I can fly this plane

Nicola and Pete, plus daughters Lola, now 9, and Nell, now 7, spent last summer exploring Britain in a carbon-light manner. Now we're home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for occasional sightseeing, plus tips onhow to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

At last here's a flight my family can take. Not only is it carbon zero, you also get to pick your seat - I'm sure Pete will want to be close to Time Team's Tony Robinson. Best of all it's a virtual trip, so no risk of irritating neighbours or turbulence terrors. This plane ride is captained by Friends of the Earth in a bid to get Government to include aviation emissions in their upcoming - and rather delayed - Climate Change Bill. Head for it now...

There's also three in-flight movies to enjoy at YouTube, find the Westminster jet crasher; the Cockney Queen and the naked flight. Aside from all those campaigners who fly around the world to the climate COPs (though they needn't December 2008 as the meeting is in Poland) how often do you get to book a flight with celebs - think Razorlight's Johnny Borrell, Radiohead's Thom Yorke - to help Government do the right thing?

This is carbon offsetting at its best.

Footprints in 2007

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling 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. This post is from Nicola

Summing up: it's been a year of adventure and we had no need to spend any part of it on a plane or at the airport. Fog chaos holds no fears. The best memories include...

• 40 countries visited and no plane used


• three months of travel around Britain even though we don't own a car (although we've sometimes used them by borrowing, sharing, renting and also as a member or a car club)


• being aware of the need to tackle climate change makes it easier to make decisions about leisure and pleasure.


• adventures on our doorstep have been easy to organise (you can even be spontaneous), are carbon light and have made us all appreciate our home a bit more.


• when we set out a Daily Telegraph travel journalist called our doorstep tour of the globe "either mad or genius", hopefully readers of this blog will be able to make up their own minds.


• thanks to everyone who helped us.
  

Read Carbon Detox

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during the summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint… This post is from Nicola

It’s half term and everyone seems to be on the move. The last half dozen people I’ve had conversations with include a mum and daughter off to Iceland; a partner off to New York for a friend’s birthday; my mum going to Edinburgh for two nights and a family off to Agincourt. All of them flew, which must make anyone wonder whether our family efforts to reduce carbon are worth diddleysquat. Therec are times when I wonder how we can all be so blind to climate change – after all clever people for centuries have mocked Nero for fiddling while Rome burned – but I hope a new book will help re-educate these dedicated travelers to shift from the skies to lower carbon methods of travel. Find out how in George Marshall’s entertaining new book Carbon Detox (Gaia) which treats our fossil fuelled lifestyles as an addiction that can only be treated if the addict wishes to make a clean break.

I’m not jealous of my friends plane trips. During half term we’ll see the pink footed geese newly arrived from Iceland who over-winter at Holkham in Norfolk (and got here without making any carbon emissions); we’ll pick up New York style beigels freshly made at Finsbury Park’s Happening Beigel; we’ll wear tartan scarves if we want to feel Scottish and we have our French fix from the chic Parisian who teaches a group of six year olds in our house each week during term time. We can do better of course with the web and google world, but that’s just for tasters.

As for those of you who feel you have a right to go wherever you want by plane, then please just go for longer and rule out the peripatetic, climate damaging mini breaks. Not only will you get to know a place better, you’ll also be doing the world a favour. And if that’s too big an ask then just buy or skim through Carbon Detox when you’re next in a book shop choosing travel guides.

Bristol: dirty plans, green action

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during the summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint…

You may already know that Bristol has an airport. But did you know that there are crazy plans to expand it so that by 2030 around 12.5 million people will be using it (currently 5.2 million do)? The plans will increase noise locally as there will be a plane in the air every 3.5 minutes for 16 hours a day and there will be a huge surge in the number of cars - an extra 220,000 on the road which will wreck the peace of some rural villages. CO2 emissions will soar which is bad as aviation is the fastest growing source of the greenhouse gases that are changing our climate.

My Bristol-based friend, Helen, (who is writing Cool Life Cool Planet, to be published by Collins, April 2008) asked me to give out some leaflets explaining the need to Stop Bristol Airport Expansion but I has trouble offloading them. The taxi driver for instance said he was very keen on the project as it would bring loads more business. I didn't like to say that much of this might be done in traffic jams seeing as he was driving us across Bristol. It’s easy to forget how short-sighted most people are. Our climate is changing and that is going to mean lifestyles change. Building more airports or taking more trips by plane isn’t going to be an option. As Leo Hickman points out in his most recent book on travel one reason why environmentalists point the finger of gloom at planes is that when a jumbo flies from London to Dubai it emits around 180 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere – where the polluting gas will remain for as long as 100 years. Not only does CO2 have a long life, that one way plane trip is equivalent to as many as 18 average people’s entire emissions heating their home, driving around, buying food out of season for a whole year.

