Hippo at the printers

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

This is the face of a man (left) who's finally sent his corrected book proofs of There's a Hippo in my Cistern: one man's misadventures on the eco-frontline off to the printer. Now there's the long wait until 2 June 2008 when it comes out. I reckon he's done a Feverpitch for the eco generation. If Pete's funny book gets a lot of readers then Pete May could do more for climate change than most of us ever can.

Here's a summary of the book (lifted from the back cover):

WHY IS THERE A HIPPO IN PETE MAY'S CISTERN, YOU MIGHT ASK.

Back in the nineties, Pete May was busy watching football and drinking beer. He was quite happy surrounding himself with countless pizza boxes, beer cans and other environmentally unfriendly consumer stuff. Then along came Nicola - an environmental activist intent on saving rainforests. Pete, surprised to find himself drawn to someone so far removed from his planet-killing laddish lifestyle, began to wonder whether two people so different could really fall for each other?

Would Pete ever change his ways and sign up to the green lifestyle of composting loos, chicken rearing, energy saving and general self-sufficiency? Would he ever get to grips with devices called Hippos that he found himself dunking in his cistern to save water when flushing?

This is the charming and funny true-life tale of one man's struggle to grapple with the good life. GO GREEN and get the girl.

Big up for Growing Communities

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

Every week my family tucks into a bulging bag of organic, seasonal, tasty veg from Growing Communities - a unique Hackney box scheme which prioritises local produce, runs the certified Stoke Newington Farmers' Market which attracts around 1,500 people a week and supports small-scale farmers growing as near to possible to London.

Although 680 bags are sent out each week to Growing Communities members (nearly 66 tonnes of organic produce a year) sometimes I try and encourage strangers, neighbours and friends in Islington to join up to the scheme because it is a brilliant way of reducing your carbon footprint and getting predominantly UK-grown veg delivered to your doorstep. And it's good value.

Reading Growing Communities most recent annual report I realise that the director, Julie Brown, is one of our neighbourhood's super green stars. As her welcome in the annual report makes clear (even when she's not quoting from Terminator 2) she's not just a worthy woman, she has a great sense of fun. "We are creating an interconnected web of local people, farmers, land, businesses, projects and food which together have the potential to sustain us: a vibrant, community based system which enriches our lives, providing us with good food, good friends and increasing numbers of us with good work.... I know it may not feel like that when you are staggering around in the yard in the dark trying to remember the combination to the shed, trying to think what to do with your backlog of curly kale, or standing in the rain at the market waiting to be served. And while there is always more we can do, for now we can feel good that are actions are part of something that is making a real difference... tackling climate change, making our community more resilient and creating something that is better in so many ways."

The only hitch is that with all this tasty fruit and veg I'm less inclined to attempt to grow much on my own plot...

Wildflowers on the roof

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.

Green roofs may be the new trend – a wildlife haven, light on materials and a boon to the city – but it turns out that not all are equal. At the same time as the Guardian’s new King’s Cross office is being criticized for having a green carpet of sedums with low wildlife value I’m sowing a cornflower mix on to the roof of our hen shed.

When it comes to sedum versus native wildflowers then the wildflowers win because they will attract such a variety of insects including pollinators like bees and butterflies. In fact I choose wildlflowers for aesthetics as sedums are generally quite low growing so on my new 3m high shed it wouldn’t have been possible to admire any rooftop greenery. What’s more the cornflower mix was much cheaper at #7.50 for a 100g bag from Norfolk’s Emorsgate Seeds. In contrast I’d need either nine sedum plugs per metre at 1.50 each (and I’ve got three metres square to cover) or to order a ready-made sedum carpet which offered little change from #90.

Instant gratification is another advantage: it’s November but I can still go ahead and sow the cornfield mix of pheasant’s eye, corn cockles, corn chamomile, thorow-wax, cornflower, corn marigold, common forget-me-not, common poppy, corn buttercup and night-flowering catchfly. To go ahead with the sedums I’d have needed to keep the rooftop soil weed free and then planted in the spring… such a long time away.

