their friend Xander to Broadgate ice rink, just by Liverpool Street in the centre of London for a long skate on a chilly, blue-sky morning with near perfect mountain conditions (!). As you can see from their expressions, they loved it - as did Xander's mum Nicky. And you can try skating too from November - early February.

Obviously if we were thinking Austrian we'd finish off our skating or tobogganing with hot chocolate and cakes. Instead we ate noodles at Spitalfields market, but I guess when you are on a skiiing holiday, you never really know what you might do next...

Over to you
Where do you go in the UK to recreate a winter sports feeling? I'd love to try to ski my way around the UK using the artificial slopes...

Running out of loo roll

2011-11-13T10:21:00.001Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here are some thoughts about taking the piss, politely. This post is by Nicola Baird

It may be possible to use leaves, newspaper scraps and bits of magazines to wipe your bum. But... I'm not keen on these options while recycled loo paper is so cheap and easy to come by (unless you forget to keep the stocks up). The obvious answer is to make sure you always have a couple of slices of toilet tissue tucked into a pocket.

British people are often very conservative about their toilet habits. I remember being amazed at about eight years old that there were squat toilets in France. Since then I've learnt that many countries use squat toilets - in some rows of "ladies" in Singapore, say, you can choose between the Western sit model and the Asian squat.

That flush costs how much?
Our family is just about to switch to a water metre in a bid to help everyone in the house understand that water has a price. It's easy to follow Ozzie rules - "if it's yellow let it mellow; if it's brown flush it down," when it's only family in the house. Far harder when there are visitors. At least that's what I think, anyone got any thoughts about how to internationalise your own toilet habits so water isn't wasted and blushes spared?

Here be dragons (aka griffins)

2011-11-08T16:36:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to find fantasy beasts via a trip through London. This post is by Nicola Baird

I love visting the City's griffins. The picture above looks rather like a sacrifice, although it really shows Nell trying to climb on to one of the City's guardians between Temple and Blackfriars tube. Using the old I-spy game a griffin deserves at least 10 points (a pigeon would be 2, a cathedral 6), and there are plenty of griffins to find in the Square Mile, so a good way of exploring London as you look around the protest site at St Pauls.

Griffin ID please
Look for the body of a lion, the head and wings of an eagle and furry horse ears & what do you see? Scales. Clearly the griffins guarding the City are actually dragons. I doubt such a mish-mash beastie could ever have been real - although the Greeks and ancient Egyptians made statues of them. As for dragons, I've always assumed they are a folk lore memory of dinosaurs (or at any rate dino bones).

More info about Griffins on Wikipedia here. And if you want to remind yourself about I-spy books, then look here.

If it's London dragons you want though, then go to the National Gallery and enjoy Uccello's St George and the Dragon - a slaying of what appears to be the lady in pink's pet.

Taste of Chile

2011-10-24T21:11:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to go to Chile via a sweet tooth. This post is by Nicola Baird

Chileans obviously have a love-hate relationship with dentists. Our family is friends with a Chilean family and have recently been given a kilo of delicious toffee sauce (made by Nestle, really it's heated up condensed milk) which is eaten on toast. I tried it on pancakes and as a topping for a cake I gave to my godson. It's very sweet, and very delicious.

Last week Lola was given a little tin of miel de palma and told by the family that it was coconut honey. The translation didn't sound right - not least because the ingredients do not include a drop of honey (I'm assuming miel is honey in Spanish...). Google turned up the goods - it's a palm syrup from a special tree that has small edible nuts (a bit like coconuts) and when the top of the palms cut it bleeds a golden juice that if heated turns into a maple syrup like concoction. Which I guess is good on toast, and on pancakes...

See what I mean about the dentists?

Here's some interesting detail about miel de palma. Anyone know any other Chilean treats I can find in London?

Going Dutch

2011-10-09T14:05:00.000Z

Windmills give Canvey a Dutch feel.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to go to Holland via Essex. This post is by Nicola Baird

Canvey Island. The name has a potency - but it's not really an island, more a chunk of Essex jutting into the Thames estuary that's below sea level. It was disastrously flooded in 1953 which led to 58 people dying. There is a history of the east of England 1953 floods here. As a result a massive cement wall was built shielding "the island" from future spring tides. It's a bit strange walking beside the sea wall because you can't actually see the sea.

You may be here a long time
There's a 15 mile barrier which makes one feel as if you are in a prison.

The effect is magnified when a tannoy from the local football club announces "good afternoon". But fortunately near the sea front the sluice gates are open so you can go down to the slender beach and play in the paddling pools... And further around the sea wall becomes a grassy mound which is a pleasure to walk along.

We're visiting because my husband Pete is a Dr Feelgood fan, but I'm curious about why the Dutch were here, back in the 17th century, when making hay (not processing oil) was the big money-earner. You can still see cows grazing in the hay meadows at Canvey Wick, admittedly with today's income generator, a vast oil refinery first put up by Occidental, as back drop. There are also a couple of wind-powered water pumps that make it look more like a Dutch pastoral. Best of all are the tiny, one/two bedroom thatched, hay-bale shaped houses dotted around the so-called Dutch Village, some dating back to 1618. There are also rumours that the Dutch drainage engineer Cornelius Vermuden helped drain Canvey (we know he did the Fens) probably because in 1623 around 300 Dutch men were on the case to make the island habitable.

All easy to see from the bus which runs frequently from Benfleet train station.

Canvey Island has many claims to fame besides it's relationship to oil. See more here. Wikipedia points out:

"The island was the site of the first delivery (1959) in the world of liquefied natural gas by container ship, and later became the subject of an influential assessment on the risks to a population living within the vicinity of petrochemical shipping and storage facilities."

It's also a long-established holiday park for the East End: one of my friends always went there every year for her summer holidays and she's not yet 40! Despite the big skies this is not really a holiday destination to show-off about to your friends. Instead expect a dormitory town of 38,000 people, many still with stories of working for the Occidental oil reprocessing centre that dominates the island's skyline, despite being closed in 1975. And it's the home of Dr Feelgood, Britain's best-known R&B band from the 1970s made that bit more famous after the film, Oil City Confidential came out. Extra respect if you also know their hits, Back in the Night, Down to the Doctors or their best-selling single Milk and Alcohol (jointly written with Nick Lowe).

We made up our own walk, along the grassy sea wall protecting Canvey Wick reserve via Islanders fish and chip shop (with sustainable MSC fish!), but here is another good route from Essex specialists - which gives you a chance to visit the Lobster Smack pub, starring Pip and Magwitch at the close of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.

As for going Dutch - well Pete kindly paid for the whole trip, he even made us sandwiches for the train. So clearly I owe him big time for a surprisingly enjoyable trip to Holland.

Where's fashion street?

2011-10-06T13:29:00.000Z

The skull pic is just a note to self about what to wear on Mexico's Day of the Dead.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to go clothes shopping as if you could teleport. This post is by Nicola Baird

Imagine a long street crowded with shoppers. Now add racks of dresses being wheeled out of lock up shops. It's a city yes, and besides the fashion shops, and alleys hung with the latest garments, cafes tempt you to linger thanks to the amazing cooking smells. There are also dry cleaners, garment alterers and even a sewing machine repair shop. Fonthill Road could be Singapore, Hong Kong, Dakka. But it's actually London's best kept secret - the place to go for cheap fashion, and invariably far more fashion forward than the high street.

Who will buy?
On my last sashay along the crowded pavements I enjoyed watching older women in brown coats debate whether to buy another brown coat, a super-plainly dressed Hasidic Jewish mum locate the only shop that sells black woollen skirts with front pleats; two Asian guys admiring the leopard skin tops (you come here to cross-dress too!), the girl in the shoe shop having a quick fag on the pavement, school students rushing past late for class with their eyes on the window, Turkish guys buying for girlfriends, black guys minding the buggy and baby while mum chooses the best dress to impress. There are long dresses, short dresses, Church dresses, nightclub handkerchiefs, frothy sunshine dresses, wedding dresses.

Most are on sale for a bargain fiver.

These must be the product of sweat shops - or maybe they are the trial runs. Whatever their provenance if you want to detour to the land of super cheap fashion then take the tube to Finsbury Park and walk to Fonthill Road. Here's where to change your image without punishing your budget.

On the other hand it doesn't answer my desire to try to buy pre-loved clothes.

As my daughters grow it is getting increasingly hard to find suitable stuff in charity shops that fits and isn't worn out (although jumble and car boot sales can be good). So I was thrilled to be tipped off by the shop assistant at the British Red Cross charity shop just off Kings Road that a member of the Nigerian royal family had just come in with piles of never worn clothes that would probably fit Nell. One pair of jeans for an eight-year-old (with jewelled skulls and roses on one leg) still had a price tag on it - apparently £400 - which the Red Cross staff planned to sell for £20.

A quick search revealed that 395 Dhs is the United Arab Emirates' dirham and thus originally £69.51. But a bargain's a bargain (even if 20 quid is still a pricey pair of jeans). It's Nell's first piece of designer wear and she looked very happy to be so spoilt.

For more info about fair trade and organic fashion see People Tree. Founder Safa Minney has recently published her first book too, Naked Fashion.

Where's that?
Do you know any row of shops in the UK that reminds you of an overseas experience? Bazars, markets, alleyways, pop-ups, pavement cafes - share what they remind you of, and their location. Thanks.

Great Britain campaign for 2012

2011-10-05T06:58:00.000Z

I love these ads, they seem to pick out some British highlights.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No, not with these ideas to get the world celebrating Great Britain 2012. This post is by Nicola Baird

PM David Cameron (don't ya just want to sit him down and give him a fierce talking to?) went to New York in September, and while there found the time to launch a boost British trade campaign. I love these cheesy posters (see pix) and look forward to stumbling across them in mags and on billboards. It's a great reminder that we are lucky to live in a country (well countries) with such amazing history. And things to boast about - from the good looks of Henry VIII to the entrepreneurial genius of Richard Branson.

For the past month I've felt so homesick for my other country, Solomon Islands, and really don't know how to feel better - that place just gets under your skin. I asked a friend, who moved last year from Sao Paulo to London with his Brazilian wife, how he coped being back home seeing as he loves being an expat, and adores hotter weather and, dare I say it, the way they wear clothes in Brazil.

But he was positively animated by the things that make London an exciting place to live - the history, the way the pubs were used by Dickens (admittedly not really a Londoner), and Pepys; the clues to the Fire of London or the blitz or the shrapnel marks on the V&A. He loves the food from all round the world. The vibe. The way the power is always on and the rubbish gets sorted into recycling. The multiculturalness of London got a big thumbs up too.

There's no reason for me to be in a giant sulk. With the internet you don't need to be at your cultural home to be working - if I really wanted to, I could be sitting in an office with the best view in the world (say, blue skies and an island not far off) plugged into broadband...(ah dream on).

However it seems Cameron is keen for 2012 to turn Britain into a honeypot. If nothing else there will be 17,000 competitors and officials at the Olympics. It feels churlish not to try and support him, it is after all supposed to be a pleasure to show people around your home. Besides, time's moved on (and we've had this amazing hot start to autumn with blue skies and climate changing temperatures) so I'm feeling better. Ready to look forward to planning for 2012. Here's some dates for the diary:

2012 dates
2-5 June The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Weekend
27 July-12 August the Olympics
29 August-9 September, the Paralympics

Rethinking Somalia

2011-09-30T05:48:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Here's your chance to rethink the Somalia we hear about on the radio/TV. This post is by Nicola Baird

The rains failed big time in 2010. It's full of pirates. War lords. What about the famine? Oh we all know about Somalia - just from hearing the headline news which sometimes leave worries about local politics, celebrities and the global financial crisis to focus on the hundreds of thousands of displaced, or ailing Somalian people.

On the bus I met 14-year-old Fatemeh* who ticks the Somali box. Actually she's a Londoner, and has never been to Somalia. But she told me how strange it is listening to her parents' stories about their homeland. "My mum makes it sound so nice, the things she did, it's nothing like the news."

But this year there is a terrible drought - the worst in six decades - which is leaving millions of people without food. Many have already moved to Kenya and Ethiopia in a bid to find food.

Leaving this huge rain failure aside (is this another sign of climate change?), I'm beginning to think that journalists - or at any rate the conventions about reporting news - are doing us all a great disservice. There is a history on BBC News here which reads OK, but as headlines it is a litany of disasters.

By focusing on the bad stuff, we get very strange impressions about our world neighbours.

Or in the UK, our real neighbours. The Islington Somali Community puts it like this:

"Telling the story of Somalis in Britain is hard because there is a lack of nationwide research. The 2001 census suggested there were 43,000 Somalis in the UK. But other experts suggest at least 95,000 and as many as 250,000 with estimates of 80,000 living in London alone. While they represent one of the largest ethnic minorities, the only significant research has been localised case studies. These tend to show that Somalis are a hard-to-reach and marginalised group whose voices are unrepresented in national debates and as a result are largely ignored by both the national and local mainstream services."

My experience of Somalians in the UK is smart people, definitely shy, perhaps from a constant sense of embarrassment about their country's pop-up profile.

Of course Somalia has massive problems. Indeed my 10-year-old daughter Nell is looking forward to a non-uniform day at her school (it costs £1 to avoid the uniform) in a bid to raise money for Somalian famine victims. They should make £300 by the end of the day, even without a single cake sold. I just wish I could tell Fatemeh something more positive about her mother's country when I next bump into her on public transport.

Have your own non-uniform fundraiser
Oxfam is helping support Somalia, to make a donation see here.

*not her real name

Wanted: one fly and a BBQ

2011-09-23T11:40:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No, not with these ideas to get you to the Lebanon. This post is by Nicola Baird

So what do you know about the Lebanon? I was stretching my mind and found nothing until I remembered Beirut. You go there for fabulous food and nightlife, but also to wander around caverns, temples and overhear French and Arabic in the neighbourhoods. See more ideas at tripadvisor.

What about the trees?
And then there's the cedars of Lebanon, those infamous, vast scented pine trees that the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians squabbled over, and later the British used up making railways. You can visit a cedar of Lebanon on a National Trust tree trail, here's one at Hatfield Forest, Essex.

But to get a taste of Lebanon in the UK here's a great tip from my friend Hannah. She says pick a nice day and then take my daughters to a trout farm to have a go fishing.

I thought I'd misheard. Here's what I think about fish farms... Minus points = overcrowding of fish & over use of pesticides. Limited plus points. Possibly a good way to farm protein and definitely an easier way to catch "wild" fish, even using a fly? But read on...

At the fish farm her friend visited, there were lots of people enjoying a weekend outing - either keeping up the skill of catching a fish, or teaching their family to do so - and then cooking up the catch. She said the smells of BBQ fish were delicious, and after befriending a family with one of the most succulent smelling meals she left with a fabulous Lebanese recipe for making trout taste extra good.

See this website for 100 of the best Lebanese dishes. They really look yum.

All I need to do now is identify the nearest trout farm, and maybe just give it a go.

Cross fingers there will be someone from the Lebanon cooking up a storm when we are there...

Using locals to speak a new language

2011-09-20T15:26:00.001Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. This post is by Nicola Baird

What's the easiest way to learn a language? I reckon it's necessary to listen very hard to become fluent, and then to try the words and phrases, day after day. I think it is much easier if you can let your subconscious - that bit of your brain that demands habit (mine likes coffee when I wake up) - kick in. But I don't find learning languages very easy.

"Quel'qu'n" this may not be spelt right, but I distinctly remember learning the phrase "is anyone in there" after staying for a couple of nights in a Paris apartment with a French family. Because the apartment was crowded there was a serious danger of walking into someone using the bathroom, so the phrase took on ridiculous importance.

In the same way hearing "mira" being repeatedly said by a babysitter dandling my baby daughter helped me learn the Spanish word for look.

Now that my 13 year old has learnt a second language (due to travelling out of the UK all summer, shh not to mention much about this on this blog and besides it was a one-off, and it's Solomon Islands pijin which very few people speak in the UK) I'm trying to encourage her to use the same listen and try techniques to get herself a Spanish GCSE. She actually made the fluent breakthrough after six weeks in the Solomons, and then one rainy day spent making baskets and toys out of coconut leaves (see pic above). And if you ever want to visit that place (the largest uninhabited island in the Pacific), know as Tetepare, see the info here.

Spanish is a fab language, I wish I spoke it. But my efforts over the years mostly in the UK - evening classes, tapes, plus short visits (pre-children & pre-blogging days) to Mexico and also Spain - have probably helped. But my know-how is very weak, so I cannot help my daughter build up her Spanish voccab, essential to get that GCSE which will give her a ticket to uni...

But there's a clever trick you can do too, whatever language you want to speak - use visitors to the UK.

Here in London there are loads of Spanish speakers so I've arranged for Lola to meet up with a Chilean family and help mum cook supper for the two boys one evening after school.

Hopefully she'll hear phrases like "is anyone in the loo" or "would you like some more" (all in Spanish!) that will never leave her brain. Actually I'd like to learn like this, but would prefer to go to a tapas bar, so somehow haven't got around to sorting out my language needs.

If anyone's got any ideas about non-classroom ways of learning a language at home please share them here... Thanks.

Take a lemon: tastebud travel

2011-09-18T08:25:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. This post is by Nicola Baird

It's so easy to eat your way around the world. You can do it at a restaurant (fancy a Mexican?), food mall (noodles anyone?) in the supermarket aisles, in your store cupboard (just keep harissa paste, curry powders, and pesto in stock for a chance to cook Thai, Indian or Italian).

But it's British food fortnight - the time when we're all urged to try eating local food, to get a sense of place on our plate.

So if you are in Leicester have an apple and a hunk of Stilton cheese. If you are in Somerset have cider and an apple pie. Etc...

I love British food, but was quite surprised how little I long for it when I'm not in the UK - what I like is to eat food that's grown locally wherever I am because that way there's a chance it will be fresher, tastier and possibly even prepared with love. Jams bought at a fete or pre-Christmas event are a brilliant way to stock up your store cupboard without ploughing yet more of your money into a supermarket.

