Where to live?

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

"We've had a lot of homes," muses Lola as we arrive at this week's holiday home, a place we are house-sitting in Yorkshire (not the pic above!). I think that home ought to be where you are right now, but deep in my psyche is also the gently rolling arable hills of the Herts/Essex borders - the area Andrew Motion has recently written about in his exquisite childhood memoir, In the Blood. He makes it clear how to grow up normalish despite a backpack of strange upper middle class ideas about what is right, and what is expected. The twist for him is how his childhood was severed by his mum's horrible accident out hunting.

At the moment Lola and Nell don't seem to have a trace of snobbery in where or what home is. They don't even need it to be close to shops as they are still a long way from being the sort of females Sunderland manager Roy Keane recently berated for stopping players moving to the north east.

Long may this last as they won't be handed homes on a plate, or even be able to anticipate enough cash from me and Pete to be able to get a mortgage on a flat in their early 20s. If I look in an estate agents' window (eg, while waiting for Pete or because I'm nosing around somewhere) the girls are as likely to choose a suburban '70s build as a stockbroker's palace. Right now they love home, London specifically, best. But they also love to muse as we pad around places how they'd "love to live in a castle" (see pic), or, as we were searching for the mermaid pool on Burgh Island in Devon "on an island" http://www.burghisland.com/.

On the latter location I can reassure them: they are islanders even if it's 800 miles by 100 plus (depending on where you do the measuring) so you can't see the edges.

As for castles. Well we have seen lots of castles, some with the roof on and plenty with just blue sky and clouds for decoration. But despite the variety Lola reckons that the best one she's ever seen is the Tower of London -visited on a school trip. "It's got masses of links with the Tudors, and prisons, secrets, jewels and the scratches of prisoners on the walls. I found one of a wild boar," she enthuses when I press for details.

Grass roof

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 our fab housesitting home near Aberdeen)

To the taxi driver I say "And then you see a grass roof". He's not impressed at all. "No, it's cool, it's meant to be grass," I insist, you'll love it... We certainly have and are inspired enough to think we might try and do the same if we build an add on to the back of our house.

Maybe we'll even be able to keep our hens on the roof?

Links with Canada

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 Nell and Lola looking at a giant redwood/sequoia planted in 1857 by Queen Victoria)

At Haddo House http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/73/ (partly administered by the Scottish National Trust) Nell cannot believe the ballroom (modelled on a Canadian style dance house) has a wooden roof. "It looks like slate," she insists, and it does. But this is cedar, skilfully cut to make roof tiling. The building has been there since Victorian times CHECK and is still looking good, what's more it's got a new lease of life as a music centre. Indeed Haddo is known as the Glynebourne of the north (ie, Scotland).

The Gordon family (now uber-grand Marquesses of Aberdeen thanks to a 1916 gift providing the title in perpetuity) has long links with Canada. Sometimes they've ruled it (as governor-generals) at other times they've sent their black sheep there in the hope they will see sense (eg, woman trouble) or avoid spending money (to sort out debts, death duties etc).

There's obviously a lot of fondness for Canada though and at the bottom of the main staircase you can see a sweet little sledge - ideal for the slopes at Haddo House's famous gardens - which was brought back from Canada and can be made to go even faster if it is harnessed to an obliging dog.

You don't have to use cedar to get the same roof tile effect. In Surrey woodsman Ben Law has used his sweet chestnut to do something similar on his unique house in the woods - the one that viewers reckoned was the best of all the Grand Design TV projects. Surprisingly Surrey is the most wooded county in England (not sure about Britain) and full of sweet chestnut that could be brought back into sustainable harvest management - either for coppicing to end up on your BBQ or for the sort of poles and palings that could create you a ballroom, music room or just a bit of an extension to the kitchen...