More positively Bristol is home to a sustainability charter and the Big City eco café movement, and will be host to the Schumacher lectures on October 13. Helen was also able to point out some of the guerilla green gardening done by the Transition Montpelier group that has recently turned a derelict blot on the corner of Picton Street and Wellington Lane into an arty area shaded by plants. It looks like a spot now that anyone could enjoy. Go see!

Granny's moving house

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood whatever the weather. This post is from Nicola

Since I was four years old my mum has lived in a lovely spot in Hertfordshire, not far from Bishop’s Stortford, but now it’s all change. She plans to move to what seems at first impressions to be a thriving villagey-town, Buntingford, once some work is done on her new home.

We’ve seen the new place twice now, once to admire and now to gawp at what the builders are doing to floors and ceilings. But we also got to clear out the pond weed; paddle with ducks by the river and arrange leaves in artful Andy Goldsworthy-type circles on the lawn. The cottage looks the sort of place that my mum could be very happy and Lola and Nell already have good memories as this is the place where they are able to purchase both mice and mouse supplies. I especially like the fact that there are no planes flying low and noisily over – something her “old” house is blighted by thanks to the seemingly endless expansion of Stansted Airport.

Strangely it is also the town where I first went to nursery school, so we are all coming back home too. I dimly remember Mum dragging my reins to stop me delaying her anymore as I climbed on and off the steps that jut out into the streets from the older houses. I also remember being shy at the nursery school when I looked at the other children (aged maybe three or four) and thought they looked so confident that I didn’t plan to even attempt to play with them.

There are times even now – more than 40 years later – when I feel exactly the same way about groups. You’d have thought I might have learnt to be a bit more skeptical about social glue by now.

Midnight walk

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood whatever the weather. This post is from Nicola

It’s 10pm and I’ve just got back from taking Lola and Nell on their first dusk-to-dark nature safari. We crossed the common at dusk dodging puddles left in the ruts of 4WD while admiring the mist that had hangs like a willow the wisp across this area making it feel very spooky. But this isn't a ghost walk, so to cheer the children up we walk on the road past Norton Cottage where the owls are shouting out for company and then out into enough open space to see the full moon rising, and then getting caught up in the hornbeam trees.

Hearing the owls reminds Lola of the time we were camping by Ullswater in the Lake District and she was woken on a wet night by a hungry owlet barracking its parents for food. Owls don’t fly when it’s wet – presumably because the voles don’t show – so this poor owlet would have had two choices: pester power or munching up its sibling (assuming there was another in the nest). Lola was too sleepy to realize this and just sat up in her sleeping bag to say loudly, but politely, “Please can you stop making that noise.” I think it worked, anyway we all fell back into a very fretful sleep and the next night the little owl wasn’t so persistent.

The big block is a mile best walked anti-clockwise. It can be busy but at this time of night on a bank holiday Saturday there are only two cars. As they pass we press ourselves into the verge, me hoping they’ll dip their lights when they see my pale trousers. But when the road is restored to its usual tranquility we get to see lots of bats using the silvery lanes as if they are they are selecting insects from the pick and mix counter.

We then turn right and out into the country with a stubble field to our left and hay-scented golf course on the right. Wherever there’s long grass on the roadside verge the crickets are up for it, shouting and partying. But all’s quiet in the stubble tonight: yesterday there was a couple working the north west corner by the passing point with a huge metal detector. I think all they got was mud on their boots.

As it grows dark the golden light shillueting SPELLING the far hedgerow closes down the colours into a grey blue and then inky night. On the golf course the grass is now soaked by dew and the moon gaining enough strength to give us moon shadows.

"It looks like the moon is a planet," said Lola teasing me, she knows I get very mixed up dealing with the solar system. Nell agrees and I resolve to learn them once and for all - I'm sure there's a nymonic SPELLING where John Likes Susan's Violet Eyes to help me finally get those planets under control.

Then just as the kids grow tired and we can spot more stars than planes (hard near Stansted Airport on a bank holiday weekend) we are over the five-bar gate and into the farmyard. Here the children turn on their torches so they can dodge the giant puddles and avoid the pond. Now we are on the final straight – strolling up the lane arm in arm listening to a neighbour’s teenagers celebrate GCSE results with a loud – and good – rendition of I would walk 500 miles by The Pretenders. It's a good choice!