There are loads of ideas about how to find and choose British specialities, without paying over the odds on this website.

Lemon curd recipe
I love tarte citron, but thought it was out of my cooking orbit being so French.

But lemon curd is a traditional English condiment (think Little Miss Tuffet eating her curds and wey), and it is surprisingly easy to make. You could even make blackberry curd if you wanted to remove all food miles and a bramble bush is easier to find than a lemon. I adapted a Nigel Slater recipe - just melt butter with sugar over a bain marie (I put some water in a saucepan, got it boiling then removed the lid and put a thick china bowl to rest in the saucepan). Then I squeezed in the juice of one a lemon, and as it was unwaxed grated the rind too. I was quite pleased to use up this lemon as I had no other plans for it. Then beat a fresh egg and pour into the melted sugar/lemon/butter mix. Stir, then beat (with a whisk or fork), for about 10 mins - until you can feel the mix thickening.

From the Observer...Makes 2 small jam jars (or for 1 jar)
zest and juice of 4 unwaxed lemons (or 2 - but I only had one and a half)
200g sugar (100g)
100g butter (100g)
3 eggs and 1 egg yolk (I used one egg, just ignore the egg yolk unless you have one to use up)

Then pour into a clean jar and when it's cool add the lid. It keeps in the fridge well for about three weeks, and is stunning - spread on toast or as a filling for a pastry based tarte citron. I even spead it on filo pastry, rolled it up and cooked as a surprise pudding.

I say surprise meaning my family were impressed when I suggested we could travel with our tastebuds, right now, for Sunday lunch, to France - except that actually lemon pie is really a British dish. Enjoy!

Bike for a French feel

2011-09-15T11:55:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. This post is by Nicola Baird (picture above about how freeing a bike can be, is by Lola, aged 9).

My friend Rachel went cycling in France during the summer. It was quite easy, she told me looking distinctly svelte, just 1,ooo km over eight days so we had time to sight-see. This is a staggering distance, how on earth did she have time to sight-see? The answer is that she's cycle fit. She cycles most weekends with her partner, Andy Cornwell, who is an extraordinarily passionate long-distance cyclist and has a great blog with ideas about where to ride, and how to test your endurance. Should you wish to do something similar, have a look at the Lonely Planet guide, Cycling France.

Admittedly the world's most famous cycle race, the Tour de France is 3,600 km, and lasts 21 days, but those competitors want the challenge - they are super-fit, lean, mean bike machines.

I find cycling is a good way to cheer me and the family up.

It's lovely to cycle on autumn days when there isn't a headwind and the leaves are turning red and yellow as if you were mountain biking through a Canadian fall. I like the way you can stop exactly when you want to - no worries about parking when you see a bramble bush still laden with blackberries. When the first frosts come it will be time to stop at the blackthorn and pick sloes to make sloe gin or flavour vodka ready for a Christmas treat.

Sustrans offers fabulous off-road cycling all round the UK.

For anyone based in London there are also some great journeys to make - your personal Tour de France - either direct from your home or via a train line that allows bikes. I particularly like the stations running north of Finsbury Park that take you out to Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridge and Norfolk. In a recent issue of London Cycling Campaign's magazine there's a great ride around Stevenage. It's 30 miles which sounds a long way - but do it at your own pace, on a lovely autumn day, and you'll be rewarded with the same feeling of triumphal achievement that those Tour de France cyclists get when they cross the finishing line.

Xmas mini breaks

2011-09-12T09:08:00.040Z

This blog is about family travel without using carbon miles. It is by Nicola Baird.

There's an obscene pleasure in mentioning Christmas - or Christmas shopping - in September. I've been tidying up and happened to uncover a pile of 2007 Christmas cards which can be put to good re-use later this year.

But what really made me wonder about what I might do for December festivities 2011 was seeing an insert from guardianholidayoffers.co.uk/newmarket which cherry picks all the European places that are famously good at celebrating the run-up to Christmas.

BRUSSELS - has a famous market
BARCELONA - has a fabulous market
BOLZANO and MERANO - for the Italian Alpine markets in the Dolmites.
INNSBRUCK - for the alpine markets in the Austrian Tyrol.

The pictures on the brochure are all taken at night; the markets aglow with twinkly lights. But you can easily get the same atmosphere here in the UK, and thanks to my wedding anniversary being in December I've been to loads of Christmas markets.

Cheap tips
Of course every Christmas market is designed to make you part with cash from a cold looking person, despite their layers of coats and scarves, parked in a shed in a town square. Some of the sheds may even be covered in fake snow. Like many visitors (so-called shoppers) I have honed the art of feasting my eyes, which seems a bit mean for all those craft makers. However the food and hot mulled wine stalls still do well.

Even when it's rained, and every year it really has poured, the Christmas markets at Bath, Winchester and Cambridge have been lovely to wander around. There's many more I'd like to visit too, including York and Lincoln.

Given that the Guardian today warns that the average family income has to fall by 10 per cent - thanks to Osbourne and the Tory's absurd policies - maybe you can find a Christmas market a little closer to home for a seasonal treat?

Find a UK Xmas market
Have a look at this website for a huge list of the dates of all UK Christmas markets, they are everywhere from Tetbury to Skipton to Portsmouth...

Sport binds us?

2011-09-09T09:58:00.000Z

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK.

In a series of lighthearted emails back in January 2010 the excellent head at Woodford International School in Honiara, Solomon Islands said my little Brit daughters could only attend his school (for a week) if our whole family promised not to support New Zealand's 2011 Rugby World Cup bid.

Well, that seemed like a nobrainer.

I've never enjoyed rugby (or to be honest understood the scoring). If he wanted me to cheer for Oz's side (the one that hasn't won the rugby world cup for years...) then I was happy to do so.

But it's 9 September 2011 today and the Rugby World Cup has started - with New Zealand the hosts until 23 October. The host nation are apparently favourites, and haven't won top honours) (the Webb Ellis trophy since the inaugural game in 1987. This seems to be an advantage, they've certainly played the first half of their first game rather finely. But don't worry Greg, I was just looking at the Tonga team's red strip, and then couldn't resist watching both teams doing their fierce Polynesian war dances before the game kicked off.

And thanks to Greg I've realised that there are seven weeks of sport to enjoy and lots of the teams are from a long, long way away. I'm especially looking forward to the Fiji v Namibia game on Saturday (watch it on ITV 1, 4.30pm).

The picture above is more relevant than it might seem, it's a Pijin-language slogan Tshirt meaning we can do it together (tugetha iumi save duim) - which I took at Honiara's Lime Lounge during an annual award ceremony for Courageous Women. The Solomon Islands award was won by a woman who'd done a huge amount of surveying to discover that more than 60 per cent of women aged 15-49 had experienced domestic violence. This is a very high rate, and besides Papua New Guinea, one of the highest in the Pacific region. It's also shocking - it's dads, uncles, step fathers, grandparents, brothers and cousins who are hurting their wantoks (relations).

Scary jobs
I've been sniffing around the internet finding out more about this and discovered a just published Amnesty International report that surveyed Solomon Islands women collecting water in an area of Honiara that is off-grid (actually it's off-grid for about 90 per cent of houses). During the day only two men went to the water pipe, everyone else was female. When the women were asked why the men weren't helping the answer was "They are playing sport or drinking kwaso (a potent homebrew)." Here is the Solomon Star link.

I guess seven weeks of sport is good for nation building and bad for a lot of non-sport mad partners. Especially the ones collecting water (and in my London home that probably includes washing up duty).

Anyway, enjoy the games. And if you have to collect water, do so safely...

Moth collection

2011-09-03T13:06:00.000Z

I've been travelling for the past three months - and I'm sorry to admit that this involved making nine flights. There is no defence other than I hadn't been on a plane for 10 years so had a few carbon credits in hand. PIc is of Nell, me, Lola and two Solomon Island guides - Ofani and David - who had just taken us for a very long walk to see this amazing map, the Kolombangara stone.

But now I'm back at home. The first thing I noticed was that the kitchen seemed to have shrunk after the experience of living without windows, or clutter, while we were in Solomon Islands for two months. The next was the plague of moths.

Confession#2
Clothes moths drive me crazy - they've followed me around London to a range of different houses and their caterpillars have destroyed far too many of my clothes. They chew rugs, carpets, dresses, silk, jumpers, curtains even. I'm told they can even take over sheeps' wool insulation. They get into the food jars, and once the kids were sent home from school with a vicious note from the lunch supervisor telling me not to send them to school with maggoty fruit bars. When I protested that these were moth larvaes the teachers were even less sympathetic.

The result is that I am willing to kill these poor moths, and do so with a pheremone trap, ie, it's laced to stop the male tineola bisseliella mate with the female.

Unlike most of the world's 160,000 moth species, clothes moths (tineola bisselliella) like dim light. As everyone knows, most moths are drawn to bright lights, so they've done a clever bit of adaptation. In fact I admit to freaking out, just once during our three month travels, and it was over moths chaotically fighting to kill themselves on the kerosene light. We had to leave at 5am, ie, it was going to be dark in the morning, and was already dark, so I had to pack. Easy! But the torrential rain seemed to make hanging around the kerosene light even more attractive to the moths. There were 100s, maybe more, anyway enough to darken the lamp and to reduce me to a weeping lump lying on the dark wooden floor of the very special eco-lodge, Imbu Rano, Kolombangara, Solomon Islands.

I literally couldn't see for moths.

Moth worries aside Imbu Rano is the place to base yourself if you ever want to take a walk through montane rainforest on a dormant volcano (the equivalent in the UK would be wooded parts of the Malvern Hills, or imagine the woods on Arthur's Seat or the Lake District). The eco-lodge has the world's most lovely view, read more about it here. There are some good pix here too. And by the way we stayed two nights and moths weren't a problem on the first night - it must have been the weather or the moon, or some other natural phenomenon.

DIY moth removal
Finding moth pheremone refills for the plastic traps isn't easy. But at the fourth hardware shop I visited (ironically the one I first stumbled across moth traps) had some for sale. A pack of 10 refills is £17.50, or buy one for just £2.

"Are you selling a lot of these?" I asked, and got a laugh for a reply at SX Wallpapers, 113 Essex Road, London, N1.

"We've sold 3,000 refills this summer. I've been saying we could turn the upstairs into a moth refill showroom and show people how best to swat them!" he added.

I'm sharing this with you so you can keep your clothes in a decent state, ensuring you have a little more cash available for travel around Britain without a plane...

Mr Pip's rebellion

2011-05-06T11:40:00.000Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - sometimes this can be done by staying put and just reading... This post takes you to the South Pacific with the help of two writers - Charles Dickens and Lloyd Jones. It is by Nicola Baird (although the video isn't)

What a classic choice. Hugh Lawrie looks set to be Mr Pip in the film version of Lloyd Jones' amazing book of the same name - a modern retelling of Dickens' Great Expectations set in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea with a couple of moments in the Solomons and New Zealand. Filming is near Arawa (in Kieta village) from May - July.

I loved the book - in fact have just re-read it - and tried to tell the author this at a meet and greet author session organised by Borders before it closed down. But poor Lloyd Jones was unwell from the long New Zealand flight and failed to show. But here's a warning: it's not for sensitive souls - the Bougainville blockade of the 1990s and the cruelty meted out be the government's forces (redskins in the book) and the rebels was appalling. At least a generation of children lost their chance of education, many people died unnecessarily, not just from conflict but malaria.

Here's a short video of a young girl canoeing in a lookalike PNG village to the one Lloyd Jones imagined. I borrowed this from a blog called My Amazing Paradise. Here's the video.

Thoughts on time

2011-04-28T10:14:00.001Z

When I lived in the South Pacific (and Oz) I loved the way I was half a day in front of my homeland - and friends in the UK. Years later I loved seeing Christmas Island in Micronesia meeting the Millennium so many hours before our new year's eve parties kicked off! This post is by Nicola Baird (pix, top of my friend Hannah with Lola and Nell on the meridian line at Greenwich, and below, irresistible to bestride a 0 degrees longitude line.. one foot in the west, one in the east.)

There are fantastic books about time. Pip Pip (a sideways look at time) by Jay Griffiths, is a favourite.

In hospital over the Easter weekend a nurse administering asthma medicine to my 10 year old at around 3am got me thinking about it again. Time goes so fast, sometimes. That night Nell was being made better but the two hour gaps between each dose of medicine seemed to go rather faster than the time it took Nell to breathe in the 10 puffs or reliever... And look, already quarter of the year has passed, the tax year is over and summer's upon us. Blink and time rushes along.

Je ne regret rien
Obviously no point wishing to turn back the clock, but it was fun to finally find t-i-m-e to visit the Greenwich Meridian line and muse about humans' attempts to make time less painful by measuring it into 24 hour bite-sized chunks. Go see what I mean (and use the side gate if you want to avoid a rather hefty ticket price).

Indian tastes change

2011-02-21T17:21:00.000Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel. With this blog find out how to travel the world in a very low carbon way. This post is by Nicola

Dear friends arrive from Wales for a cuppa and then some spaghetti pomodore - and being generous they bring along a treat. It's a box of delicious Indian sweets from Drummond Street behind Euston where you go to get the tastiest, and best value Indian buffet in London. Conversations later we're talking about the iniquity and misery of boarding schools. The children know them from Harry Potter (or even friends) and aren't taking the sides that George, Pete and I are. Turns out George's dad was sent to England from India when he was just three and then neglected in schools here. Pete's dad didn't board but he certainly got bullied. Mine boarded and remembered secondary school as a bullyfest, with him as the whipping boy. It probably didn't help that he was 4ft 6in aged 14 - though subsequently grew to 6ft!

Our dads were at school when England still had an empire. I find this quite astonishing, and of course the links to India are still there. Our friend Anthony, just turned 70, was born and grew up in India where his father worked. George's grandfather was military in India. Taking it further back one of my famous relatives (possibly famous for bad temper rather than actually famous) was Sir David Baird - on of the winning generals at Seringapatam (sp?) in 1799. If you don't know the battle, you might know the pic of the Fall of Tippoo Sultan, see here.

"Still it's all different now," muttered someone at the table. Did they then say modernity started with George Orwell and the Road to Wigan Pier? I can't remember, might have dreamt it, but checking up on these facts suddenly saw that George Orwell was born in India too. When it comes to my generation, or my kids' generation for that matter, the people I know who were born in India are no longer repressed Englishmen/women sticking to Victorian values, way past their sell-by date. They are sassy, bright young men and women who are making up the rules for the new media age. We do have something in common, all of us still like those luminous coloured, teeth-rotting, exotically enormous Indian sweets...

Egypt

2011-02-05T11:47:00.000Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel, in as low-carbon a way as they can. This post is from Nicola

Here in London - maybe the UK - the Egyptian drama unfolding in Cairo and Alexandria is an ever changing story, but for us so much safer. We just get to see the photos, watch the TV, and in the Evening Standard read the tales of all the British families who are taking flight back here. I'm not entirely sure why the coverage is so good... I'm sure there are many oil-driven, scared of the Muslim Brotherhood reasons, although military history lessons must factor too. My dad's National Service, back in the 1950s, was in Egypt - though he is sadly long dead which means I can't quiz him much about the whys of that post.

Anyway the result ensures Egypt takes a higher news position than say, Colombia.

It's the Facebook messages from Egyptian friends that worry me so much. Yes the internet is a big place but Murabak seems very capable of paying people to track down those who aren't on his side. Never has watching history unfold been so nerve-wracking.

One thing that has puzzled me is the allure of Egypt for tourists before all this. Until these pictures of the million on a march started flooding BBC, the Guardian, Skynews etc most of the noise about Egypt was what a lovely spot it is to visit - swimming in the Nile, touring the pyramids, taking a dive tour, avoiding that rogue maneater shark at the main tourist hotspot, Sharm El-Sheik on the Red Sea. Quizzing them now it seems none of these visitors had the slightest idea about Egypt's politics, let alone that the president has kept his seat tightly for 30 years. It makes me feel that before you are allowed into a country you should be given a mini quiz about it's most basic history and politics. Just like a British nationality test, only a lot easier!

EXCLUSIVE Read Nicola Baird's first ebook FREE (rrp US$2.99 or £2.21) until 5 March 2011. Download Coconut Wireless: a novel of love, life and South Pacific gossip on your phone, kindle or PC using www.smashwords.com coupon code QX22S. If you do this please also review at http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B001K7R1UY or send other feedback. Enjoy!

When hens need B&B

2011-01-27T22:11:00.000Z

Pete, Nicola and their children Lola and Nell love to travel, but like to find ways to do this oh-so-low carbon... This off message post is from Nicola

I have this idea to make a longer trip than normal during 2011. It's a little hypocritical to attempt this (or maybe even mention it on my Around Britain No Plane blog), and I don't take much comfort from the fact that I've not flown for 10 years, but may do this year. However researching ways to keep my pets in the style they have become accustomed to while we may be away (eg, mud and the occasional worm pill) offers earth-shattering reasons to stay home. If climate change wasn't good enough, say.

The hens will cost £5 a night to go to their Club 18-30 stop-off at a nearby city farm. And someone has told me a kennel for the dog would be £30 a night. I can hardly breathe thinking about these expenses at the end of a three-month trip.

It's extraordinary how much influence economics has on decision-making. If only renewables were cheaper (or seeemed the sort of no-brainer choice that a smart phone has become). If only trains were the obvious way to get from A-B (or buses or maybe even feet). If only the richer world stayed put and the poorer world had more.

No surprise that "If only" and "too late" are famously still the two saddest phrases in the English language.

2010 roundup

2011-01-03T15:40:00.000Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel - and try to do so in low carbon ways. This post is a summary of 2010 entries.

It may be better to travel than arrive but now we're in the fourth year of this blog (it was started in 2007) it is also a lot harder to find "new" countries for us to visit simply by using our imaginations in the UK.

Worth visiting
My top trips this year were to Ethiopia - via a coffee ceremony and music in my local London park, see here. I also loved the stop-off in Chile via Darwin-themed tour in another nearby park, see here.

We also visited the super dog-friendly Cheddar Gorge, a Somerset location that rivals just about any Alpian chasm, or Romantic- (as in 19th century German art) themed picture.