Like a volcanic tropical island most of the green roof is out of sight – around 80 per cent of the box is hardcore and gravel, most of this rescued or pounded up from bits that I’ve found in skips over the years and then left lying around our garden. To see if it is a success I’ll have to wait, but it is definitely keeping the rain off our hens which is after all its real raison d’etre.

Cold comforts

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.

For the past few weeks I've been run down by a coldy virus but at last I've found the perfect repair food - Racalet, as served at Borough Market. Racalet is a Swiss cheese but in this dish the stall holders scrape melted lashings from a huge wheel of cheese on top of a heap of hot, roughly mashed potatoes and then add some baby gherkins (presumably as a sop to five-a-day demands). On a Saturday at Borough Market you have to queue to pay for this gorgeous concoction and then queue to watch it being cooked. Despite the grey weather I felt happily revived after a sit down with my plate of Racalet. Then I found a loaf of still warm organic walnut bread and carried it home warming my side as if it was a hot water bottle.

Farmers' markets may be popular but Borough Market is a foodie beacon noteworthy not just for being the oldest food market site in London and a huge draw to weekend strollers, tourists and hungry food afficianados but also because it is a charity run by a board of trustees who all live in Southwark. If you haven't been, you must. Though if you go on Saturday (rather than Thursday or Friday) don't expect to get tranced into a mountains and Heidi mood even with a dish of Racalet as the market is just too crowded to let your soul yodel off to Switzerland.

Trick or treat

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer 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.

Mexico does All Souls Day (1 November) the best with its sugar skeleton sweeties, picnics by the graveside and general communing with absent friends and family. For Halloween (31 October) this year Lola, Nell and their friend Izzy tried to outdo the Mexicans by dressing up in the most eccentric ghost costumes (props included a cuddly otter, decorative masks and a Dr Who scarf) and then trawling around their home patch hoping to get handfuls of sweets. Wherever we saw a pumpkin we stopped but the best decorated house went to a family in Aubert Park who decided they’d rather children came to them, than their children went trick or treating. Their show included spooky music on the loudspeaker, silly cobweb string all over the hedge, bits of bleeding corpse (stuffed jeans if you must), mock gravestones and moving skeletons - a fantastically horrible Halloween success.

Everyone was so friendly this Halloween, reminding me again what a great area this is to live. But a few days later I watched The End of Suburbia with four members of the Highbury Community Association and began wondering just how ready any of us are for living without using so much fossil fuel. The film reveals that peak oil – from then on oil prices go up and quantities go down – has either happened worldwide or is just a few years away. The consequence of switching to renewable energy, living and working locally could be heaven or hell… not unlike the neighbourhood’s opinion of Halloween then.

For a more positive spin on the likelihood of a resurgence of local life than The End of Suburbia offers see www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk.

World in one city

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

On Wednesday 24 October 2007 Alex Horne and Owen Powell’s year long quest to find nationals from all 192 countries of the world living in London comes to an end. I'm impressed because this website has so far only found 27 places in the UK which give a flavour of another country... how much more ambitious to find someone from everywhere and then get them together at a world party?

Alex and Owen have found it hardest to find people from tiny Nauru (population 10,000), Niger, Palau, Qatar, Tuvalu, Guineas-Bissau and Gabon. For a fascinating story of life in the big soup – have a look at their website.

Finding English wine

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… (pic is of English wine bought at a farmers' market)

A few weeks ago I made a promise to drink only English wine in a bid to slash my liquid food miles (which have tended to include screw top fruity wines from New Zealand). By the way English wine can be very good, so stop laughing now... The problem has been how to find it - most chain wine shops reserve the sort of mirth for English wine that I am used to encountering from neighbourhood friends who assume that modern people don't do veganism, god, au pairs or Dairylea cheese triangles.