Back home Granny Fiona is mystified by a walk in the dark: the terrace is her night time limit. Yet when pressed she says she enjoyed night fishing as a child on Strangford Lough, in Northern Ireland, and coming back by the moonlight with the oars dripping phosphorescence. Our midnight safari is not nearly so glamorous, but what a fine way to end a summer’s day.

Water garden

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood whatever the weather. This post is from Nicola

Alnwick Gardens - the amazing 12-acre creation of the Duchess of Northumberland funded by European money and NGOs such as Northern Rock Foundation - is deliberately focused around water, http://www.alnwickgarden.com/about_the_garden/index.asp. While the rest of England seems deluged - Worcester, Battersea are apparently flooded - up in Northumberland they are coping fine with rain, indeed they are used to cold, wet summers.

On the hour, and half hour, the fountains on the cascade are set off by computer and either bubble their way down the waterfall in the manner of a great French palace, like Versailles, or they shoot spurts on to the pavement soaking the innocent who screech in shock. At the base of the fountain is a huge pool with water draining off the walls which children are encouraged to play in.

About 20 solid-looking plastic diggers are parked there and the kids pedal from one side to the other with cargoes of water they have collected, usually getting wet but invariably grinning from ear-to-ear. You'd have to be a strange child not to enjoy doing this water shuttle all day, every day. Even in their raincoats the kids look as happy as children in India celebrating the first rains of the monsoon.

In contrast all those families who have either had to move out of their homes or got stuck on roads thanks to flooding must be loathing the recent deluges. As ever for anyone with insurance it's always alright in the end - albeit inconvenient for days or months - but with so many floods this year I think we can all expect higher premiums, and less coverage from the insurance companies at our next policy renewal date.

In Northumberland the farmers are very worried about the weather spoiling their crops. This is the time for the silage (grass) to be cut and for grains like wheat and barley to be harvested - something that is not easy to do if your crop has been flattened by yet more rain. Potato blight is also a risk too as the endless rain is washing off the chemical treatments conventional farmers rely on to keep this in check. People's immediate misery from heavy rain is of course the most newsworthy, and provides better pix, but bad harvests are in the long term much more worrying for us all.

I want to find out if this year's wet weather results in more people flying off to drier parts of the world for their holidays... I'm hoping it won't. But I know lots of people feel rain is the big bully that ruins their borders, picnic plans and holidays and thus they deserve a bit of sun, regardless of what it takes to reach that location, or how that adds up to making climate change (the very thing they are trying to escape) worse.

Greens on planes

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of loads of countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola.

Planes aren’t just carrying passengers with sunscreen and travellers cheques – there’s an increasing amount of planes arriving each day that are stuffed with crates of exotic fruit and vegetables destined for our supermarkets and market stalls. If you can't resist holiday, work or love miles using a plane, then you can at least reduce the amount of CO2 emissions you create from your weekly shopping basket by choosing UK grown produce. This is easy if you read the label, and great for your children's geography too. Admittedly it makes your trip round the supermarket a little bit slower at first...

Sometimes a packet of salad leaves, can contain produce grown in as many as five countries – all flown in from different corners of the world. This is definitely not what's meant by having your five a day.

Less miles from farm gate to your plate is even easier if you grow a few items yourself. At Lola and Nell's school the Climate Club planted strawberries and blueberries back in March in the hope that they'd be able to enjoy snacking on their own grown produce. They might even share the crop with their friends, so long as someone keeps remembering to water the containers.

Cross fingers that our housesitters will also be watering our window boxes of basil, tomatoes, Romanesco cauliflower, fennel and mint while we are away. Has anyone got any tips about how to make watering really easy, and fun enough for children and guests to want to do it? Or can we get away with a thick layer of mulch?

Travel surprises

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of loads of countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola.

If you're a fan of holidaying in the UK then it's hard not to feel smug when friends say they flew off to Majorca for a week of the Easter holidays and it rained non stop. "People knew the weather was warm and gorgeous in England and they were trying to get planes back,' admitted one Dad. "It was too cold and horrible to even go to the beach. And then when we got back home to Cambridge everyone looked a lot more tanned and healthier than us." As you can see there are some spring benefits to this year of the climate changing - and definitely worth enjoying while we all can.