Just by making simple leaps of imagination - sometimes by choices of food, or doing the research, reading noticeboards or listening to the hubbub around us - our family stayed home but felt like we were tasting someone else's culture. I reckon we managed virtual visits to more than 35 countries including Nigeria, Bangladesh, Somalia, Croatia and Albania. I love the way this can happen. It just shows that 10 years of not using a plane has enabled our family to get to know the UK far better, and the UK's links with the whole world. Definitely one travel habit worth hanging on to.

Apologies for slackness
Just for the record, one reason my entries are down on this blog during 2010 is that I started up a new one, named after my book, Homemade Kids: thrifty, creative and eco-friendly ways to raise children which saw me post more than 60 times. Travel and kids, what could be better?

E-reading treat

2010-11-22T11:57:00.011Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel, but want to find ways that are as low carbon as possible. This post is from Nicola Baird

Nearly 21 years ago I was living in the South Pacific. The pic on the left is me posing in a small Solomon Islands village, on the island of Makira, dressed up in frangipani lei (flower garland), tapa cloth (made from bark) and painted in tumeric. I was on a journalism trip for Solomon Islands Development Trust rather ruined by the villagers - unusually in this part of the Solomons all Polynesians - asking me not to reveal the detail of their astonishing tumeric harvest. And of course I didn't.

But during my two years as a VSO journalist trainer in the region I collected so many stories, ideas, experiences that had no choice but to merge, fizz and revamp them as a story which anyone could enjoy - and especially people who love to travel or who live in Solomon Islands.

Read Coconut Wireless
Hopefully this will tempt you to look at the new e-novel I've just published. It's called Coconut Wireless and is about life, love and gossip in the country's capital, Honiara. Enjoy downloading some free sample chapters by clicking here or buy for a couple of US dollars from Smashwords as a pdf here.

Half of any money generated by this book will be donated to projects supporting women and children in Solomon Islands.

Chernobyl makes me mad

2010-11-05T10:58:00.010Z

Pete, Nicola and their kids, Lola and Nell, like to travel the world but are trying to do with as low a carbon footprint as possible. This Mrs Angry post is written by Nicola

It's rare that I use TV to travel but I made an exception when a friend (who'd done some of the filming on What the Green Movement Got Wrong) urged me to watch BBC 4, thursday november 4, which is available at catch up for a while here. The programme enraged me, mostly because it dismissed the idea that here in the West we all have to learn to live with a bit less. As the population keeps on growing - and poorer people expect to share more of the good things of this world, such as electricity - this means we need more and cleaner fuels. In the film, using a couple of turncoat Greens it was suggested this could only be nuclear. (btw No, it does not). But Mark Lynas thinks it is, both talking from his office and on a surprising trip to still-uninhabitable-since-April 1986- Chernobyl.

Two summers ago in Yorkshire I met two Belarus girls, young teenagers - so 2nd generation "Chernobyl" children (around 60 per cent of the radiation spread into neighbouring Belarus with long-term devastating effects). The girls were on a month's holiday organised by the Chernobyl Children's charity, see more here.

You'll die anyway
Last night on TV a scientist told us that not many people died after the 4th reactor went into meltdown, but lots died from alcoholism and stress from fear of radiation! How I laughed (in an ironic way). The host mum of these two girls told me how the Belarus children's exposure to Chernobyl gifts them with a lifetime of chronic ill-health. They are unusually tired, many end up with thyroid problems. It may not be a stark death under a blood-stained blanket, but it's a dreadful legacy. And one we could blight many other people with if we turn again to nuclear as a magic bullet for tackling climate change.

Obviously lots of watchers (it's the first thing most Greens have watched since the news of the failure of Copenhagen's climate talks last December...) were unhappy with the show. I like this calm comment from Craig Bennett at Friends of the Earth. That NGO has also published a briefing about what they thought was wrong with the film, see here.

Go girls
I have an extra complaint about the way "What The Greens Got Wrong" is that it reflects its own premise - Greens are too conservative - by almost exclusively relying on white men in suits. Where are the women who'd talk a lot more sense?

I know so many mothers who are doing their absolute best to help their children become the adults who will be coping with climate change. They are teaching their kids to think and learn real life skills, plus rewarding tolerance and co-operativeness, etc. But they seem to be a missing species in decision making. Probably because they're back home putting the kids to bed. If you're interested in more thoughts on this see this piece in the Guardian (from 2009).

It's a pyrrhic Victory

2010-10-25T12:13:00.004Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel the world but are finding ways to do so without racking up their carbon footprint. This post is by Nicola

Just taken Lola and friends down to Portsmouth to catch a ferry to France. To avoid hanging around the ferry terminal we also visited Portsmouth's historic dockyard. An expensive trip (£55 for a family ticket) but full of amazing history lessons. For instance we were forced to whizz around the Mary Rose Museum which shows how Tudor seamen wore jerkins, measured the sea bed and plotted their routes, etc, just so we could have the guided tour of the navy's first ever commissioned battleship the HMS Victory at 3.35pm.

Because we made this trip the day after Trafalgar Day (October 21) there were wreaths marking the spot Nelson died while fighting the French. (Although the nearby Lady Hamilton pub seemed to have ignored this particular landmark moment). It was also a few days after the big spending review by Cons/Lib-Dem so felt strange seeing the about-to-be scrapped HMS Ark Royal tied up in a nearby dock.

Ethiopian bread and coffee

2010-09-13T08:46:00.005Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel with the lightest of carbon footprints. Here's one way to get to Ethiopia. Post by Nicola (for more of her writing also see http://www.homemadekids.co.uk/)

Bread and coffee are my staples. But if I tweak the ingredients so it's a flat bread - injera - and add a bit of ceremony to the coffee, maybe with frankincense then it's easy to be transported to Ethiopia. It certainly helps if you add in the wonderful music of singer Honey Solomon at the 24th Gillespie Festival (held the 2nd Sunday every September) Ethiopia came to a pocket park in the shadow of Arsenal's football stadium.

The Gillespie Festival is a large fete with a cultural spin that reflects the area's unique mix of peoples. While the stalls are piled with secondhand or homemade creations. There's usually also a fast trade in homecooked or home grown produce (I bought rhubarb and plum tomatoes from the Quill Street Allotments and damson jam from Olden Community Garden's stall). Defying categories - a pedal bike that powered up a fruit smoothie maker being run by Finsbury Park Transition Town.

But the real pleasure of attending Gillespie Festival is its amazing multicultural mix of music and people.

Get up and dance
Honey Solomon specialises in Ethiopian songs - and during her set a tower block version of the flatbread injera was passed around for sharing to everyone in the audience. This bread was delicious tasting (and is ideally eaten with the right hand).

To one side of the stage a coffee ceremony had been set up, beans roasted, frankincense flavoured the air. The hypnotic effect of Honey's music, food and scented smoke soon had the crowd dancing.

Today I was back in this little park walking my dog and there's barely a trace of the Magic Carpet trip the people of London, N4 and N5 took yesterday to Ethiopia. But it's not one I'm likely to forget if I can turn my coffee love into something with more ceremony and less addictive-behaviour.

Street grazing

2010-09-11T20:39:00.013Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel. Here are ways they keep their carbon footprint light simply by exploring as they stay put. Post by Nicola

Years ago in Zanzibar Town when I was new to travel, I went to the famous Stone Town night market where loads of stalls serve supper - or bitings - with the most basic of equipment. Fingers for forks, stars for parafin lights.

It was magic picking the best things to eat in the blue-black, super-scented dark. Perhaps because night markets lead to sensory overload - try the salt tang of the Indian ocean, bright Southern Hemisphere stars, crash of surf on reef, charcoal fires, the spit of grilling chilli fish, sweet taint of rubbish piles, ladies' perfume, sweat, mosquito buzz - the food at the original spice island tasted delicious. Just remembering has got my mouth watering.

Fast forward 23 years and I've just raided my own neighbourhood for food. Near my home the street trees that produce fruit (eg, rowans, crab apple, plums, elderberry, pear, sweet chestnut) are dropping their load. Inspired by Finsbury Park Transition Town's fair/fete (where I bought a jar of N4 crab apple and greengage jelly for £2), I decided to harvest what was left of the non-stomped on crab apples in my nearest street.

My first attempt - a half pound of mushy mini apples mixed with my homegrown redcurrants - produced two delicious jars of jelly. Later in the day I zipped around on my bike to pick up the very last of the edible fruit starting to rot along the pavement. Whilst doing this - bike parked by the side of the road, fruit popped into my upturned bike helmet - I had the strangest sensation of what it's like to know food poverty. Two guys in shalwar kameez walked past, oblivious to the rubbish picker (me). One woman plugged into an i-pod attempted to turn off my flashing back bike light (to save money she said!), a dog walker crossed the road. And then a friendly man, Rex, came out with his young son to hand me an orange plastic bag.

"It's alright, " I said quickly, "I know there's a shop just round the corner, but I want to pick these apples to make some really local jam." Rex did his best to humour the mad woman outside his house, promising me empty jam jars next time he saw me...

Really it's me who should feel smug. I now have five lovely pots of old-fashioned crab apple jam sourced spitting distance from my home.

But I'm still disturbed by that out of 21st century experience. It feels very rural - even in a city - to sort through and reject fallen fruit. Secondly I had a taste of what it is like to be absolutely invisible, how I guess a refugee might feel. People tried as hard as they could to ignore a street gleaner. Most looked faintly disgusted as if my parsimony might force them to drop to their knees and fill their own Tesco bags with unpackaged food.

The obvious third thought was how lucky we all are here in the UK with this profligate glut of food that no one fights over. If this was the flooded parts of Pakistan how different our approach to food would be.

The shocking media quiet about how our climate is changing - as highlighted by Bill McKibben who set up http://www.350.org/ - makes chilling reading about the speed our planet is warming, see here. For example Russia, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, Sudan and Pakistan have all set their all-time temperature records during 2010. Big changes like this change how things grow.

I won't be setting up a food stall outside my house yet. Which is lucky as goodness knows what health and safety would make of run over, chewing gum flecked, dog poo avoided fruit jams? But I still think these experiences are going to inspire me to make more produce I can store. What I hope this means is that if climate changes mean I actually have to do foraging for real I won't be an absolute beginner...

World food

2010-09-08T09:33:00.007Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel with as small a carbon footprint as they can. Here's how they will enjoy world food this September. Post by Nicola

It's nearly the end of Ramadan and some of the mums (many with connections to Bangladesh, Somalia, Tukey and Nigeria) at my younger daughter's school are clearly looking forward to their long month of fasting to finish. There should be a big party in many homes for Eid Marabuk sometime this week - maybe wednesday, or thursday - definitely Friday (it all depends on the moon, and no doubt other details). I just wish someone would ask me to one of these celebratory parties as this will be a brilliant celebration feast.

Harvest festivals - and this year Ramadan - show that religions are clever at using our love of food as a spritual in, and an opportunity to thank too. But the UK has genius (often secular) food traditions - not just our fried breakfasts - and despite all our supermarket addictions it is hard not to miss the best autumn seasonal treats. Right now I'm loving blackberries, Conference pears, damsons, greengages, plums, cobnuts and the few grapes my one-year old vine kindly produced.

Obviously you can enjoy these treats on your own, but another way is to go to a food festival like Brighton and Hove which promises a chance to "taste the world" between 1 September and 7 October, neatly including the nationally celebrated local food week with a celebratory picnic at Preston Park on 25 September, from 11am-4pm. There's even a Regency Banquet - with dresses as sumptuous as the dishes, perhaps with even a few Indian courses given the look-East outlook of the time.

A quick look at the fascinating website of Common Ground (art merged with local distincitiveness) shows that 3 September was the opening of the oyster fisheries in Colchester, a tradition dating back to the 13th century. As you probably know tradition decrees that oysters can only be fished/eaten when there is an R in the month. This year Colchester's Mayor - a confirmed landlubber - caused outcry by doing the gin and gingerbread ceremony (yes, I know it sounds strange...) on dry land rather than a boat. She seems to have done it well though and the oysters can now be served up again.

More worryingly all blackberries are meant to be picked by St Michaelmas Day which this year is 29 September - after that the Devil has either spat on them or done something unspeakably horrible - so you have been warned. I have an Italian friend who says blackberries are considered unlucky throughout Italy making it a brilliant place to pick these delectable fruits. (And if you've got kids they are also a brilliant non-toxic face paint!).

But cutting back on your jam and blackberry and apple crumble supplies (assuming you've stocked up the freezer) does give you time to enjoy apple day and all the picking, preserving and juicing that goes with it on 21 October.

I am sure every nation has moments of food glut - the season of mangoes in the Caribbean, sardines in the Mediterranean, rich cream from Swiss cows, tumeric wherever spices grow - which you learn to love as a child and anticipate as an adult. Enjoy your autumn tastebuds and if you can't make it to a festival like Brighton's (or somewhere more local to you) you can always create your own special nature's larder celebration at home. Cheers!

Best of Bristol

2010-08-26T15:10:00.014Z

One family's tips on how to travel the world without leaving home, much. This post is a local's guide to the best of green Bristol (thank you Helen!). Cobbled together by Nicola Baird, also see http://homemadekids.co.uk/

Bristol has 2 million people, two vast open spaces, loads of green lungs (parks, play space, Sustrans routes) and it's not far from Wales, Devon or the Cotswolds. What's not to like? Well my friends keep moving there... when I'd prefer them to live nearer me. But the result is great insider knowledge: so here's insights from a local on how to enjoy yourself on a walking tour of the city, even during rain. Most are free, and certainly interesting.

And if you go on a Wednesday you can choose a picnic at Bristol Farmers' Market (approx 9.30am-2pm) or just enjoy the markets at St Nicholas in the old town running from monday to Saturday the whole day, see details here.

Around the Harbourside/Waterfront area there's plenty to see. also look out for the Arnolfini gallery (next to the YHA) see here.

Behind the Watershed/Bordeaux Quay is Millennium Square - good place to hang if sunny - and home to @Bristol (science museum).

Slightly up the hill from there is the Cathedral, Council House and College Green (which I've taken to my family once for a picnic to Stop Bristol Airport expansion...).

Going over the river you can head out to SS Great Britain (ferry boats also an option), see here.

If you go a bit further along the river, you get a view of the Clifton Suspension Bridge and you can visit an eco house at the Create Centre. It's a big red warehouse building on the left hand bank where the river splits (this is about 20 mins walk from Anolfini). May be possible to take the tourist bus from Create up to the Downs for views of the bridge, gorge etc.

Or stay down near the centre, Red Lodge is interesting and free, see here.

No Banksy
Further up the hill (just carry on up Park Street from Council House/ Park Row from Red Lodge) to Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery - also free. No Banksy on show now but plenty of quirky items, see here.

Or over in Stokes Croft - Bristol's (alternative) cultural quarter, the People's Republic of Stokes Croft (PRSC) has just opened the Stokes Croft Museum. Admission costs £1 and it's tiny - but entertaining. Open Wednesday 11am-3pm. See here.

Given the stress on all things green and alternative culture, it could be said that visiting Bristol could get you thinking you are in a time warped, left bank France - the city has got Montpellier after all. But it's also got a big Caribbean community and in Stokes Croft you can find nearly 50 artists working at Jamaica Street artists, here.

Trendy offices
Opposite the museum is Hamilton House, now home to Coexist and interesting shared office space (there's a rumour about a soon-to-be-built green roof and a wood fired hot tub), and The Canteen - which is the ground floor bar/cafe with nice coffee and a big terrace for outdoor lounging. This is also where Bristol Green Doors office is based (about 20 mins from Red Lodge, you just follow Park Row past the hopsital and then go left along to Jamaica Street and you come out on Stokes Croft just below the museum).

Solar swim
There's also the solar-heated Bristol Lido - edge of Clifton, up the hill fromt he musuem, near the BBC. But it's expensive to swim (£15 afternoons only). There is a cafe bar too which is open to the public.

Staycation gorge

2010-08-25T14:09:00.009Z

One family's tips on how to travel the world without leaving home, much. This post takes us to the Grand Canyon, via Somerset's immense Cheddar Gorge, and is by Nicola Baird (also see www.homemadekids.co.uk)

We're in Wiltshire house sitting for a while (this is a brilliant way to holiday cheaply). In fact just swapping houses for a night gives you a sense of living quite differently. Pat Barker, winner of the 1995 Booker prize, calls time spent in another person's house (so long as that family isn't there) "a holiday from adult life". In the more recent Double Vision (Faber, 2003) a character enjoys: "The mere fact that the house was not his gave him an Alice-in-Wonderland feeling. He seemed to be wandering around between the chair legs while items of furniture loomed above him, mysterious with withheld significance. They made him feel insubstantial, these rooms with their carefully selected antiques, the fruits of years of settled, successful endeavour, and yet the feeling was not entirely unpleasant. Like Goldilocks in the house of the three bears, he had a sense of danger and transgression."

I have to admit that my lack of action with the vaccuum cleaner - despite today's full timetable of dawn to dusk rain - makes me feel edgy too... What will my friend Julie say when she surveys her house after her holiday?

But yesterday there was sun and a chance to enjoy a day trip to the Cheddar Gorge which splits the Mendip Hills, Somerset. I'd never been, couldn't even imagine what it looked like, but the Gorge with it's dramatic views enhanced by old grass, sheer rock faces, wild scrub, colonising ash trees, real climbers,magical stories and "British Primitives" (aka goats) and soay sheep browsing is as good as a wonder of the world. Comparisons include the Grand Canyon and any drama cliff coastline - Italy's Amalfi coast say (except there's been no sea here for millions of years) or maybe some spot in Albania or Croatia.

Way back the gorge was home to a spectacular river, and inside the carbonifeous limestone are some amazing caves. We toured the Gough Cave with its frozen waterfall, rough scratched mammoth cave painting and at the very back the huge dome space nicknamed St Paul's. Cooper Cave has lured in TV's Time Team, been home to a shepherd and his family in Victorian times, and no doubt was the ultimate in designer living for people in the Mesolithic Age.