Waitrose is one of the few supermarkets that sometimes stocks a bottle or two of English wine but at the Saturday farmers' market in Stoke Newington I found a supplier from East Sussex who pressed delicious tasting glasses from Sedlescombe on me all the while explaining the difference between vines grown on chalk or iron soil. It was fascinating to have a liquid geology lesson, and I think I will need more...

If you don't want to lug your bottles home then you could try buying online. I've had great service from Warden wines in Bedfordshire, and Chapel Down in Tenterden, Kent. Another method is to use the wine co-op Vinceremos.

Land girls do time travel

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 month our nearest church, St Thomas’, is running an environment month with lots of activities ranging from the harvest festival and showings of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth to birdbox making and wild food walks. Best event so far turned us all into Land Girls (the blokes were busy watching England beat Australia in the rugby). Equipped with scythes, rakes, mattocks, loppers and gloves mums, kids and staff from Islington Ecology Centre cut a good chunk of the hay meadow near the east coast main line. Repetitive hard work outdoors with people to chat besides is fun especially on another nice October Saturday. When the gang of kids tired of working they played chase through the Michaelmas daisies in the nearby meadow until distracted by the splendid site of the Duchess of Sutherland (a steam train) puffing into and out of Kings Cross station.

Work just about completed – it’s harder than it looks to mow a meadow with hand tools – we sat around the bonfire eating baked potatoes and beans (see pic).

For my family the slip into the 1940s didn’t stop there as we then spent the evening at an outdoors barn dance (to raise funds for Highbury Roundhouse). The organizers had managed to turn the car park into an atmospheric post-scything party place thanks to gazebos, scattering several bales of straw on the tarmac and the guest appearance of Jasmine, a fluffy white Sultan hen from Freightliners Farm.

Time traveling is definitely a lesson in how fit you used to have to be! If I hadn’t needed to run a deep bath to soothe out my aching limbs I would have probably had an exemplary eco weekend…

Not that shandy

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… (pic is of a croc sandwich eaten by the kids at the African Adventure fun/fundraiser).

After spending three months pleasing myself travelling around Britain it is good to be doing something altruistic – this time raising running costs for a small park, Greystone Nature Reserve in Harare. The current Zimbabwean situation is so difficult (something even PM Gordon Brown seems to have noticed hence the posturing over the conference due to be held in December in Portugal that either he or Mugabe will attend) that raising as little as #250 bails the 7ha park out for a year (cross fingers).

Raising money is always tricky, especially if you are focusing the event on primary school aged children but it was really good fun. The kids got to play traditional Zimbabwean games – pin the tail on the zebra and Dumbo Crumbo (aka guess what animal I’m pretending to be); the adults supped Rock Shandy and Malawi Shandy after realizing that a Zimbabwe Shandy is just plain water with no ice or lemon; and all of us had fun following a nature guide around our London pocket park looking for mini beasts – highlights included a toad and a newt.

The good news is that we raised half our target and the Friends association (of the London park) has promised to stump up the other half for their Zimbabwean twins.

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!

Cut the carbon marchers

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…

Since early July a handful of men and women have been walking around Britain on the Cut the Carbon march (backed by Leonard DiCaprio). This event is organized by Christian Aid – 1,000 miles in 80 days – and should take them from Belfast, via Edinburgh and through England to team up with the Labour party conference in Bournemouth on 25 September and then to London for 2 October and the day of the Climate Change Bill (please, don't let this open the door to nuclear).

On our summer travels we saw many posters advertising the Cut the Carbon marchers arrival but always seemed to miss them by a week, so when we realized we could meet and greet them at Bristol and still go to our friends John and Ann’s wedding party it felt like serendipity.