It's not just the weather that can surprise travellers. Did you know it's quicker to take the train from London to Paris than it is to fly, http://www.eurostar.com/ ? And it's also good for your conscience because the train notches up your annual carbon dioxide emissions by a far smaller amount:
BY PLANE: journey is 3.5 hours. There and back uses up 244kg CO2.
BY TRAIN: journey is 2.75 hours. There and back uses up 22kg CO2.

We know that train hopping is going to cost us a lot this summer - an amount I hope to ease by buying tickets in advance (walk ups can be disastrously expensive) and using our family railcard. We could save by avoiding the sleeper to Scotland, but I think that's one journey everyone in my family will enjoy too much to drop. Pete will like the glamour of getting into Scottish mood with a whisky in the dining car and the kids will adore the bunk berths. I'm usually happiest doing at least two things at once - and sleeping flat as the miles spin by on a train is at least meant to be possible for normal salaried folk in the way that flying first class is absolutely not!

What's your favourite journey? We'd especially like to hear about trips that don't take too long from your doorstep.

Can you offset flights?

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of loads of countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola.

The new trend for offsetting your carbon emissions by planting trees or donating a couple of quid to a worthy project cannot salve the jump in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that each plane trip will bring to your yearly total. It's better not to get on a plane than to pay a sop at take off time. Here's why. If we are trying to reduce our CO2 emissions planes rack up the figures. For example an average household will clock up about 10 tonnes (!) of CO2 emissions in a year - but with a bit of thought/planning (see ideas 1-3 below) it's not difficult to half this amount. Apparently even the boffin members of the Royal Society of Arts are all promising to aim for five tonne annual totals, good on them).

There's a few people that reckon carbon offsetting is a ridiculous concept designed for money wasters. I do too and for that reason adore a fab website that sends up the carbon offsetting idea beautifully. At http://www.cheatneutral.com you can "offset" your dating indiscretions - or choose to get paid for not having a boyfriend or girlfriend. Already more than 60,000 people have signed up as cheaters/singletons, which just shows how irresistible the allure of offsetting is at the moment...

If we really want a solution for sorting out climate change then the answer is not to be part of the problem. Stay away from flights and offset fees.

Tackling climate change needs political will, of course, but people also need to:
1) sort out the energy needs of your home
2) hang the car keys out of reach occasionally and
3) get to know your bus stop, train station and (London travellers only) get an oyster card.
First homeschooling challenge will be to get the kids to be marketing gurus and think up a snappier anti-plane phrase for use on tickets (just like the warnings on cigarette packets) while we are on one of our longer train trips...

Why "no planes"

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of loads of countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola.

Just before Lola (now eight) got her first tooth getting around the UK was a simple decision - you drove. Students used coaches or railcards. Heroics cycled. Trains had moments in and out of fashion. Plus there were boats to visit neighbours on the island of Ireland, the Isle of Man, France etc. Then came staggeringly cheap plane travel and the mini break, begun and ended in an airport terminal.

Exciting as taking a trip by plane may seem to be, it is terrible for the environment that you can now fly from London to Cornwall, Birmingham to Cardiff or Manchester to Glasgow for pocket money prices. Even short trips can rack up half a tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

At the moment aviation's CO2 emissions are rising because millions of us can't resist planes for mini-hols. The tickets are cheap as chips because the Government allows the aviation industry #9 billion in tax breaks (think what you could do with that if you ran the country!). Although the Government says it is keen to tackle climate change, bafflingly it has refused to add aviation pollution into the basket of carbon dioxide emissions that could be cut. That’s why you can read a newspaper story telling you about the extinctions and major changes to habitats and weather patterns that climate change will bring… but still see an advert on the facing page from an aviation company with another fare for a tenner or less.

It’s not just the carbon dioxide emissions that are the problem. Both Pete and I grew up not far from Stansted Airport in Essex and know how noisy planes can be if you want to sleep later than sparrow-fart or talk to a friend in the garden.

We like travelling, but think it is best to resist plane temptations – especially don’t try to kid yourself that as a flight is going anyway, it really doesn’t matter if you swell the passenger list by just one more. That's because practically any long haul return flight will double the amount of carbon dioxide emissions your household creates in a year.

WAY TO GO: Here’s a few ideas to help you succeed with next year’s plane-free resolution. For Europe try using Eurostar – it’s so glamorous, and there’s often 2 for 1 ticket deals. You can find out how to get across Europe on train using an inspiring website like http://www.seat61.com/. Or how about booking longer holidays so you don’t get tempted to take two or three return flights when you could just take one? Now that's what I call temptation...