Cheddar Man is a must see. It's Britain's oldest complete skeleton (approx 9,000 years old) and was used in 1997 to make DNA tests that show there's still a descendant of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer living in Cheddar today - a history teacher called Adrian Targett. Amazing thought, and one which the small Museum of Prehistory spends time encouraging visitors to think about how much this disproves the notion of God. In case that's not enough brain meat there are also three skulls on display providing absolute evidence of cannibalism in the Cheddar cave network.

The downside is Cheddar Gorge, once cheese, mills and shepherds, is a real tourist trap. Every village building sells tacka-tack rubbish, postcards and snacks probably no different from Wookey Hole nearby (except at Cheddar Gorge dogs are truly welcome, thank you!). It's also expensive - a family ticket is around £40 plus a car parking fee. You can of course just take a walk to Jacob's Ladder which is up the Gorge (on the National Trust land) for free, but paying lets you see the caves, and that's what we wanted to do in our borrowed Fiat car.

I was impressed by the amount of people employed by the Cheddar Caves & Gorge company (no doubt for low wages, but the staff were invariably friendly, mixed ages and seemed to take some pride in working in such a honeypot). I also really enjoyed the onus on nature conservation at the site - we saw a buzzard and heard tales of 10 different types of bat, breeding peregrine falcons and a family of nationally endangered water voles near the mill pond.

It is also the true home of the Cheddar pink (a flower) and of course Britain's best-loved, and best-known cheese. We bought a slice of some cave-matured "authentic" cheddar from the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company (£22.95 per kg). Irresistible after seeing it stored under lock and key during our tour of Gough's cave.

You don't just have to look and learn, or guzzle on the various cafe menu options as there's a place you can learn to cave, climb and abseil - and perhaps do something a bit dirtier and more challenging than just learn - at the Rock Sport centre.

After a summer spent feeling rural, I felt Cheddar Caves & Gorge had hit a potent mix that suits every sort of tourist, and perhaps even locals too. The next plan is to fit a ski lift from top to the bottom of the gorge, an ambitious £2 million idea, that if carried out would certainly gives British staycationers a taste of the Alps. I can't wait to go back...

Smell the petrol

2010-08-17T15:06:00.004Z

One family's thoughts on how to travel the world without leaving home, much. This post is by Nicola

I'm ashamed of myself really: in just two weeks of holidaying I've managed to drive nearly 1,000 miles. Most of this was local trips in Yorkshire, although the big mileage came from an up and down of the A1, plus a return journey from Carlisle to Wast Water. Although the family also clocked up the miles on the gear-changing, brake-waring crossing of Hard Knott pass between Boot and Ambleside.

Because we need to drive so little, I usually stick to a membership car club scheme, Streetcar. But this time it was more convenient to rent the cars from Sixt.

As a result of this I've been into a couple of motorway service stations - better for clean loos than most train stations still - and nowadays also serving a good cup of coffee, but otherwise soleless places. Assuming it is not an April Fool (and we are months out as I am writing this in August) there are plans in the Cotswolds to build an apparently "green service station" with a grass roof, electric vehicle refuelling points, and a veg patch. The full story is in the Guardian here.

What struck me about the service stations on the A1 was they were an identical layout, and nothing to tell me where in the world I was. Apparently the kit-design is the way to make cost and building savings - you create a model that can be dumped anywhere you acquire the land, a bit like Lego. So if this so-called green service station was to go ahead it would make sense to build it just like all the others. Or to make a model that would be acceptable to all the other service station developers.

I wonder if there is still time to ask the question: do we need yet another service station? I'm guessing this is a no, even if you could pour unleaded petrol into your car while munching on a locally-sourced goat's cheese sarnie.

Oops that fell on my head

2010-08-08T13:46:00.005Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell like to travel around Britain in a carbon lite way. On a recent round trip to Yorkshire we found a good way to break the monotony of motorway driving near Mrs Thatcher's old constituency of Grantham. This post is by Nicola, see more about energy efficiency in her most recent book, Homemade Kids: thrifty, creative and eco-friendly ways to raise children at http://www.homemadekids.co.uk/.

When bird poo lands on your head - observers laugh. The recipient feels slightly sick, then remembers that this sort of accident foretells a good luck day. When the young Isaac Newton sat under a tree and an apple fell on his head (or on to the book he couldn't take his nose out of being a bookish sort stuck at home to escape the plague in Cambridge) he began to work up a theory about the first, second and third laws of motion. Everyone knows these laws now. And who doesn't get gravity?

Fast lane
Driving up the A1 from London to Scotch Corner - this week I needed to drive 772 miles which seems a staggering distance (although it was only just over one tank of diesel, ie approx £65 of the rented VW Golf) - so I was desperate for a fun stop-off rather than a "services". The answer is at Grantham, the fascinating National Trust-run Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire which was the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton. At the science centre Lola, 12, and I used a prism to see how red, green and yellow light beams become "white", we learnt that Isacc's dad (who died before he was born) couldn't write and how the boy Isaac built models of windmills and then powered them by mice! We also picniced near the famous apple tree (see pic above).

"His discoveries included revolutionary ideas in mathematics, optics, gravity and formulating the laws of motion. His theories and scientific methods underpin the world of science today."
NT guide book

Six fingers seen by people in a Sixt rent-a-car
Fascinatingly the house is also filled with anti-witch grafitti scratched into the plaster. It is at the front door, in the hallway, in the bedroom even. How strange that the man who did so much to make science accessible grew up in such a super-superstitious household. Or maybe that explains it? Lola and I drove off powered up by ideas that kept a conversation about how to make our own pet mice produce some renewable energy last many, many miles past York. And the fallen apple we took as a conversation piece is now tucked into my compost pile.

Spanish gourmet

2010-07-22T09:53:00.006Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell spent three months in 2007 travelling around the UK exploring the world. They are back now but still finding there's plenty to see, and lots of low carbon ways to see the world

Spain: there's so much I'd like to know about this country. And thanks to Nell's school organising a week of Spanish activities she at least is learning something. So far there's been flamenco dancing, paella making and a lot of foodie exploration. The eight and nine year old children were even given a jar of Mediterranean veg (aspargus!) to take home from a generous Spanish online gourmet shop, at http://www.ibericalondon.co.uk/.

The students were also asked to abandon their uniform so they could wear red and yellow clothes - which is a lovely way of remembering Spain's complicated flag. Although I'm sure that Spain's World Cup win (2010) means that every football fan knows exactly what it looks like anyway.

Extra tasty teaching
After classes on Wednesday the teachers laid out a table groaning with freshly-made fiesta food so every child could try something - even if it was just a grape or a bit of crusty bread.

Sadly Nell, 9, wasn't so keen on slithers of octopus, the dark, salty anchovies or the tasty gazpatcho. She's not allowed to eat nuts so that ruled out the almond-stuffed olives (I waffled these up) but she loved the tortilla. Phew.

Darwin trails

2010-07-06T17:51:00.013Z

Pete, Nicola, and daughters Lola and Nell love to travel without wrecking the planet. This blog looks at ways they travel the world without leaving Britain. This post is by Nicola.

4 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon sees Lola and I, just minutes from home, sharing Charles Darwin's favourite teatime snack - cucumber sandwiches with the crusts off, strawberries, ginger and treacle cake and homemade lemonade. We're in Caledonian Park, Islington along with children from nearby schools, the Mayor and an impressive number of Charles Darwin's relatives to enjoy the opening of the new Darwin Trail.

In Islington the Darwin Trail is a 10-slated loop around Caledonia Park with quotes by the great writer of The Origin of Species that link the borough, the plants in the park and naturalist knowledge. The trail cleverly bridges science and literature with some meditative finger posts set by park highlights: a hedge, a bird feeder, a holly tree, an oak and a walnut tree.

Snakes and tortoises
The oldest and boldest of the relatives, Randal Keynes, a great, great grandson (author of Annie's Box) told the crowd that he'd opened Darwin Trails throughout the world. Each has a distinctive character - but in Brazil the first users had been obliged to detour past a boa constrictor, and in the Galapagos Islands there were tortoises to avoid. In Islington we spotted a cute dog, a fluffy dog and two scary dogs as well as the famous pigeons who are descendants of Rock Doves.

Look closely and even in this uber-urban setting all is "beautiful adapatation". It's a lesson for life, by the great mapper of life. A wonderful adventure for our armchair travel diary.

Sunflowers everywhere

2010-06-07T09:03:00.015Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola, now 11, and Nell, now 9, spent three months travelling around the UK in 2007. They're back home now but still exploring ways to see Britain while exploring the world. This post is about a trip to Arles, Provence (France) via books, and is by Nicola.

Our homegrown sunflower seeds are starting to break free and head upwards which has helped extra engage the girls with Van Gogh's famous flower portraits. Back in March we'd been to the Oxford Literary Festival to hear three children's writers talking about their work - one of the most impressive (and certainly the man who made everyone laugh the most) was Frank Cottrell Boyce.

Cosmic sunflowers
Three months on we've now read three of Frank Cottrell Boyce's books aloud at bedtime (also on the tube, trains, in the garden etc) and he is a genius. See here for video clips with Frank talking about books and paintings to a class at the National Gallery. A truly "cosmic" writer as one of his character's might put it. But in Framed a key part of the plot is when the kids steal a really famous picture - Van Gogh's sun flowers.

Time travel
Roll on a couple of months and Dr Who plus new assistant Amy Pond turn up in Arles a few months before Van Gogh's suicide to assist him removing an invisible, fierce, blind alien.

Seeing Vincent Van Gogh with their favourite TV characters - plus recognising his pictures from the Royal Academy exhibition (we went twice!) - and generally being clued up really helped the kids talk about depression, highs and lows of creativity, what is art etc, and they know what one small bit of Provence used to look like. (In the Dr Who TV series these scenes weren't shot in Cardiff, but on location in Croatia which clearly still has narrow cobbled streets and is incredibly picturesque).

Treasure hunt
If you're looking for ways to inspire kids about art then Framed is a brilliant introduction to the National Gallery collection. Obviously, you could just go to the National Gallery but I find it's worth picking out a few pictures rather than going room by room. Either provide a treasure hunt of target pictures or get lost and in each gallery pick out the pic you most want hung in your bedroom. Another in-depth read about Van Gogh's final weeks - much of it spent drinking absinthe, sharing ideas and getting cross with Gauguin (who will be the subject of a huge exhibition at the Tate in September) - is to read The Yellow House by Martin Gayford (Penguin).

I think this is the first trip to France my family's made that mostly involved books and pictures. Strange that it was inspired by sunflower growing and a Dutchman.

If you like this post do bookmark it, or also have a look at Nicola's other blog, homemade kids: thrifty, creative and eco-friendly ways to raise children here.

Half term walks

2010-05-31T20:32:00.004Z

In 2007 Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell spent three months travelling around Britian in a low carbon way. We're back home now, but we still like days out - and sometimes share ideas here on this blog.

It's half term and I've already taken my kids to see Granny and their cousins over in Hertfordshire. Parking the Car Club car bumped into Dr Dave who has three small children who he likes taking on trips. Like me he's a fan of Adventure Walks for Families by Becky Jones and Clare Lewis (Frances Lincoln, £8.99), but I just read it in bed because it very much assumes users have their own vehicle.

Are we nearly there yet?
Dr Dave spent a good 10 minutes praising the trips that led him and his family to see the amazing red kites (birds on Christmas Common, Oxon); following in the footsteps of Alice in Wonderland (Port Meadow, Oxford) and BFG and other pursuits in ~Roald Dahl country (Little Missenden, Bucks).

So good we made up our own trip
Inspired by Adventure Walks Dr Dave then spent the last wet Saturday at Cadbury World, Birmingham. Not only do you get plenty of tastes of chocolates (chocolate buttons, curly wurly, chocolate bar, etc, etc) you also see a factory at work, better visualise Charlie's temptations (from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and learn about the founding of Bournville and how to be a truly good Quaker. Mind you he warns that you may regret the colour purple during the trip, and fail to learn anything about new owners Kraft.

I found Dr Dave's retellings of his family outings a joy to hear. Kids need love, of course, but stretching their mind with simple themed walks with plenty of opportunities to look out for Oompa Lumpas, or big red raptors, or a bottle labelled 'drink me' - or perhaps more practically a pub selling packets of crisps - is a lovely way to spend half term. You all get to know the UK better, and stop clogging up the sky with multi mini-break flights.

Gritty world tales

2010-05-14T13:17:00.005Z

In 2007 Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell spent three months travelling around Britain in a low-carbon way. We're home now but still like to travel, and blog about it. This post is by Nicola.

Part of the year I teach feature writing to university students. this is a real pleasure and has enabled me to meet many very lovely, bright and ambitious young men and women on the cusp of their careers. It's a kind of virtual travelling as I get to meet people from places I doubt I'll go to. For all of us it's about realising everyone has different norms.

When students do a feature assignment for class I always say "write what you know". This year I'm regretting it. Many of my students have interviewed friends/ family/ acquaintances who have harrowing stories about family life around the world.

Life changing journeys
From Nepal there's the misery caused by students lured to the UK enrolled into fake colleges, or Visa Factories, who then end up in debt and with no chance of getting the promised degree.

From Nigeria there's examples of the causual violence inflicted on girlfriends and wives because it's OK for men to be seen to be the boss.

From Bangladesh there is the problem of arranged marriages leaving young women, new-to-Britain (often with no friends and no English language skills) trapped with violent husbands and consentingly mean mother-in-laws. If these women manage to leave these husbands and divorce they are shamed and shunned by their own family, destroying their lives if they even can get a ticket home. They are also stuck if this happens within the first two years of their marriage/visa as the UK rules mean they cannot get any support from the state. Any unfortunate woman with a baby would be in a horrific situation.

There's the Albanian girl who knows her life will be mapped out for her. She may be a student know but you get married before you're 24 or that's it, no man will want you.

Or in India, the semi-Royal-behaving family who was so angry with their daughter's choice of boyfriend that they packed her off to the UK and then faked her death in a car-crash. This is a particularly harsh story as the girl was treated like a princess right until the moment her family realised she had been a friend of a Moslem man. Clearly she didn't realise she was living in a gilded cage and had misjudged the love her family had for her. Daddy loved her but only if she did what they wanted, which isn't love at all is it?

And there's another story from India recalling the clashes in 2002 which left 1000s dead in a city on the "other side of the bridge". For the Moslem teenager on that side the experience was scarring enough to bring on post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet his contemporary, a Hindu girl, remembers the three months of curfew on her "other side of the bridge" as a happy time with far more leisure and indoor activities that she almost misses now the troubles are over.

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
It's a right set of misery pieces, all written so well. And I so hope my students can take these ideas and shake them up and make an effort to change things. At the very least I think we all deserve safe homes, and yet for so many women this is painfully not the case. My students' writing show the world as cruel and unfair - and yet their own generosity, happy spirits and kindnesses demonstrate another path.

Here's a good luck message to anyone baffled by the things going wrong - the lost housing deposits, the fake colleges with dud courses, the family or cherised boyfriend/partner turning against you. I hope things will get better for you, and that you have the skills to share your stories. I've never read about the stuff my students chart in my favourite newspapers, but I cannot tell you how many times I've read about how to reuse a plastic water bottle, what film to watch or summer festival fashion tips - useless, simplistic journalese.

I guess the message of this piece is that when you travel - anywhere, even out of your door - try to see if your friendship can ever help people too proud, or confused to admit to the pain their nearest and dearest are giving them.

The Lost Garden of Miss Willmott

2010-04-23T12:43:00.008Z

This post is by Essex Man Pete.

Collapsed cellars, a ruined conservatory, hidden reservoirs, stone paths, cold frames and boating lakes emerging from the undergrowth. If Warley Place were in Cornwall it would surely be the subject of a Lost Gardens of Heligan-style TV series.

Warley Place was a welcome discovery while visiting my late father’s old farm in Great Warley. As a child I remember scrambling up a huge earth bank in Dark Lane and discovering the Narnia-like ruins of an old house in the woods. It was, in fact, the remains of one of England’s finest gardens created by the formidable Ellen Willmott, one of the top gardeners of her day.

Forty odd years later it’s been renovated by the Essex Wildlife Trust. The entrance is next to the busy Thatchers Arms pub.

Ellen Willmott moved into Warley Place with her parents in 1875 and spent a lifetime developing a sumptuous garden. Numerous plants are named after her (the Eryngium giganteum is still called "Miss Willmott's Ghost) and she once employed more than 100 gardeners. She was a big mover in the Royal Horticultural Society and was awarded the Medal of Honour in 1907.

She died penniless in 1934, perhaps having perhaps spent all her dosh on mail-order seeds, and the grand house was demolished in 1939.

The walk begins along the old main road to Brentwood which medieval pilgrims once used when travelling from Walsingham to Canterbury. Past the old crocus field is South Pond, Great Warley’s watering hole in medieval times. Then it's in to the woods and the ruins of the Willmotts’ old house.

The roofless shell of the grand old conservatory is still standing, an evocative sight in the dappled green light. While around it are drops in to the old basements. You can still see the tiled walls of the kitchen and the overgrown alcoves of the old cellars.

Mosaic stone paths have been unearthed by the Wildlife Trust's dedicated staff and the 17th century walled garden is still relatively intact, housing amon others, a palm tree, a ginko tree, magnolias, comfrey and anemones.

The wooded trail continues past wild garlic and the remains of Willmott’s cold frames, greenhouses, and a half-moon shaped pond and a deep reservoir.

Down the hill, the boating ponds are empty but the brickwork is still there complete with a mooring rail. A huge earth bank, now supported by steel trusses, descends to my dad’s old farm workers’ cottages in Dark Lane. You sense the huge effort Miss Willmott went to in taming and controlling nature — a very Victorian philosophy.

There’s still a carp pond with water and past the seven Spanish chestnuts a viewpoint by a daffodil-strewn meadow. Here you can gaze across the fields of my dad’s old farm, towards the M25 and then in the distance the towers of the City of London. You feel the history of encroachment at Warley Place; of both time and the city of London.