It was disappointing that there weren’t that many at the event in a city of just under 400,000 people – less than 300. Low turnout meant that Nell was able to snaffle some of the cakes made by the Mothers' Union while the rest of us enjoyed a picnic outside Bristol’s cathedral listening to the steel drums go, and later some speeches.

The marchers focused on big picture problems - rather than ones they'd seen on their journey - talking about the destruction of Easter Islands' trees (and therefore micro-climate) in order to make those infamous big and small eared stone head statues and the difficulties changed weather makes to those living in the Congo (DRC), as if there weren't enough problems in that country already.

You can support the Cut the Carbon march virtually by logging on to Christian Aid’s website and joining their shoelace protest or emailing various companies, eg, Barclays and Morrisons, to try and convince business to make more effort to publically explain how they are reducing emissions. The walkers are regular bloggers so you can get the inside story on the web.

Good luck to them all: I so wish I could have joined them but the time just isn’t right.

Teddy bears' picnic

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 all part of the excellent Little Hadham parish plan that we are turning up by the Millennium Wood in Bury Green for a teddy bears’ picnic – a free event for those with bears. The last time we were here it was for a polo match that only locals were invited to watch (held at Easter).

Lola and Nell are excited by the idea of a teddy party and ensure that my sister Eliza’s two bears get a makeover from Granny Fiona’s bit bag, and looking much smarter than they have for some time a sandy creature (Eliza/Hagrid) and a brown straw stuffed creature are soon in smart enough outfits to go down to the woods in.

Lola is in charge of Eliza’s old bear and is lucky enough to find it is the biggest – a bit impractical as we have to walk home with him later – but she also wins a beautifully designed teddy plate commemorating the occasion.

Nell is happy too because she’s picked for the magic show (note to Mums, dress your kids in red it’s a sure fire way to get them invited on to the stage, though white and every other colour works too…) and then wins a giant paper fiver that the cunning magician, Mr Ted, says her mum will swap for a real five pound note.

Even though I don't live here, I've lived in this area long enough while growing up to know enough people to really enjoy joining in. I absolutely love events like this - where there's a chance to get to know people, and zero pressure to contribute lots of money (unlike PTAs say). The organisers also have a brilliant recycling system - four dustbins labelled paper, cans, plastics and bottles - placed in the centre of action. Anyone could copy this idea, and I certainly will at the next event I find myself embroiled in.

Besides all the other pleasures - a family friendly event, old friends, prizes, veggie burgers on the BBQ and a fun trail to get you walking around the handsome wood (with wishing tree, lollipop tree etc) there was an ancient red London double decker bus (159) owned by a local man used to get visitors to and from the party via the village hall. Another brilliant idea, and free.

On the buses

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 not your obvious tourist destination, and yet Wakefield is a brilliant place to stay. It’s in Yorkshire (good), boasts at having part-educated sculptural legends Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore (v gd) and seems full of friendly people (v v gd as I’m constantly getting lost as I make my way around the city and having to ask for directions which invariably include instructions for me to “turn right at the cathedral”). And the tourist info centre was voted the best in Yorkshire last year (2006).

But what I like best about Wakefield is the bus station. It’s clean, the departures board and timetables are easy to understand, there are lots of places to sit, and even on a Sunday morning two shops were open – Bakers Oven for snacks and WH Smith for the papers. Admittedly my last experience hanging around at a bus station was in the disaster of Workington. It may have had the first covered passenger waiting area in Britain but hasn’t yet realized that these days we also need somewhere to rest our weary legs while we wait for our bus to turn up.

Lola jumps

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

About six weeks ago my friend Fleur, who has already taught her four sons to ride plus numerous of their friends, took Lola out for a ride on the trusty Silver. Lola started on the lead rein – by the end she was cantering off it! Fleur said she had a grin like the Cheshire Cat’s. Now we are back in Yorkshire house-sitting for Fleur’s family and I’m able to take Lola out for a hack.