The tour ends with a bridge over a gorge that Willmott created to showcase her Alpine plants. Water used to flow through it and in to the South Pond. The huge rocks in the gorge were lugged all the way from Yorkshire by the company she employed.

Willmott never married and as she grew older she became increasingly eccentric, if not all stations to Barking. Her CV includes being arrested for shop-lifting (the charges were later dropped), carrying a revolver in her handbag and booby-trapping her daffodil fields as a deterrent to bulb thieves.

Yes, Miss Willmott’s garden was the project of a loaded toff. She wasn’t great on workers’ rights, and was said to sack any gardener if he allowed a weed to show. But the scale and ambition of her life’s work is still inspiring. She spent everything on her garden and died penniless.

After her death Warley Place was sold to developers (nothing changes there) but then the Second World War intervened and afterwards the area was designated part of London’s Green Belt.

Ellen’s pristine garden was overtaken by undergrowth, decay and Japanese knotweed, until volunteers unearthed it in the last decade. And the sense of decay makes it even better, within sight of the M25 lies a place to reflect, wonder down mysterious overgrown, shadowy paths and move back in time to an era of grand projects in the shrubbery.

Volcano v planes

2010-04-20T20:39:00.004Z

Iceland has become the most over-heated topic of conversation at Baird-May Towers. First it was aboutWest Ham (icelanders bought the club); then we focused on the banking crisis (which led to West Ham changing hands) and now it's that pesky volcano. This post is by Nicola.

No planes over London is spookily pleasurable. Without the planes it's been possible to sleep (ALL night), and leave the windows open. To hear bird song and see such blue skies you'd think it was a Photoshop trick. London is still noisy, but not half as bad as it usually is. And with all those busy Brits stuck somewhere else the city's tubes, trains and roads are far less crowded making cycling easier, taking buses more effective and walking more enjoyable.

It seems this is the world's first carbon neutral volcano. The figures go like this - the European aviation industry is emitting 344,109 tons a day and volcano Eyjafjallajoekoll 150,000 tons - so while the planes are forced to rest our volcano has cut Europe's carbon footprint by nearly 200,000 tons a day. See here for more info from the number crunchers.

Ironically the best view I've ever had of a volcano was when I was in a light aircraft island hopping in the South Pacific and the pilot flew close to the snout of a newly emerged volcano so we could have a better look. If I'd known then what I know now about dust particles I'd have been terrified.

Instead I was smitten looking down from the tiny plane into the smouldering red heart of a new volcano spitting out boulders with gusto as it emerged from the Pacific Ocean floor. Two years later I was in Rabaul, the Papua New Guinean town destroyed by it's neighbouring volcano looking for a friend who'd lost their home to hot grey laval ash forcing his family to move into a shipping container.

I know volcanos are an expensive pain, but for us stay-at-homes the no fly zone has been an unexpected treat. And an early lesson in what happens when your sky supplies get shut down...

Falling out with the kids

2010-04-19T10:37:00.009Z

This post is by Pete, who visited the Secret Nuclear Bunker in Kelvedon Hatch, Essex.

Kelvedon Hatch in the afternoon appears to be a town bereft of inhabitants. We get off the 501 bus from Brentwood and walk up the A128. No shops, no children, it could be an episode of The Survivors. Finally we find a man gardening by his bungalow.

“Excuse me, do you know where the secret nuclear bunker is?”

“It’s down that way on the left, but it’s a long old walk… ,” he says of the not-so-secret bunker, with the bemused look of a man who has never before seen a man and two children attempting to access a nuclear bunker via public transport. And it doesn’t look like he expects us to return.

The pavement soon disappears. It looks like a nuclear strike has already hit Essex. The verges, hedges and ditches of the A128 are full of shattered plastic mineral water and Coca-Cola bottles and rusting lager cans.

Eventually we come across a bunker sign pointing to a long track winding track heading across a ploughed field. There’s just a grassy hill in the distance with a mysterious mast perched on its top.

It feels like a real adventure, a trek into the unknown regions of both history and Essex. The track descends into a gulley where there’s a sentry box and a paintballing shed. We walk on past a stream and wood, post-apocalyptic paintballers scaling ropes in the trees, and eventually find a car park and a path to a suburban bungalow on the side of the hill.

Eerily there are no staff on duty, just hand-held audio guides in a rack. We enter to the left of the bungalow and find it’s a huge steel corridor with bunker plans and Geiger counters hanging on the walls.

It’s square and featureless and designed to defend the government from civilians if they tried to storm the bunker to escape the radiation and perhaps query their MPs’ expenses.

There’s an Armageddon time soundtrack on the public address system; four-minute warning wailing sirens and calls for Captain Palmer to head to the operations room.

Then we move through blast doors that are the weight of four cars each and descend further down to the depths.

We’re 100 feet underground and encased in ten feet of reinforced concrete. The bunker was built in 1953 and decommissioned in 1993 as it cost £3 million a year to run. The family who owned the land, the Parrishes, bought the bunker and now run it as a tourist attraction. The ideal place to fall out with the kids.

There’s no natural light and only circular vents in the ceiling to circulate the air.

We enter the communications area where 1950s switchboards give way to ancient telex machines.

“This is cool! Everything’s grey. These are so old. What are these?” says 11-year-old Lola, banging the keys of a Telex machine.

A uniformed female dummy sits in the incoming messages booth. The bog-roll like print-outs list innocuous towns like Aberystwth and Luton. Here the 300 self-appointed survivors of a nuclear holocaust would search for signs of life in other bunkers around the blighted landscape.

Panic pervades our party. Static crackles in the scientists’ centre where the fall-out patterns would have been monitored. Red phones stand in a box on the wall.

““I want to leave, it’s scary!” says 9-year-old Nell.

And so am I. It nearly happened. It still could.

In the BBC Studio a dummy of Margaret Thatcher stands headphones-on ready to talk to the shell of a nation.

Lights flash on machines and everywhere there’s great big clunking boxes with dials on them. It all feels like 1970s Doctor Who. The dummies look like Autons and there are gas masks on the walls. It would be no surprise to find Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and his chaps from UNIT here, trying to maintain discipline and lay on a cup of instant coffee in an impossible situation. Jon Pertwee’s Doctor would be shaking his head at humanity’s folly.

We move up a flight of stairs to the “floor”, where there’s a map of Britain complete with pointers for military planning.

The children watch a TV playing Protect and Survive. It’s the best CND recruitment video ever. Everyone must stay in their improvised house shelter for 14 days with water and tinned food. The sections on placing your toilet waste in a plastic bag and storing it in a larger bucket fascinate Lola and Nell. “If someone dies wrap the body in plastic or blankets and move it to a separate room,” says the keep calm and carry on voiceover.

We see the giant grey tanks and pipes of the plant room where the life support systems supplied water and pumped filtered air around the bunker.

It’s up another flight of stairs to the sick bay where a dummy lies with a bloody eye. “Look there’s a coffin!” says Nell.

It’s the most surreal kids’ day out ever. We see the bunks where staff would have “hot-bedded” in the dormitory and a large room full of ancient computers that would have been the devolved central government. Although now it’s staffed by dummies with no legs and flapping white sleeves. A sign says “Justice” on the walls. And the controller of this bunker really would have had the power of life and death.

We find our house in the giant laminated map of London on the wall. And in the Gents piped music pays “You Can’t Hurry Love.” Weird. The children try on gas masks and army uniforms in a dressing-up area.

And then it’s up to the canteen where the smell of institutionalized food from stainless steel ovens evokes just how awful the post-nuclear bunker would have felt. And a sign reads that the food may contain nuts, which seems the last thing to worry about after the invisible death cloud arrives. I’m tempted to ask if they do irradiated food.

And finally we find two staff alive behind the counter, although everything has to be paid for in the honesty box.

We admire the nuclear bunker mugs, postcards and pencils and rubber toys beneath the grey tomb-like beams.

“Are these dead?” asks an elderly retainer picking up our coffee mugs and cans. No, but everyone outside is.

And then we take the final exit, walking down a long arced tunnel that finally emerges at a small camouflaged opening in the side of the hill.

Daylight at last. And thankfully there’s no sign of fall out.

Essex discoveries part 1

2010-04-06T10:35:00.015Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love travelling around the UK. Here's some ideas to fill your holidays and keep your carbon footprint low. This post about Essex is by Nicola

It's a swap thing: Pete was born in Herts, and I was born in Essex. But he's all Essex humour and I'm the posh bird from Hertfordshire. Although we didn't meet until I was 29 years old for a time we'd both lived pretty much equi-distance from Bishop's Stortford, the Hertfordshire market town that protects us from Essex. Or vice versa. Anyway, ahhh.

Nell, 9, is intrigued by Essex, she's hardly ever been there and yet there's a map on our corridor wall with rings around all the places that are family important (and yes, Nasty and Ugley, High Easter and Cold Christmas - we lost control of the highlighter pen!). And so the plan is get-to-know Essex better. It also means we've got a travel theme and Nell hopefully won't feel so cheated by her friends and their climate-bashing tales of "when I was at the airport...".

We've started well this Essex-themed Easter holidays well with a quick walk through Hatfield Forest, just outside Bishop's Stortford. Hatfield Forest is a remnant of the Great Essex Forest, mimics a medieval working woodland and is now run by the National Trust. As an added bonus it's opposite Stansted Airport working as a seriously green lung by the bypass and perimeter fence. Using a very easy to follow map we walked around the lake created by the one-time owner, a Hugenot refugee, who built a shell house for picnics - the shells (see pic left) are from the Caribbean and Africa, brought to the UK in the ballast of the ships that created such wealth for some of the old families (there's clearly a link to slavery here). The nice volunteer guide inside the Shell House encouraged the girls to play with these shells... And I swear I spotted the shells of African land snails too...

A family hunt
Next stop was just outside Great Dunmow (a place Pete could remember his Dad recalling the Saracen's Head and his mum rolling her eyes at the metropolis) for Great Garnetts farm by Barnston. This is where his dad, Denis May, had his first tenancy farm, eventually moving to the other side of Essex when offered more land for his dairy herd.

The big house at Great Garnetts was Elizabethan, with tall chimneys. There's still an interesting arch in or out of the stable yard and we hope to find out more when we go to the farmers' market held just about once a month (except August when everyone's too busy harvesting) - in 2010 they are on the 2nd Saturday of each month so try 10 April, 8 May, 12 June, 10 July, 11 Sep, 9 Oct and 13 Nov.

When Pete's mum, Sheila, moved in to the semi-detached farm cottage (see pic above) there was no heating except wood fires. I think she said there was no water as well. It must have been terrible for her especially looking after a four year old and Pete for his first eight months. No wonder he puts up with the cold... The farm cottages look picture perfect now and I think Lola and Nell were a tad jealous of the three children rolling outside with a pack of black labradors.

We also went to the pub that Denis used to walk to after his chores were finished. Lucky for us The Spotted Dog, in Bishop's Green (tel: 01245 231598), a lovely old thatched place, had just been redone and opened on 1 April (five days ago) as a gastro pub which still served real ale. We had our dog, so we ate on a bench outside, thinking about Denis all those years ago propping up the bar with a few old farmer friends. Maybe.

It's an irony that Denis felt so strongly that organic was a fad, and now even the old pubs are going all foodie and his old farm has recreated itself as a farmers' market. Obviously it's not all organic, but the locally grown element - pork and turkey - is key to this farming renaissance.

Following Harry Potter

2010-03-22T14:40:00.021Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell took three months off in 2007 to travel around Britain visiting the places here that should be abroad. Now we're home, but still enjoying carbon lite travelling. Here's how...

Fiction is always nother country: but JK Rowling's Harry Potter world seems to be an inevitable part of our family's adventures. Here's four places I can recommend for Harry Potter fans, whatever their age:

1 Christ Church Hall, Oxford is Hogwarts' dining hall
We've just been to the Sunday Times Literary Festival in Oxford to listen to three great modern children's writers - Blue Peter's 2009 book winner Ali Sparkes with Frozen in Time, Frank Cottrel Boyce whose written Cosmic, Framed and Millions (and plenty of others) and new on the scene Harriet Goodwin with the excellent Boy Who Fell Down Exit 43.

2 Elephant House (cafe), Edinburgh is Harry Potters's birthplace
Lap up the atmosphere - and the craggy castle views - even though JK Rowling may not visit much now. This also does great breakfasts if you've just got off the night train... See opening times here.

3 Kings Cross Station is home of Platform 9 and three/quarters
Arguably London's best station, currently near the end of its underground revamp, and also the way to Norfolk, Yorkshire, the Lake District and other favourite places...

4 Alnwick Castle, Northumberland is Hogwarts
This castle is a fantastic place to visit and if you get tired of the gardens, the rampards, the Harry Potter memorabilia (especially HP and the Philosopher's Stone), the infamous poison garden, the treehouse cafe - is it possible to get tired of such delights? - then you can head to the famous secondhand bookshopnearby. Barter Books is known as the biggest 2h bookshop in Britain and the source of the recent craze for mugs, key fobs, posters etc telling us to "Keep Calm and Carry On". See Guardian feature here.

5 Isle of Man has Gringots Bank
Might need to check this... but a trip to Isle of Man (take the ferry from Liverpool) exits you not just from England but Europe too - an utterly exotic destination only a couple of sea hours away.

Where to watch the World Cup 2010?

2010-03-12T16:26:00.006Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell spent the summer of 2007 travelling around Britain without resorting to planes (simple!). Now they're home and keep up the carbon-lite world travel habit in all sorts of ways. This post is by Nicola

So where's the best place to watch the World Cup this July? I'm asking this less for myself, more as a puzzle. I know one sports writer/lecturer who is taking her toddler to South Africa for the full atmosphere (but worrying as much about which malaria tablets to take as how to get tickets). My Brazilian-based friend plans to come back "home" to London just in case England does really well - I also happen to know he likes being around the UK for the soft fruits season, so that's two draws. Meanwhile his wife thinks it might be more fun in Brazil, just in case her team does really well. While the Dads group from Nell's school look set to fall back on a CAMRA (ie, real) pub near Baker Street that serves Abbot Ale and when they drank there last undoubtedly set up England's recent victory in the friendly against Egypt. A winning ritual should not be broken they claim.

Where you watch and how you get to that place can be a brilliant way of sharing the joys and blows of being a football follower, or it can be rubbish (yes, that's why there's a picture of the rat infested rubbish truck from the recent Rio carnival!). I'm guessing I'll see some of the games with friends and family on outdoor screens, walkable distances from my home.

It's been 10 years - this coming April - since Lola and I took our last flights (first as well in her case as she was not quite two years). Nell is nine years and still hasn't gone on a plane. Pete has flown in the past 10 years but only twice, once for fun and once for work, so our family footprint has stayed low for a significant length of time compared to our friends.

Our no-plane boast is not so great if we compare with our own childhoods - Pete never took a plane journey with his family, it wasn't until he was 18 that he set off for an airport check-in. I think I made one return flight to Northern Ireland as a toddler (apparently noisily confusing nuns with Father Christmas) and then another aged 15 when my Dad suddenly took us all to Paxos, a Greek island.

Our family's experience shows you can have fun at home in the World Cup (why, even Lola was born at the start of the 1998 kickathon), in fact home is probably the only place you can watch every game, keep up to date with every bit of information and still keep that carbon footprint a blistering zero. Here's to an England win...

Out of Africa

2010-02-10T15:35:00.005Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola, now 11, and Nell, a just-turned-nine, spent summer 2007 travelling around Britian. They're back home now (not so far from Tower Bridge) but still trying to find ways to see the world without racking up their carbon footprint. This post is by Nicola.

Thanks to my friend Nicky, who I met at university, I've been to many places in the world I would have thought weren't for me - starting with Chitral in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan. This was back in 1987 and my first trip to Asia. I really enjoyed it thanks mostly to Nicky who was living with her family there. Another summer we trained it around Europe (1984) - eurorailing was a belated right of passage for us both.

Nicky is a menace with the air miles (although I get to benefit and stay in touch as she comes by London Heathrow frequently as does 10-year-old Xander, see pic below with Lola and Nell). But last year, after nearly 10 years based in Zimbabwe, she and husband Robert (another uni friend) took their kids out of school and on to the dirt roads of Africa so that they could drive north-south from Cairo to the Cape and back again to Zim - a 25,000 mile road trip.

Robert is a fabulous photographer (that pic of Tower Bridge is his), films anything, and a good writer too so the blog entries on his trip, enlivened by the kids' entries, have been great. I loved popping to their blog between cups of tea and dull tasks, and now their route and adventures have also been poured over by Saturday Guardian readers - see here.

Six months cost their family £12,500, which sounds a hideous amount, but for an adventure fo a lifetime in which their children learnt so much - and not just how to use sand ladders to escape out of sand dunes and a combination of GPS and stars to navigate - it seems to me money well spent. Here at Baird Towers it would have gone on wine, bike services and energy efficiency which is nothing to write about... except that I do, see here.

If all of us could just take longer to get to places, perhaps we'd reduce the amount of mini trips made. Robert says there's a Swahili* word for this - mahali - the place that becomes a journey. That's exactly what this blog attempts to do as we wander around the world without ever needing to leave Britain.

*Swahili is spoken throughout east africa, including Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

Croissants or dog care?

2010-01-23T12:16:00.011Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell spent 2007 travelling around Britain, now they're home but still keeping their carbon footprint down (and when there's a dog doing a lot of legwork). This post is by Nicola

One Saturday my family were all in Islington Music, just off Cross Street, waiting for the customer in front to stop chatting. She was obviously a journo (Rosie Millard a Sunday Times writer), had lots of kids (4), a patient hairy dog lying at her feet (see pic above) and an interesting story - she was off to see six unexpected bits of France in a few weeks time. Her problem was she didn't know what to do with the dog for the next three months.

"We'll have him" I said rudely interrupting, "assuming my husband will agree". Well we had to get served somehow... Pete looking a bit startled managed to say yes and the girls were ecstatic. And so it was that Disney the dog joined us for about three months last summer while his family went off to film their travel series, Croissants in the Jungle. As much as we like travelling we felt we got the better deal - and when Disney had to be returned to his family we missed him so much that we ended up finding a Border Terrier replacement, our puppy Vulcan.

While Rosie and family were off to see the Dom Toms, the bits of France that shouldn't really be France (but somehow are) including the tiny islands up in Newfoundland, St Pierre et Miquelon, Martinique, French Guyana, French Polynesia, New Caledonia and La Reunion, we got to hear the occasional travel snippet (Rosie's blog and postcards to Disney...). The places sound amazing, all cultural islands shored up financially by La France. Translated I reckon this means that crossiants in the UK are a great deal cheaper than French jungle breakfast bars.

You can join Rosie and family on their travels, described temptingly by the Travel Channel, as "part contemporary history, part family disaster movie" thanks to the complexities of having to film with four increasingly fed up children. If you like travel and the BBC sit com Outnumbered, you are sure to love this show which is on thursdays at 9pm. Have a look at the Travel Channel highlights here.

This entry is missing two rather cruical facts - dogs have a whacking carbon pawprint if you feed them meat, deal with their poos, leave the radiator on at night etc, and, secondly, flying around the world to French colonies busts a lifetime's carbon supply. In my own and the Millard families defences the answer is "we know", and as a consequence, and in another small part of this crossiant v dog coincidence are both users of the local car club when we are not poundingIslington pavements between the parks our dogs love.

2009 roundup

2010-01-04T15:40:00.008Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell took time out in 2007 to travel around Britain. Now we're home but we still like to travel with a carbon light footprint, and share ideas about how to do this... This post is by Nicola

2009 roundup - well our family has now visited by default 77 countries without really leaving the UK. We certainly haven't flown anywhere either (all very inspiring if you are a 10:10 fan/groupie). I haven't included postcards from amazing places which is vocarious travel, as is reading the travel supplements, going to the Embassies, eating in a themed restaurant or flying around using google earth.

I think introducing myself and the family to 77 countries without leaving Britain (except the one time we took Eurostar to Lille, France for three days during 2009) is a triumph. The idea even got picked up in the Guardian's Saturday supplement on 14 June 2008, see here. And then was reprinted in 2009 in the Guardian's Rainy Day Book, details here.

Most cold months I pretty much abandon this blog as I have to work the winter to take the summer in a leisurely way. But this year I will also be thinking more about green childcare ready for for the publication of my new book, Homemade Kids: creative, thrifty and eco-friendly ways to raise children, due out in July 2010. I've set up another blog for those entries so if you're interested have a look at my new homemadekids blog which is especially easy to add comments to. But when we travel I'll be blogging right back here. After all there are another 50 countries to locate...

Coping with Copenhagen failure

2009-12-20T10:59:00.009Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 11 and Nell, 8, spent the summer of 2007 travelling around Britain with an eye on their carbon footprint. Now they're home and trying to find ways to get out and about in a carbon lite way. This entry is from Nicola. (pic of girls looking at the UK's only polar bear who lives in Scotland)

My watch has stopped at one minute to midnight on the day I finally realise that the Copenhagen climate talks - in Denmark - have failed.

It takes the Guardian's hope-o-metre of one polar bear (the highest is five) for me to get this, read all about it in 19 December 2009 pieces here. With the world now set to warm up by at least 2 degrees low lying Pacific islands (as in the picture) and the super-flat Maldives, and anywhere with coastal homes/cities is going to be in serious trouble. As a result more than a third of species look set to become extinct.

The next day I wake (after a crap night of borderline sleep) feeling furiously low. The sky may be a beautiful, bright winter blue but it's obvious to me that it's just a picturesque tease. Everything I've loved is at an end: Borders is being sold off, ergo book writing is doomed (or at least the weekend free reading in a warm room with real coffee percolating out of the cafe). My list of complaints include cash crisis (mine, world), lack of paid work (mine, world), worries about food/inadequate stockpiling (me, world)... Pantomime doom and gloom really.

But after a cup of hot black coffee, I pick up a useful sort of a book called 52 ways to change it by life coach Annabel Sutton (website here), flip the pages to allow the text to choose what I read today and the perfect pick me up appears. Here's the quote: "There's no such thing as a wrong decision", which is backed up with calm balm... quoted here from p 17.

"No matter what happens, whichever decision you make it won't be wrong - it will simply result in a different outcome. Either way, there will be new things to learn, new people to meet, new opportunities will open up, and so on."

I'm going to hang on to that, because it makes the idea of the world learning to be more energy efficient, matching climate refugees with their hosts and taking advantage of any new opps a great deal more attractive.

And as Pete points out if the climate deniers turn out to be right (!) all we'll have to put up with is insufferable crowing. We could all live with that.

Gin and wink

2009-12-18T12:06:00.008Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 11 and Nell, 8 spent the summer of 2007 holidaying in the UK to perfect low carbon travel. Now they are back home still keen to share their carbon lite travel tips.

It's all about gin today.

Just presented Nell's teachers with an end of year gift - the sloe gin that she and I made together. We will miss ritually shaking it in the cellar each week to make it change from boringly clear alcohol to a shocking red-pink (claret?) sloe-flavoured gin.

I always think of gin as quintessentially English, but years ago before we counted carbon footprints Pete was invited to the juniper berry harvest for Gordon's Gin in Italy. Here he watched old ladies on the Umbrian hills of Italy picking the berries, drank samples heartily and then wrote about it. And if juniper berries give Italy the ownership of gin, linguistically it's closer to home. The word gin is a corruption of the French word for juniper berry (a very Wikipedia fact).

Plus very excited to see JJ and his business partner James use gin (although Lady Arran may have gone for vodka) to win Raymond Blanc's The Restaurant on 17 Dec 2009. Success came after yet another lucky contest where JJ's cocktail-thinking got him out of another culinary scrape by serving up a blackberry flavoured gin mix instead of chocolate souffle in the final task. Masterful! Find out more here.

I've become an adoring JJ fan - recently Pete had a party at JJ's atmospheric London Cocktail Club, 6-7 Great Newport Street below the Arts Theatre. And as result of those cocktail-fuelled conversations generous JJ (then hanging in at the 3rd of the TV shows) came to the London College of Communication (LCC) to let my class of Year 1 media students interview him. His reward? Another jam jar portion of that famous sloe gin... The picture above shows some of the LCC students with him. And no one winked, remembering perhaps JJ's discomfort when Raymond Blanc caught him doing this.

So the plan for this Friday night is to celebrate the girls' end of term and JJ's spectacular win with my own mix of gin and silly (aka tonic and ice), and all because the sloe gin is taboo until after Christmas. FYI this is an ancient Baird tradition which if broken would set my dad's ghost on me shouting "gutless worm" and other well remembered phrases.

Waving not drowning

2009-12-06T09:34:00.012Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 11, and Nell, 8, went travelling around Britain in 2008. Now they're back but still trying to make trips with the lightest possible carbon footprint. Here's how ...

Can you see the blue noses and clotheses (from right to left: Lola and Nell. Ellen, 14, and Andy seen here back home after a day of citizen protest)? There's 20,000 others on the Wave - a march across central London organised by Stop Climate Chaos to highlight the need for politicians to do something about climate change.

Actually the police say 20,000 and the organisers (including Belfast and Glasgow) tell us it is 50,000. Whichever number is correct it is a lot.

Lola, Nell and I have done something similar together enough times to feel that marching for climate justice is one of the tasks in the run up to Christmas. It's our form of spiritual preparation, but this time there are many more people involved. We meet a man who'd come up from Gloucester on his own, see buses from Wales and Dorset, get surrounded by church groups and admire the crowds on TV that set off from Hyde Park after a rousing set of talks. We even have friends staying who have travelled down from Hexham, Northumberland (see pic). Sorting out climate change is one thing, but it is also fantastic to be walking along a traffic free route from (roughly) Green Park tube to Lambeth Bridge.

Next week we will find out if the big turn out does impress politicians at the Cophenhagen meeting who have to seal somekind of carbon dioxide emissions deal.

Pre-march preparation takes Lola, Nell and I to the Royal Academy's pop-up expo on art and climate. It's called Earth: a changing world and was stunning. there's a man futilely making an island in the sea; there's a barbcued polar bear bone turned into a diamond, there's epitaphs and landscape pix and wit. There's Tracey Emin, obviously. And a video of black rain. And performance art with a rapping conculsion. Find it around the back of the Royal Academy (at the old Museum of Mankind, 6 Burlington Gardens). If you're an RA member it's free - and there are no queues. Even if Anish Kapoor, the main attraction is worth seeing, I really don't think I'd be willing to queue when I could enjoy Earth with no crowds at all.

The art show helps us focus. It's clear what's going on worldwide isn't good, and it's clear that we don't know the half of it. Why do factory workers dressed in pink pack pinky chicken? Why do rich Israeli men try to offroad dunes in vast 4x4s? Why are the rubbish piles in China covered in nets and shaped to look like romantic Chinese landscape - or have shrines on them? We also owe a great debt to the educational programe Cape Farewell that takes artists to the Arctic for a look-see (aka cultural response) that seems to inspire astonishing creativity about climate change and the state of our world now.

After the art we join the crowds with our friends Andrew and his daughter Ella, 9. The kids daub blue face paint on nose and cheeks and then get a chant going which peps up our bit of the march. They only stop when we reach Lambeth Bridge. And then at 3pm with Parliament encircled via two bridges (and the climate camp activists apparently camping out or avoiding arrest under Oliver Cromwell's toes) everyone waves their blue hands. And waves, and waves again because we're rioting for austerity measures that will give everyone in the world a better chance.

Meanwhile the news focuses on the 20 million Bangladeshi people who may have to leave their country within 50 years because of sea level rise. David Cameron lashes out at the climate sceptics (particularly David Davis in his own party) and Barak Obama finally agrees to pop into Copenhagen on the first day. See here.

This Saturday we've done something big, and the signs that it may have helped are good. But perhaps that's because we so want them to be. As for Pete, he insisted on going to the West Ham v Man U game (result a shameful home loss of 0:4) but sort of redeemed himself for a no march show by getting climate change mentioned in his fan's view in the Observer, see here.

It's time to party

2009-12-03T16:00:00.006Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 11, and Nell, 8, spent three happy months during summer travelling around Britain. Now we're home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint.

In the run up to the Copenhagen meeting next week there seems to be a sense of great sadness. See here at the Guardian. We did all this to the world. We made October the hottest, November the wettest, Sydney the dustiest, etc. And at night I am conscious that my bedtime reading, Notes from Walnut Farm - a collection of Roger Deakin's writing during the six years before he died - is imbued with sadness. Even the frothy spring cow parsley is berated for replacing rarer, and arguably more lovely, violets. See the cover here.

Which is why it is lovely to sometime crash a party and cheer the hell up. December is the best time to do this, but last month the highlight near home was when Algeria qualified for the World Cup. The guys in Little Algeria (an area around Finsbury Park) were able to celebrate qualifying for the first time in 21 years. They bounced up and down, they drove around the block hooting horns. They marched back and forth the zebra crossing. And they waved flags, smiled and gathered together (yes,blocking the buses) conscious of just how far their team had come in order to make the slot for South Africa in July 2010.

It was like a flashmob, but less contrived. You could smell the happiness.

Having fun doesn't make me forget climate change, but it does remind me how important it is to avoid the tendency for humans to look on the dark side. Yes the world is in a bad, bad place. But without hope it really is hard to summon creativity. And creativity is what we all need, and especially the journalists writing up the story and those world leaders whose job it is to get a deal.

Stories round the woodburner

2009-11-18T12:55:00.009Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell spent the summer of 2007 travelling around Britain without racking up their carbon budget. We're home now but we still love travelling. Here's how we try and do it keeping to a low carbon footprint and getting a taste of everywhere in the world. This post is by Nicola.

One of the things I love about visiting people in the countryside is their tendency in the winter to have wood burning stoves. If the wood is sourced from the right place - and I'm working on this - then you can have carbon neutral space heating.

After long talks, debates and saving up we now have an Aga Little Wenlock woodburner fitted (suitable for smokeless zones) where our Victorian fireplace used to be. It's pretty warm today - 16C - but last weekend, when it was a bit colder, we set it alight both evenings with amazingly good results. In fact the woodburner's efficiency made our sitting room warm enough for me to stay up late (chatting), rather than retire with a hot water bottle to bed at 9pm. Its cosy glow reminds me of Hannah's in Wales and Exeter, and my childhood in Hertfordshire. Pete says - rather happily - that the atmosphere in our living room hints at warm ups by the pub after breath-freezing days in the Lakes and Yorkshire.

Of course you need kindling to light it, and so there's a new task for the children (see pic). Here's Nell and her three year old cousin Jago helping me collect up a big bag of twigs off an ash tree, which all fell down after a night of gales.

Searching for kindling, copying great ideas (I think the Swedes invented the woodburner, just checking) and being able to story around the fire make autumn and winter such a pleasure. next project may be to plant some more trees...

Dog daze

2009-11-14T12:32:00.007Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell spent three months during summer 2007 travelling around Britain. Now we're home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint.

I'm guilty of introducing an 4x4 jeep sized-footprint into the house. At least that's what a recent Guardian piece claims here thanks to the arrival of our pup. Much of Leo Hickman's piece is taken from a hackle-raising book, Time To Eat the Dog and is probably spot on. I've already noticed that even at eight weeks Vulcan's lack of house training meant we had to wash our hands more; and we're flushing his poos away so our water use is well up. He eats a chicken-based biscuit (so we're fuelling Amazonian rainforest decline as soya feed gets used to fatten the poultry base). We also often leave a light on for him - and at night to keep him warm we provide a hotwater bottle (better than gas central heating, but still a need forextra electricity as we heat up a saucepan on the hob).

In an ideal world we'd have got an unwanted/rescue dog who would still have a resource-heavy footprint (mostly shit) but convincing the rescue centres to let me take one home was heavy weather. One in Wales didn't seem to think I could collect a dog (Jester) without a car (wherever I lived) because it would be "too traumatic". I was so furiously amused that I couldn't actually reply to this ridiculous comment.

The whole family was also expected to do the fetching, and we had to do it straightaway. When I pointed out this would mean taking the girls out of school - technically illegal - the dog ladies (because they always were) gave a telephone shrug as if that was quite inconsequential.

The dog books are the same, containing scant regard for resource pawprints. Here is where you learn that dog poo should be picked up in cheap nappy bags (which don't biodegrade); and dogs need to learn to love cars so they can be driven for walks. Call me old fashioned but I think it's better to start walking from where you are, not by driving to where you want to be.

This is not a campaign I will be putting a jot of time into - turn on dogs and you lose a huge swathe of people who just might have made an effort to cut their carbon emissions until they realise they love the enemy. Besides, I am looking forward to walking our puppy more as he gets big enough to do so and together we will muse on this strange, strange world.

Climate refugees on wobbly bridge

2009-10-29T11:13:00.010Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 11, and Nell, 8, spent three happy months during summer 2007 travelling around Britain. Now we're home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint.

Friends arrive during half term for city sightseeing so we take them on London's best visitor route, the number 4 bus down to St Paul's Cathedral. Nearby the wobbly bridge over the Thames has sprouted mini tents. It's an idea by the German artist Hermann Josef Hack for Oxfam's Here & Now campaign timed to coincide with two-day EU heads of state and . The art installation is in seven cities including Amsterdam and Brussels.

Lola, Nell and Xander (now 10 and born in land-locked Zimbabwe) stretch out amongst the tents and get snapped while I calculate that the tents are 20cm high - just about the height the sea's already risen since 1900. You can find out more about what sea level rise means in the excellent new book for kids Gaia Warriors, by Nicola Davies which is published by Walker Books, £9.99, buy from Amazon.

20cm doesn't look much, but for countries like Tuvalu, or the Maldives where land is barely 1m above sea level this is serious stuff. No surprise that the big London march timed for the Copenhagen COP on Saturday December 5 is to be called The Wave. Find out more here.

Not everyone is impressed by story campaigns. I overhear an irritated woman on the bridge complaining that someone will break their ankle on the cardboard tents. She doesn't lack imagination, but is clearly having trouble with empathy. Does she know that The Maldives has a dynamo head of state, who has already conducted a cabinet meeting underwater to alert the world to his country's sinking future (lots more about the Maldives plight here). To date Tuvalu is less good at climate change PR but the funniest book I've ever read, Tales of the Tikongs, is by Epeli Hau'ofa from Tuvalu so clearly there are skilled wits on the islands who could if they wanted to do so.

What a loss it will be to have either of these countries turned Atlantis.

Arctic scare on Blog Action Day

2009-10-15T10:00:00.008Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 11, and Nell, 8, spent three happy months during summer 2007 travelling around Britain (pic is of a visit to Lapland via a Kent woodland). Now we're home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint.

Waking up to the radio isn't a good idea. This morning it turns out that the explorers who tramped across the icy Arctic measuring ice cores have worked out that this frozen sea is going to melt very summer from around 2020. That's interesting says the radio voice, so good for shipping having a new route up top. Then a scientist, dispassionately, points out that this will really change the world's climate - instead of a lovely bright white world lid there will be a dark sea-colour shade. I guess the albedo effect sizzles up.

White to black is a big change.

For a moment I imagine frantically painting every roof in the UK white. We're not that far from the Arctic, would it help? And then I get angry, this scientist is Mr Calm. A Dickens' Gradgrind of facts - ironic seeing as it is world blog action day, see here. It's up to those of us able to feel how bad that is, to make a better fuss.

Actually people near where I live make more fuss about car parking, and school dinners, oh yes and dog poo, than this scientist is making about the Arctic's ice crisis.

I specialise in the small: being enery efficient at home; not having a car; helping out a school climate club; finding ways for secondary school students to store wet shoes and coats so it is more practical for them to walk to-and-from school.

My university students (on the odd days that I teach) look perplexed by the amount of green and climate changing examples I can dredge up. They are looking for facts from their tutor, not convictions. They find it odd to be asked to be more passionate in their research, their writing and thinking - especially as some feel quite distant from the course objectives. To try and unfreeze them I've asked the 24-year-old climate activist Tamsin Omond, who set up Climate Rush, to come and talk about what motivates her on tuesday 27 October at the London College of Communication's main lecture theatre (2.30-3.30pm if you want to join us, it's free but consider buying Tamsin's new book Rush: the making of a climate activist) available here.