Truly it is weird riding out knowing that I am the mother and my companion is my daughter (see pic). One of George Monbiot's recent polemics in his column - about the rise of people playing farmers and horsiculture - made me wince http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2133120,00.html.

There is no way you can make riding horses cheap. Getting into riding is a good way of developing a habit that is going to make you poor, or develop a serious need for cash. And the better you get the more gear you need; then land and apparently a 6-bed former farmhouse with stabling etc. But not all of us: indeed I would argue that the more people know about horses the more:
(a) independent they become as thinkers and
(b) knowledgeable about the countryside - they aren't just driving through it, they are riding in it, noticing the road kill; anticipating the speeding white van and the flapping planning proposal application; stressing about the weather and how all this dampness is going to lower the quality of hay and straw as well as increase its price.

Admittedly these are hardly world changing bits of knowledge but if I hadn't ridden as a child I would never have become a green... or made a very determined decision to live in a city with the lowest carbon footprint I can manage... or become a born again riding instructor.

But for this week Lola is really enjoying the rides on her borrowed pony, and when we come back to the home paddock she begs me to let her try to jump. Fleur’s tip is to just get the learner on a schoolmaster, like Silver, to follow the pony in front. This is definitely not the Pony Club method but it made sense – no problems steering or acceleration for the learner. So I took my mount, Charlie, over three different sets of poles, including some low barrels, with Lola following safely and happily (thank goodness). So now she has got a taste for speeding along and a sense of how jumping feels.

This is very much the way I learnt to ride – some core lessons and then lots of practice hacking around looking for verges to canter along and fallen logs to pop over. I’ve always been amazed that at eight years I was thought capable enough to go out for rides on my own on Telstar. Obviously it’s more fun and safer to hack with a friend – but on the right pony, along quiet lanes with enough space to get out of the way of speeding cars I reckon Lola, who is now nine, could manage too.

In Yorkshire people often seem to drive fast but they invariably slow down, sometimes even stop, when they see horses on the road. Thank you to all those considerate drivers.

Be plastic bag free

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

Lola, Nell and I are staying near the first town in Britain to go plastic free. Modbury is a really small Devon town, but from 1 May 2007 its independent retailers resolved to quit giving out plastic bags. Since then Hebden Bridge in Yorks has been inspired to follow suit, as have Saltash in Cornwall and Dunoon in Argyll.

Modbury's move came about after a local woman, Rebecca Hosking, showed them a film she had been involved in that helped people really understand how bad loose plastic bags can be on wildlife.

Find out more at http://www.plasticbagfree.com/ including how to get your community to quit the bad bag lady look.

Glorious food right here

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

Everywhere we’ve travelled we’ve tried to use independently owned shops and locally sourced food – as a result we’ve had some very delicious drinks and meals. But here in Devon local fine food moves into a new category. Everyone’s at it! Within walking distance of the village we are staying in is a 13th century pub, whimsically named The Journey’s End. Its menu is locally sourced, changes daily, has a veggie option and all adult portions can be served up for kids. The landlords, Jules and Paul, are super friendly – even to people with children – which turns out to be normal behaviour from all the shopkeepers I’ve bought stuff off so far. (This is something La Fromagerie owners in Highbury could learn a few things from, it makes spending so much more pleasurable!).

Then there’s Ringmore Stores/St Ann’s Chapel Post Office that is open 7 days a week, offers an internet service (something not a single shop in Hexham could manage!), takes cash and cards and stocks zillions of local produce including cheese, English wine, Westcountry meringues, South Devon chillies etc. Not surprisingly it won the Best Village Shop & Post Office in the South Hams 2006 – and then held a celebratory BBQ with 250 of its customers. Despite needing to queue when the daytrippers come past to pick up supplies for the beach the owners are calm, friendly and chatty. They make feel you are on holiday.

Up the road is a pick your own at Kitley, off the A379, tied to one of Riverford Farm’s farm shops. This is a brilliant find at 5.30pm on a Friday evening when you think that all there is to eat for the weekend are Pringles & a variety pack of cereal bought from a petrol station. The farm shop sells every imaginable luxury but also bread, milk and organic veg.

If you can tear yourself away from the stove then there’s also the Venus Café (see pic above of Nell choosing her favourite locally made ice cream & cone) at Bigbury-on-Sea which looks like a cheerful chips and tea kind of a place but offers a menu with gluten free choices, fair trade drinks, local ice cream, home made chips etc… And the takeaway mugs explain what’s going on:
“Drink in the view. It’s stunning isn’t it? We aim to keep it that way.
We use natural toxic free detergents and cleaning materials preventing damage to the beach, sea or any wildlife.”

If only every county was as eco-conscious as South Hams.

I want a treehouse

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 (looking inspired in the pic despite three sleepless nights in a row)

The treehouse at Alnwick in Northumberland is spectacular - and the biggest in the world. I didn't just enjoy visiting it - trip-trapping over the rope bridges, admiring the giant chairs or winding your way up to the crows' nest views - I've now got something to think out how to squeeze into our pocket home in London (other than world peace, education, and climate change concerns) as I lay awake failing to visit the land of nod.

Meeting stilt man

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. This post is from Nicola

Crossing the causeway to Holy Island on foot we were all worrying about tides. Although the tide table assured us the next wasn't due until 5.10pm, it takes ages to walk the three mile route, especially if you get distracted by little terns, crabs, cinnabar moth caterpillars (crowded on to ragwort) or the forests of glasswort on the sea side. Realising that at our pace we'd have no time on Lindisfarne I doubled back, picked up the parked hire car (a strange beast with flat sliding electric doors which make getting in and out of tight spaces easier but seem likely to remove someone's arm at some point), and drove on to the poor crowded island - it gets half a million visitors a year.

And then we saw how it should be done, Pete Thornett towering above us on his bouncy stilts which could surely get him across the causeway whatever the tide height. He was looking forward to the tides coming in so he could engineer a walking-on-water type photo to help raise awareness about epilepsy during his mammoth stilt walk from John O'Groats to Land's End.

Obviously conversation was a bit stilted at first but when his offsider (ie, driver of the van) Laura turned up the girls chatted away finding out which bits of Britain we'd all been to. Nell was delighted to find out that there are other people travelling around Britain and recommended Penrith...

Nell: It was lovely seeing some people travelling around Britain too, especially their van with two beds in. And the van had their blog site on it.

Lola: Cool. His stilts are really bouncy. He could jump so high. They're definitely better than heely's! note from a shocked mother - as he uses pro-jump stilts which cost around #135 there's not a hope... unless Lola commits to washing up every day and foregoing all pocket money for years to come...

When people are ignoring Pete - nearly impossible - he goes back to his van and dresses up in some of his many outfits so he can power back into the lime light. We had a bizarre chat in the Lindisfarne mead shop (specialising in a sweet wine brewed up on site just the way the monks used to) http://www.lindisfarne-mead.co.uk/ about whether a full flashing number or a were-wolf would be best for this island...

You can find out more about him at http://www.dangerous-stiltwalkerws.co.uk/charity or give a donation to Epilepsy Action or another charity working for people with epilepsy, FABLE, via http://www.justgiving.com/peterthornett

Stilt man's outfit, and incredible efforts to fundraise, reminded me of Lola's friend Florence's dad, Simon who took four years to walk around the coast. He painted a picture each day but despite setting himself this amazing task in every pub he walked into the locals weren't at all impressed.

"That's nothing," they'd say shifting on the bar stool. "There was a man in yesterday who's walking backwards around the British coastline..." For Peter the inevitable comparison is to the South African disabled runner who is now taking on and beating non disabled runners. I hope he makes it all the way - either to his target of #10,000 or the 1,200 miles stretch between the tips of Scotland and England,and that this keeps him in many stories for the rest of his life, because as artist Simon found, and Nell's found and stilt man Pete says he is finding travelling around Britain isn't just about exploring it's also a chance to talk to the most interesting, passionate and unusual people. And that journey need never come to an end.