I felt far more distant from the Arctic when I knew it was solid ice. Knowing it's giong to be a swishy, cold, dark sea gives me a horrible jolt. When my family next plays our travel game - being in the UK while pretending to be somewhere else through geographical, physical or cultural clues - we won't need to visit an ice rink to think Arctic.

We won't need to wait for a cold snap.

We won't need to detour to Kent to a Disneyesque-winter wonderland (see how we did it in the pic above).

We'll just pop out of the door and stand by the reservoir looking at the canoe club. We'll imagine they are the new polar explorers.

My hope is that small changes, the ideas of Friends of the Earth's Big Ask, or Age of Stupid film make Franny Armstrong's 10:10 or suggestions from the Government-backed Energy Saving Trust will help people make some changes to their lives that tackle climate change... and help slow down this predicted Arctic melt.

Energy journeys

2009-10-01T13:12:00.004Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel but insist on keeping their carbon footprint down. Here's how (this post from Nicola)

Just been infuriated by feedback from some riding teaching I did back in July in which a dodgy old Yorkshire lady sounded off about my apparent lack of energy around eight-year-olds and four legged ponies. Funny how much I mind (never mind it not being true!) considering that the rest of my life is spent trying to be far more energy efficient.

And how well we feel we are doing - not just the travelling without planes or living without a car - but the way our end of terrace has been turned into a renewable power house. Since the solar PV was installed in summer 2008, we've generated 1,246kWh of electricity. Given our current summer usage, this is the equivalent of the sun gifting us 311 free leccy days. Nice eh?

It's not a simple calculation of course, as we're not off grid, but I am hoping to get a cheque for a decent amount from Good Energy (like the other 1,000+ renewable energy suppliers spread around the UK) before the end of this month.

At the moment I'm paying around 12p/kWh for using electricity, but expect to get 15p back for every sun-generated unit our panels clocked up. And next year this looks set to soar to 35p. Clearly being a low energy pioneer has a good cash side. Even if it marks you out for pony club disgrace.

Useful contacts for energy savers - to buy an energy metre, http://www.goodenergyshop.co.uk/, or to join the zillions of families trying to slash their energy use by 10 per cent each year see http://www.1010uk.org/.

Old Father Thames ain't wet

2009-09-28T11:14:00.007Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - but try not to rack up their carbon footprint as they go. Here's how...
If it wasn’t for the pile of dry pale rocks – and the engraved tombstone – by the corner of the wood you’d never guess this was the start of the River Thames. This September there’s no sign of water, although two fields away, at what’s known as the head of the Thames, you can clearly see the course of a river, even if that too is dry.

I’m used to the forceful, grey Thames of central London with its curves, boats and treasure-lined tidal shores, so it’s strange to see around 180 miles away that it starts off as a dry spring leading to a dry ditch. The track beside the outline river is well worn as many walkers enjoy tracking the Thames back to its Gloucestershire source, see how to do this at http://www.thames-path.org.uk/

We cheated the footslog by taking a detour from Kemble train station, following the well-signed Wysis Trail and then left on to the last stages of the Thames Path (about a mile and a half each way) to see our river’s birthplace, marked in marble with "The Conservators of the River Thames 1857 - 1974. This stone was placed here to mark the source of the River Thames". Unfortunately we are in such a hurry to catch our designated train back to London that we have to race the route, as if fleeing from the sort of floods that have recently hit Manila. We do not even have time to chat as we open gates/climb old steps, dodge cows or admire the heron flying by.

I’ve seen a volcano spring out of the sea, spitting red rocks into the Pacific waves. And the girls have seen chicks hatch, pecking and peeping and struggling through the shell. Dramatic enough births to oblige us all to puzzle how the UK’s greatest river (with apologies to the Tyne, Avon, Severn, Clyde and others) can have such a low-key start. Obviously deep waters can run to silt, although not if you’re here in a wet January (or so the potter-postcard seller by Kemble station would have us believe).

Tree heaven

2009-09-28T11:12:00.002Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - but try not to rack up their carbon footprint as they go. Here's how...

Walking along the twisting sanded path between some of the rarest, most impressive and unusal trees in the world is a treat. Add autumn colour from mid October through November from Japanese maples and you ‘re in for a sensory treat at Westonbirt, the National Arboretum in the postcard perfect Cotswolds. The collection is split into two enormous woods, the Old Arboreturn which dates back to the 1850s, or Britain’s largest collection of maples (and others) in the Silk Wood - an area so large it can take two hours to tour even without detours and the opportunity to gaze up trunks oohing and ahhing.

Lola’s learning the history of the Silk Road at the moment – the trade route that allowed East and West to switch influences, more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road – so it was no surprise that she turned us towards Westonbirt’s Silk Wood for a Sunday morning stroll. We enjoyed finding the tented weeping holly and a weeping Japanese cherry, the ubiquitous sequoia (not yet super tall but big and soft enough to be easily recognizable). But our party’s favourite – all ex or current Friends of the Earth employees/contributors, bar the two children – was the rare Japanese tree that smelt of caramel/burnt toast.

Westonbirt Arboretum is huge and plays an important role even now collecting rare species, preserving seed and raising super-trees. It’s a tree gene pool but also a feast for the eyes. Autumn inspires many tree events, most you can just turn up for, but see the list here www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt but there’s also xmas lights, winter walks, photo displays, fungi hunts etc. If you’re taking younger children, get your under 5s trying the “exploratree” play area or other activities, see www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt-families.

Like Kew Gardens Westonbirt showcases British gardeners’ ability to grow just about anything, hinting at the English colonial presence all over the world, but it’s also a place you can know nothing about trees or plants and just enjoy a stroll knowing you won’t get very lost, and even if you do someone will be able to direct you to a coffee shop.

And if you’ve never been there before, don’t be distracted by the woods, first go to the Great Oak Hall, open from 10am-4pm, and find out where to see some of the 100 champion trees (VIP trees with blue ID tags) and when to join the free info tours.

Westonbirt Arboretum is disappointingly hard to reach by public transport (and you’ll need to pre book taxis) but if you do arrive by foot – try the Monarch’s Way www.ramblers.org.uk/ out of nearby Tetbury http://www.visittetbury.co.uk/ which bypasses Prince Charles’ Highgrove – then the entrance fee is slashed.

Another country: perfect Costwolds

2009-09-28T11:07:00.002Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - but try not to rack up their carbon footprint as they go. Here's how...
“Is it one of the made up Cotswold towns,” asks my London neighbour after I describe a weekend in Tetbury glowingly. I’m not sure about this – guessing one of Oxfordshire’s Upper or Lower Slaughters could have been just to keep the visitors trapped in a Cotswold beauty ghetto – but the old wool town of Tetbury http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetbury is astonishing. We arrive in perfect September sun to see many other visitors enjoying pavement gourmet meals, the public loos are squeaky clean, the postcard recommendation to look out for St Mary’s church and the Chipping Steps easily found. No surprise it is a 2009 Britain in Bloom finalist.

The evening is spent at a perfect wedding held in the nearby Great Tythe Barn – then again Helen and Chris claim they have had 20 years to plan it!

Back in Tetbury central on the Sunday there’s a food festival (with English wines, Highgrove organic produce from the Veg Shed, prize winning local made organic smoked brie) and the village hall has an art show Even the B&Bs are themed – the lovely one we stayed in was pure House & Garden perfection with its low beams, model owner and delicious breakfast; another is above a chocolatier; a third transports you to India through artifacts and incense.

Tetbury has always been the place you might meet royalty – and since March 2008 you can step into the shopwindow opposite Somerfield’s thanks to Prince Charles opening the Highgrove shop www.highgroveshop.com/ . It’s an upmarket style center for modern posh with wooden apple trays, hen-bedecked aprons and pottery tablewear. Old farm tools have been clustered together like decorative weaponry. There are books extolling the organic, country life and I love the fact that profits from the sale of these products goes towards The Prince’s Charities Foundation – an altruistic offer that makes me wonder why people so often slag Charles off (or should I be writing “Your Majesty/Sir??”) as a NEET who is rich (or silly) enough to be not in employment, education or training.

A local resident resists praise for the town too. He claims the problem with Tetbury is it has no middle class, just posh or forelock tuggers, and it’s only really bustling at weekends as the townies drift in for their Saturday of rural unwinding with the very best food. He says I need to get myself to Nailsworth, or read reports of crime from Stroud for a real touch of Cotswold life. Even so, the next visitors I get who want to see a snapshot of old fashioned England –will be given a map to get themselves to Tetbury.

Souk for the soul

2009-09-21T18:32:00.006Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - but try not to rack up their carbon footprint as they go. Here's how...

Today spent a happy half hour at my favourite local shop, Unpackaged in Amwell Street, where the food is wholesome and the staff (well Cath) emails you if they haven't seen you for a while - not to chase your cash, but to check that you are OK. How caring is that? The bill is always complicated by 50 pences off each container you bring and 10 per cent Wedge card discount etc, so Cath showed me a calculator version of the final tally as if we were in the souk and I couldn't quite get my head around the bargain carpet I'd negotiated over Moroccan tea. Admittedly I went home with rather less extravagant (and easier to carry) purchases, but it was a lovely out-of-UK shopping moment. I can't promise you'll be offered a repeat souk skit, but there's plenty of other reasons to go to Unpackaged yourself. And it's the shop's second birthday in November too.

Heather on Ilkley Moor

2009-08-22T19:37:00.004Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - but try not to rack up their carbon footprint as they go. Here's how...

A suprisingly beautiful day in west Yorkshire (we are staying in Shipley as part of a house swap with friends) inspired us to go to Ilkley and up to the famous moor. Anyone who has been here would know that Ilkley is a busy tourist spot, there's even a Pizza Express and an M&S at the station - amazing if you compare it to Keighley which isn't so far away.

In fact it's been a busy tourist trap for years. Charles Darwin stayed here with his family, at a big house now called Hillside (with blue plaque), to correct the proofs of Origin of Species in 1859. Darwin always thought he was ailing so he came partly to try out the waters at White Wells. Nowadays it is a cafe (flags from all nations up when it is open) but then you popped up for an icy plunge bath. The Victorian copy writers managed to convince the public that the Romans used to use it and that it was an unmissable experience with water that is "mellifluent, diaphanous, limpid, luminous transparent, pellucid" and the "nectar of gods and goddesses".

Darwin probably believed them, and probably had a dip too. When you realise how gullible he could be it makes his discoveries all the more amazing.

But we're tourists too - so off we go along the path to the Rocky Valley and over to the Cow & Calf rocks but on a route that just misses the Pancake rocks. On the way Pete is determined to see the cup marked rocks (there are masses marked on OS maps in this area) but when we find one scored with rings he dismisses it as local (possibly Victorian) grafitti. How we laugh when he later looks at the map and realises that was the real McCoy.

Just as they probably said about Darwin in Chile we rather implied that when it comes to fools on the look out for rocks/specimens, etc, well there's one born every minute.

And then we walked back down the path to the train station via a cart stall offering Yorkshiredales ice creams by a long-suffering, midge bitten Pole or Romanian man. I was very happy to buy his cones and stuffed with sugary cream quickly shot Ilkely Moor into the best place for a walk that I know. In summer it's got everything: prehistory, rocks, signage, controversy, scrambling opps and a cafe and ice creams.

Carlisle's Talk of the Town

2009-08-18T11:45:00.004Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel but stay off planes to keep their carbon footprint down. Here's how they satisfy their passion for travel

Best way of getting to know a place besides walking it? Reading it. And so in Carlisle I've come across Jacob Polley's new book – Talk of the Town. He's better known as a poet and this is his first novel but it is hauntingly good. Good enough to win a Man Booker. I like the way he used to work in Waterstones in Carlisle and plenty of the current shop assistants remember him well.

No point giving away the story - a 13 year old boy's confusion about everything - but I can't shake off the need to see if the huge statue of Queen Victoria in Bitt's Park really does have an unnecessary bit of anatomy!
Just shows how easy it is to be susceptible to rumours whatever age you are. See Jacob talk about his book on You Tube here.

Hadrian's Wall: the end & haaf fishing

2009-08-18T10:41:00.008Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel but stay off planes to keep their carbon footprint down. Here's how they satisfy their passion for travel

It's 84 miles (135km), was built in six years and the only World Heritage Site to have a long-distance footpath along it. So this is Hadrian's Wall – a 2,000 year old map route from Newcastle's Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway. And as a family we have now managed 59 miles of it stretching from Chollerford (Hexham) over to the edge of the Solway Firth (Carlisle).

There was a tourist perfect end to the walk – a Roman(esque) recreation of an Edwardian viewing point at the Banks, just off the village, which offered a poetic view to Scotland. As we sat and half contemplated our as-good-as-finish of Hadrian's Wall a man walked out with his 18 foot Haaf net to fish the tides for salmon etc. Wading out he looked like Anthony Gormley's Angel of the North on the move. With the silvery light, our soon to be rested aching feet and this snapshot of a 1,000 year old fishing skill (brought here by the Vikings) it was the most atmospheric moment of the whole walk. And that includes meeting men dressed as centurions, the re-enactors at Halsteads Fort and even witnessing the Roman shoe dug out in front of us at Vindolanda.

Living history is not yet going into the supermarket and choosing our food, or for that matter tapping out blog entries. Living history feels like watching a fishermen with a weirdy net or retracing a Roman soldiers' path within earshot of a dual carriageway.

Admittedly I did rather turn the end of our epic journey into a shopping saga by stopping off at the King's Arms, 016973 51426, to buy sew on Hadrian's Wall badges and postcards. Pete can do celebrating fine with just a pint.**

I wanted to find out more about haff fishing but it was luck that we stopped off at the Highland Laddie pub in Glasson as this is were you can find Mark Messenger, highlandladdie@talktalk.net, who'll take you out to fish the age old way for salmon, grilse (young salmon), sea trout, grey mullet, bass and flounder. He's also the secretary of a new haaf fishing association - see more on page 5 of this document about the Solway Firth here, which explains why haaf fishing is endangered now it can only be practiced between 10am-10pm.

There's even a festival - the Haafest salmon and beer festival from 5-6 September 2009. Equipment is provided (you wear your own waterproof jacket) including the haafnet and waders, though you need to be fit enough to stand in cold water for a couple of hours. Or just enjoy Jennings beer and local bands.

Be tempted when you find out that “haaf net fishing is one of the best excuses there is to stand right in the middle of one of the last wildernesses in the British Isles and explore the magnetism of the Solway Firth.” You could even see seals and porpoises and of course the many migratory wading birds that stuff themselves on the rich tidal waters and marsh land.

**Useful guide for Hadrian's Wall is Hadrian's Wall Path by Anthony Burton (Aurum, £12.99) which makes the route incredibly clear though fails to do justice to the many contrasts of the walk, or name all the pubs and which stock the best ales.

Perfect mountan hideaway

2009-08-18T10:16:00.005Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel but stay off planes to keep their carbon footprint down. Here's how they satisfy their passion for travel

The Wasdale Head Inn looks like a tiny white Lakeland cottage nestling in the flat green valley below the big mountains that ring it. But it's a mecca for anyone passing through this valley thanks to its micro-brewery, rooms and self catering apartments and a walkers/climbers equipment shop. As we stomp through the rain – Nell slithering in wellies as her feet have suddenly grown – the word INN in huge font gets pleasingly nearer... We will be happy here, no doubt.

And we are – the first day it's good enough weather to see that only the tops are in cloud – so we set out to climb Lingmell. There's a pretty walk along Moses Trod (good name eh with hints of tradition, poetry and anticipation?) with the river on the right but as we climb up the hillside it's obvious that we are approaching from an awkward angle. Quick change of plans and we swerve left and up the fell to the place where four paths cross. Here, there's a teeny tarn the kids start throwing rocks into (not sure this is a good thing but they are happy and recharging) while I look around for a mountain to climb. Eenie, meenie, minie, mo... There's so many tops we could be in the Pyrennes, Alps or Nepal...

Most people go up Scafell Pike (England's biggest) but we are so close to Great Gable here – it's top is just 300m up which is an hour long staircase climb. Or something like that, and soon we huff and puff ourselves to the top, which is a bit cloudy cheating us of the stunning Wasdale Head view we should have. Not that it matters at all – the kids have climbed their second big mountain – and the views as we descend Great Gable are sublime. Even when the cloud wafts out the big picture Nell is enchanted by being inside cloud. It's like flying, but more DIY.

The next day Pete walks off his stiffness by doing five tops, Pillar etc, up the other, less crowded valley, and we all celebrate with chocolate cake and pasta when he makes it down: contented albeit 50. A proper happy birthday to be alone in the mountains contemplating...

The Wasdale Head Inn is not a chi-chi place. It's the birthplace for British climbing so is filled with climbing memorabilia – ice picks, photos of men in tweed and weather reports. It feels very male with its wooden panelled rooms (and no hot water while we are there in our apartment), but it hums with anticipation and adventure, and we all want to go back soon.

Adventure by train

2009-08-18T10:09:00.003Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel but stay off planes to keep their carbon footprint down. Here's how they satisfy their passion for travel

Pete wants to get away for it all for a big birthday and this apparently means visiting Wast Water – the most isolated of all the Lake District's lakes. I'm up for it but looking at the map think maybe we need to rent a car. No insists Pete, we will take a train down the west coast from Carlisle – looking at wind turbines (he knows how to tempt me) – and then the steam train from Ravenglass over to Dalegarth. And then it's a three hour walk over the corpse road.

At 9am when we catch the first train out of Carlisle, it's raining. But Nell occupies herself by hoola hooping in the luggage compartment and the rest of us read so who cares about the lovely view – including the spot at St Bees where Pete and I eons ago started the Coast to Coast walk?

Two hours later (this is not a commuter line) we switch to the pint sized steam train at Ravenglass & Eskdale, http://www.ravenglass-railway.co.uk/, 01229 717171 . The station is packed with visitors – despite needing to pay a £10.80 adult fare and £5.40 child (dogs are £1.50 and cycles £3) but the seven mile open-air chug is fantastic, especially after grabbing a cuppa at Jan's Cafe on platform 1 (the food here is so good this would be enough of a day trip for me as I remember the Lakes when good food wasn't guaranteed anywhere). We find two little carriages, squeeze on our luggage and as the train toots out of the station find we are all grinning wildly. It's amazing how much more you enjoy yourself the slower you go. Each of our train journeys has only got better as the speed stutters to a walking pace. Even the girls are pointing out ash, oak , rowan (trees) and Herdwick (sheep) between sweet swapping and jokes. This s-l-o-w-i-n-g down has to be a good sign for the next phase: crossing that moorland corpse road over to the Wasdale Head Inn, http://www.wasdaleheadinn.co.uk/.

We offload our luggage with a mate of the hotel owner – thank you for this! - who then makes an hour or more drive I reckon to get back there; bypass two lovely looking pubs; pop into Lakeland's oldest working water mill, quickly picnic and then the rain starts up again. But it doesn't matter we're in our walking boots, at the start of our holiday heading towards England's deepest lake, highest mountains and smallest church (admittedly this is less of a draw).

Definitely an adventure for all of us to walk to our hotel. Even when there's a lot of walking ahead...

Loving our borrowed dog

2009-06-23T20:46:00.007Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell like to travel without racking up their carbon footprint

We like travel, and we like dogs too, usually incompatible. This time we've lucked out and borrowed a wonderful dog for two months while his family cross six continents ticking off the dom-toms (French colonies). And all because I was earwigging in Islington's music shop...
You can read all about our borrowed dog's family's doings, right from their start in the little known St Pierre et Miquelon, here. I've been reading dog owner Rosie Millard's travels to Disney from the Sunday Times and he agrees it is meant to include Martinique, French Guyana, French Polynesia, New Caledonia and La Reunion (but not Wallis & Fortuna), and can we now turn the TV back to Simon Cowell or Hannah Montana, or just fiddle around for a bit longer on Club Penguin? Yes, our borrowed dog likes TV.

As newbie city dog owners we're also getting used to getting up when Disney wakes, picking up four poos a day and enjoying his enthusiasm for balls, walks and us. It's amazing how quickly a well-trained dog fits into your life...

Pirates at home

2009-06-23T20:25:00.009Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel but stay off planes to keep their carbon footprint down. Here's how they satisfy their passion for travel

OK I admit that for ships in the Gulf of Aden the Somalian pirates are a problem, but it's hard not to want to be a pirate at fancy dress parties, imaginging a look that mixes Russell Brand's attitude, Captain Flint's reputation and Jack Sparrows' stunning looks - and that's just the girls. So we've squeezed into our tiny garden a pirate experience - floating platform, Jolly Roger, pondlife views - to enable us to take off on the high seas whenever we want.

To my surprise the first voyage never made it to the Caribbean, instead we saw off kling ons on the starboard bow and then detoured via night sky constellations until we heard someone like Long John Silver tapping down the street, got frighted and sneaked back inside for a bedtime read of Treasure Island.

Local news

2009-05-08T11:45:00.006Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola (seen here publicising a plasticbagfreehighburybarn film show event) and Nell love travelling but like to do it in a way that keeps their carbon footprint low. So that's no planes, occasional trains, car club cars and enthusiastic biking when we cannot walk. This post is from Nicola

Just had a weekend staying or meeting up with friends who've left London. I wish they'd stayed put, but it was fun chatting as we rowed from the Bath Boating Station down the Avon. One week later the blisters are patching themselves up. The south west, it's a dangerous place...

Back home we have been busy in our street encouraging neighbours to plant up their tree pits with poppies, camomile and other native wild flower seeds. Lola, Nell and I clear up the pit - retching slightly as we flush dog poo down our loo, put the tossed cola cans into the recycling bins, dig up the current plants for green waste recycling and plop cigarette butts into the dustbin for landfill. I wanted to grow carrots but the dog poo really puts me off. This is a tame version of guerrila gardening, but I like the idea that my kids are already so used to community cheerleading. And it led to some interesting chat about the sunflowers and sweet corn I've seen growing on roundabouts in Nairobi, Honiara and here in London near Blackfriars Bridge.

So far nine of our street's trees are planted up by their nearest neighbours and adorned with a green ribbon to show there's big tree love out there.

Next project is to get clothes swapping going in our school. The plan is to get parents and carers to bring unwanted clothes for 0-11 year olds to the school one Friday. They can just give them, or take other items or give and take. It's a good idea but definitely a trial.

The swishes held for mums have been very successful but if we are ever to crack fast fashion then swapping clothes is a no brainer. The problem is that if parents have never been tempted by secondhand clothing, then they often feel ashamed to kit their children out in it. At least that's how my Somali, Bengali and Turkish friends put it. How different life is for Lola and Nell - really I'm surprised I didn't get pre-loved children given my enthusiasm for all things secondhand/vintage/freecycled etc.

Wales at easter

2009-04-14T21:26:00.006Z

Pete with pretend-to-be cossacks Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel but stay off planes to keep their carbon footprint down. Here's how they satisfy their passion for travel, this time using one of the oldest ways of getting around - on a horse

Wales used to be the UK’s best kept secret. It’s got the most gorgeous scenery, rolling hills that are steep enough to make you puff just looking at them; castles; activities, coastline and those green, green valleys. It’s got great poets, Taliesin(s) and lyrical Dylan Thomas to heroes such as Glyndwr and that girl from the Mumbles (no, I'm not thinking of Charlotte Church).

It’s also wooed and won a lot of my friends so in order to make a visit to Llanidloes we were happy to housesit a combination of geese, hens, cats, horses and seedlings while our hosts took a mini break in their camper van from housesitting her mum’s place while she’s off working in Lesotho. A complicated bit of house swapping to organise (as a friend of our hostess also moved into our house in London), but five horsy days for me and the kids doing country stuff.

For Lola the highlight was bareback rounding up of sheep (!). Nell was delighted to go on her first hacks, have the big dog lick her hand and watch her mum treat geese as nervously as if they were a herd of rhinos. There scarier in fact.

A real treat was to saddle up the horses – grey Herbie and liver chestnut Rosie who was born on the farm – and take the girls for a ride up over the hills. It was hot and the last few lambs were popping out in one field which inspired lengthy discussion about why sheep don’t eat their placentas (much), how many placentas twin lambs create and human connected fact of life questions.

And then it was time to trot to the moor and Lola lent forward, clutching the mane, imagining herself as Laura Ingalls Wilder (of Little House on the Prairie fame) galloping bareback On the Shores of Silver Creek. While Nell was being a Nellie – find out which you are at the cute quiz site Are you a Nellie (spunky) or a good natured Laura, http://www.littlehousebooks.com/fun/nelliequiz.cfm

Content as I was, riding out with my two girls – who I’ve taught to ride despite their London address (a miracle really but it may come in handy come the fossil fuel cutbacks as this is the original renewable way of getting around until the bike was introduced) - I couldn’t resist dreaming of other horse nations where the mum would stick the kids on the GGs to make getting around more fun, and a great deal quicker. And within seconds the beautiful 360 degree skyline of wind farms and bleatingly busy ewes disappeared so Lola, Nell and I could cross the old soviet steppes Cossack style on our way to summer grazing. And as we looked for finger posts taking us along the National Trail my imagination was ticking off the horse-lovers Stans – Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's a bit like TV Alexandra Tolstoy's rides with horse people of the word (see what the Guardian makes of her show here).

But less posh - because back in 1985 visiting a uni friend, Nicky, whose family were based in Islamabad, Pakistan I went to the North West Frontier Province, after a bumpy flight from Peshawar up to Chitral, which is very close to the Afghan border. I remember being aghast at the number of kalashnikovs slung over men’s shoulders, and stunned by how many Afghani refugees were forced to make new lives in an area that looked so bad for crop growing – although maybe I visited in the wrong season as this part of the silk road is famous for apricot orchards.

Dressed up in shalwar kameez (and sun glasses which rather ruined the common touch) Nicky and I looked at the sites, ate the delicious apricots and debated maternal health until we were invited to watch from the Prince’s dias (well he said he was) the amazing game of buzkashi played (in Uzbekistan it’s called uloq). Buzkashi is a kind of polo with a goat carcass used as the ball.. It’s very fast, only men do it (I think only men watch it but I guess Nicky and I were treated as honorary man) and at that particular contest a clarinet and drum band beat out a rider’s signature tune whenever they were on the ball.

It was a surreal afternoon – English polo has never seemed so exciting again, even when it’s injected with Argentinian verve and skill.

Now even the simple pleasure of a morning ride with my daughters surprises me. It's not just that we live in central London, or that Nell's asthma is made worse by the beasts, or the cost (although all are relevant) it's the surprise of having got to be old enough to hack out with my own children. The Welsh views may distract eco-bunny me - we counted enough wind turbines to provide energy for nearly 7,000 households but I'll have to check this - but when I'm around horses I feel just as I did as an eight year old out for a ride: happy, ready to canter and in touch with the place I am.

Horsiculture is maligned for being elitist, pricey and a little bit obsessional - so as a part time riding coach I'm delighted to see that a few environmental writers, specifically Mark Lynas and Sharon Astyk, have suggested horse transport may be the way to go. I don't for a moment think they were serious, but it's a good reminder that everyone used to be able to get around without using any fuel save grass, hay and oats.

Cycling via Tashkent

2009-04-14T21:23:00.006Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - but they don't want to hike up their carbon emissions by taking the plane. Here's how they stay home and satisfy their passion for travel

A month ago I was returning a borrowed bike to my sister-in-law in Hertfordshire the lazy way… ie, I wheeled it on to the Stansted Express train from Liverpool Street station, London to Bishop’s Stortford - knocking 30 miles off my pedaling. I probably could have been picked up in Hertfordshire but it was a lovely spring day so at Bishop's Stortford I got off and cycled the 7 miles to my old home near Little Hadham as happy as a cyclist with the wind behind them, and light panniers, can be.

The train journey was fun too as I had a long chat with the barista (if that’s the right word for the guy who runs the trolley service of hot drinks and snacks) who came from Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan (and once far better known in the West as it was a main stopover on the Europe to China silk road). The barista was a brilliant ambassador for Uzbekistan – he didn’t just give a check list of where to go (Samarkand obviously…) he also summarized what the place is like.

For example the autocractic president is head of state, and head of government – so no room for dissent. Indeed President Islam Karimov is already on his 3rd stint in office (only legal to do two stints according to the constitution). Interestingly he was raised in a Soviet orphanage which must have been tough. His Harvard-educated daughter, Gulnara Karimova, is maybe the one to watch. She secured popular support with her music video releases (using the stage name GooGoosha), groovy enough – listen at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd8BVcmj0B8&feature=related

Karimova is not just a wealthy woman – from her businesses and her divorce from Mansur Maqsudi, she’s a fashion designer, chicly dressed and my coffee-serving friend admires her hugely, calling her “clever”. From what I can see on the web she’s Islam Karimov’s heir apparent too…

Instead of watching the Lea Valley go by (you could do the same at the cycle ride here), I got a black coffee and a potted history of politics Uzbekistan-style. Lucky me. And to think I’d written off the Stansted Express as a rather expensive whiz to my old home with little chance of getting a seat as it’s so often packed by minibreakers (careless of their carbon footprints) flying dirt cheap to Scotland and Sweden – and a few other Euro airports. You can see why that's bad if you watch The Age of Stupid...

Egyptian princess

2009-03-18T13:00:00.008Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell are finding novel ways to travel the world without leaving Britain. Just been to Egypt without even leaving the kitchen table...

Nell adores leraning about ancient Egypt and her dad would dearly like to see the pyramids. Luckily for us there's the British Museum to snoop around. After a school visit Nell made her own ancient Egyptian jewellery (crown, arm amulet and gaudy necklace) from paper and string, see photo.

Then a few days ago my friend Nicky - who is driving across Africa with her sons - sent a birthday gift wrapped up in Arabic tape postmarked from a hotel near the pyramids. Nell was thrilled. She sepnt nearly 15 minutes studying the brown paper wrapped parcel, fiddled with the tape and traced the hieroglyphs until finally she could not resist opening it up.

Inside was a beautiful wooden box -not quite made from cedar or suitable for the world-famous Alexandria library - but nearly, and in that was a dashing blue beaded hat that turns Nell into an Egyptian princess. Though I think she prefers the idea of being a bellydancing babe.

Riverside finds

2009-03-18T12:52:00.004Z

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel the world but like to find original ways to keep their carbon footprint down for the journey. This time we went back to medieval London

There's no such thing as away. When it comes to plastic bags in landfill this is a disaster. When it comes to the excitement of finding a 500 year old sole by the River Thames it's exciting.

Lola, Nell and I were showing a 9-year-old friend from Yorkshire, Izzy, around the South Bank recently and found an old shoe sole with little nails sticking out on the beach below the Tate Modern after getting our eye in spotting lots of bits of broken clay smoking pipes.

We gave the sole to our visitor to take home and her mum Julia showed it to an archaeologist. Can you believe it was more than 500 years old? Here's what the archaeologist said:

"I have looked at the shoe in the Museum of London Finds Catalogue and it is Medieval. It is a standard man's shoe (small size) that would probably have been worn by an artisan or merchant.Unfortunately its design remained the same for a very long period indeed and so it could date from anywhere from 1175 to about 1450. Aristocratic footware,the platform built pattens and pointy poulaines changed design frequently and so are more easily datable."

Another brick in the wall

2009-03-02T14:30:00.007Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - without racking up our carbon footprint. This weekend trip took in two institutions - the Queen's most visited castle home at Windsor and the poshest of the boys' boarding schools, Eton. Post by Nicola

It's where they train boys to become young men. It costs an arm and a leg and relies on a mixture of great teachers, tradition, snobbery and parents willingness to pay up, pay on. Eton is only for boys, a great shame as Lola thought she'd like to go there... and now she has, but just for a day trip to see my godson.

Here Nell, Lola and George look left towards Eton's famous wall - a bit bellying but still used for the inexplicable (aka unique) wall game. The tree with the white band that hasn't been hit for 200 years is on the far right.

And then around Windsor Castle where we saw some of the most wonderful portraits of Charles 1, Henry VIII and the 13 year old Elizabeth 1. As with all the royal palaces (or historic palaces) it's expensive to do a tour but you can reuse your ticket for the next year.

Lola and Nell were impressed by the world's biggest carpet beneath the world's biggest mahogany table. I liked the banks of spring flowers by the waterfall beneath the towers. And the magnificent dolls' house which we even bought a guide book for, and has proved a pleasure to flick through.

Windsor is a crowded town, and not just filled with tourists, but it was a lovely day trip even if we felt in such an English environment there was no way we could pretend we were anywhere else. Now that's something that's never happened before.

Big spin

2009-03-02T14:11:00.007Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell are trying to visit as many countries as possible without increasing their carbon footprint. This entry is from Nicola

The mild spring days of February inspired us to get on our bikes to pedal around Broxbourne woods in Hertfordshire (reached via the train that seems to run from our doorstep straight to a hornbeam/oak ancient woodland). The stop is Bayford, and as an added bonus just a short cycle ride up the hill there's even a gastro pub specialising in home cooked food and real ale at the Baker Arms .

With the sun above, these lovely woods smelt of warming earth, and magic visitors to play. Nell set up a shop in one forked ash tree while I took loads of photos of buds and deer baskets (woven fences to stop the muntjac and other nibbly beasties from coppicing coppiced timber to death).

Pete wanted to time travel, so stared at the info panels hoping it would reveal how he could join the Celtic camp that's run annually deep in the woods near Brickendon. Sadly the panels didn't, but there's info here about how to join the history makers at the Celtic Harmony camp.

Dragon stance

2009-02-23T22:06:00.005Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world without racking up their carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

Korea is one of the countries I don't expect to know about. It's far away, mysterious and I haven't yet had any students from there. China yes. Taiwan yes. But this half-term week after a fascinating detour to the V&A museum (the Natural History Museum was just too crowded) we all found out about Korea's early writing programme for the masses, the way Buddhist texts were written up and the importance of dragons. Most of the dragons were on decorative china pieces but bold, lithe and perfectly scary. As we'd just seen a lifesize sculpture of George slaughtering a dragon in the plaster court, dragons seemed to have become the dominant animal force in the East wing...

While there a text pinged in from the girls' tae kwondo instructor, Michael, suggesting that they used half term to prepare for some tests (belts). That's how I know that this amazing hand/foot discipline was born in Korea on 11 April 1955. Bizarrely for the past couple of years our family has even been using a few Korean words - all thanks to the stances the kids learn in tae kwondo - without realising just where they came from. Not long ago Pete even wrote about it in the Guardian, see here to find out if we ever found our 'indomitable spirit'.

I'm afraid to say that there wasn't really a dragon's chance for me.

Shark adventure

2009-02-15T17:05:00.006Z

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel around the world without hiking up their carbon footprint. Can you help us? This post is from Nicola and Nell.

"I'd never seen sharks before. I really was interested," says Nell.

We took her and six friends (plus Lola) so eight - because she was eight - to the London Aquarium (see line-up above). The Aquarium is a bit dismal at the moment because are building works until Easter. But the kids adored seeing a tank full of huge sharks swimming in a Pacific ocean (salted Thames water) and then listening to a talk about the different types of shark. Behind the acetate tank the sharks looked very menacing as they loomed up to the sides and then dodged around the replica Easter Island heads.

Horrifyingly 100s of 1000s of sharks are killed each year for their fins - to make the supposed delicacy shark fin soup. I used to like eating fish, and when I did found it hard to snorkel as my mouth kept watering... but really how could a fin look tasty? It's mystifying. Meanwhile the shark keepers did a great job explaining to the children why they really shouldn't pick shark's fin soup if they ever go to an Asian country serving it. Lesson learnt we all went and ate homemade cake (made by Nell!) on the grass near the London Eye.