Tanking up on petrol

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. This post is from Nicola

We are over a third of a way into our tour of Britain and have so far bought just three tanks of petrol. I think we may buy three more. (I am not counting the fuel used by the trains or buses we are taking)

So how much will six tanks of lead-free petrol add to our year's or lifetime's carbon footprint? That's a question I need to think about - it's definitely more than we normally use in a year, but it is significantly less than the average family's use.

And here's another one for us to wonder about: what is the right way to offset these extra carbon emissions?

Slow down car drivers!

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. This post is from Nicola (pic is of a solar powered slow down sign for drivers [right] which seem to be positioned around every school in Scotland - the schools are on holiday at the moment so we haven't found any working)

Talking to a new neighbour where we are staying I asked what it was like riding a horse around these Aberdeenshire roads - narrow, straight and begging for a flat accelerator. "Oh, it's very dangerous," said the lady (her grown-up daughter does the riding), "everyone visiting just drives too fast. Country people don't do that."

Well, excuse me. The people I know who drive too fast invariably live - or love - in the country. They whizz down their roads at whatever speed they want and are willing to damn the consequences.

As I explained in my book The Estate We're In: who's driving car culture, speed kills. http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books-uk&field-author=Nicola%20Baird&page=1 Roads aren't dangerous, however many bunches of faded flowers you see tied to trees and lamposts, roads are routes, nothing more. Accidents are misnomers too, an accident is a mistake. Driving too fast is likely to cause a fatal car crash - and if this happens to your friends or family I recommend you speak to the organisation Road Peace, http://www.roadpeace.org/index.shtml

But here in Scotland driving with the speedometer knocking seems to be a national past time. The area we are staying in has the highest number of road deaths per year. Some say that's because the roads are bad and should be upgraded to dual lanes. Some say its because other road users (ie, me) drive so slowly (eg, 40mph) they just have to overtake, all the time - regardless of bends, bad light, weather etc.

Five days ago we set off at around about 5.45pm to go to a gastro pub down the lane and a mile of so down the B979, but had to find another way because oncoming traffic was flashing as there was a clearly a bad accident ahead. The next day we found out it was a 29-year-old man from Aberdeen who was driving a Porsche Boxster who'd overshot a corner, tipped into a field, rolled over and got himself killed. A needless, stupid tragedy which thankfully involved only himself.

As I pootle along, not really sure of the roads, looking out for signs, crossing wildlife, eyeballing the landscape, etc, I know I'm irritating everyone who is used to driving around here. Sometimes I think I should drive faster so they don't have to feel obliged to overtake - but up here overtaking seems to be a national sport, regardless of its all too often fatal consequences.

It is strange that there are so many road deaths in Scotland. After all the roads aren't very crowded, compared to London say, and statistically you are at much more risk here riding bikes, horses, probably even walking thanks to drivers' intolerance for slower speeds than in a busy, traffic-choked city. That's a statistic that stinks - and really, it's up to anyone who drives to take a deep breath and think: "Yes, I love the speed my car offers, but how would I talk to the families of anyone I might kill if I went too fast - and was unlucky?" I still can't forget the blackbird I ran over (aged 17), so who knows what it must feel like to live with the consequences of killing a real-live-human?

When my not-yet-40-year-old friend Mark was knocked off his scooter by an old man, and died, I felt pure rage. Mark had signed up to handing over limbs, lungs, heart etc and so his death saved others, and for this we can only wish sufferers more road deaths.

Or I guess we can generously sign up to the NHS's transplant donor scheme http://www.uktransplant.org.uk/ukt/how_to_become_a_donor/how_to_become_a_donor.jsp and keep on driving just the way we like...