New thinking for new year's day - Clerkenwell history

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK in order to reduce our impact on climate change. All is quiet on New Year's Day, so it was fun to go on a rebel footprint tour around Clerkenwell and see the exact spots that social justice was challenged and changed thanks to people from Italy, India, German, Soviet Union etc. Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

Walking a chapter in Rebel Footprints by David Rosenberg was an interesting way to spend New Year’s Day. When the big blockbuster shows are on in London covering revolutionary art and ideas there’s a tendency to focus on the Soviet Union and France. But Rebel Footprints offers a guide to “uncovering London’s radical history”. Turns out London is packed with historic incident plus the places – often coffee houses, but pubs too – where these events were planned.

As I live in Islington it’s always fun to learn more about the area (see the 260+ interviews on https://islingtonfacesblog.com ) so instead of a cobweb-blowing New Year’s Day walk along a cliff edge we picked a guided tour (reachable by local bus) of the trailblazers for democracy who lived, worked and plotted around Clerkenwell, EC1. This is a short walk – 7,000 paces for those of you living by fitbits. For me it was very familiar so a chance to look again at places and consider the power of politics. Here’s what I found most interesting:

Spa Fields (a paved green space) looks a bit sad in winter, but it was a huge area bordering Exmouth Market and ideal for rallies. It was the centrepoint for bread riots that broke out in London in 1800-01 which the authorities blamed on Newcastle-born Thomas Spence who was a shoemaker and radical teacher who wanted egalitarianism, land nationalisation and universal suffrage. His followers were known as Spenceans.

Plaque marks the UK's first black MP - who won his seat in 1982.

The Old Town Hall on Rosebery Avenue, opened in 1895, used to be where Islingtonians registered births, marriages and deaths in ink. I have two millennial daughters – one was registered with an ink pen, the other in a more high-tech environment using new technology. The Old Town Hall is now a dance studio for 16-21 year olds, Urdang Academy. Here we spotted a plaque commemorating the first black (and first Asian) MP, Dadabhai Naoroji, who was elected as a liberal MP for Finsbury Central in 1892. He won by just three votes! This is a good place to people watch: in just five minutes we jam-packed history and spotted a policeman on a skittish horse; a woman dressed as a suffragette and an ambulance responder on a bike. Often you can see queues for Urdang auditions which makes me think of the 1983 movie set in the thriving industrial steel town of Philadelphia, Flashdance – best songs What a feeling and Maniac.

Italian family and home of Joey Grimaldi, London's most famous clown

Exmouth Market was the home of Joey Grimaldi, the famous clown. He was the son of Italian immigrants and went to work as a dancer, on stage at Sadler’s Wells from just three years old.

On the site of a prison...

Mount Pleasant – now a reduced Royal Mail operation although it does have a postal museum and underground postal train to try – was the Middlesex House of Correction, also known as Coldbath Fields Prison. 

The Italian church is still busy.

Clerkenwell Road is where you can find St Peter’s Italian church, built in 1863. It still holds joint Italian and English Sunday mass and is the place to go for an Italian experience in London (especially if you go for coffee or pasta before or afterwards). Back in the mid 19^th century the church doubled as a labour exchange and the area was dubbed ‘Little Italy”. Since the 1880s there’s been an annual Italian parade around Clerkenwell – known as Our Lady of Mount Carmel. In 2018 the parade and carnival will probably be Sunday 22 July (please check date before you go!).

From this building, now the Marx Memorial Library, the first red
flag was flown during a rally

Clerkenwell Green is the hotspot for radical explorers. Here you can find the Marx Memorial Library, which is in the building where the first red flag was flown in London, hoisted at a rally in 1871 in sympathy with the Paris Communards. It used to be a radical printing workshops where Lenin worked... Here's a fascinating film about the building's history.

short MML film3 from Christopher Reeves on Vimeo.

Under the clock

The Crown Tavern, 43 Clerkenwell Green. At the table under the clock
is where Lenin drank (possibly coffee and not just beer) and planned.

Just over the road, also in Clerkenwell Green, is the pub where Lenin drank – The Crown. Head to the back room and you’ll find the conspirators clock, which is helpfully marked by a plaque.

There are plenty more radical history exploring possibilities – I’d recommend borrowing or buying the book. Do you have any guide books that get you outside and learning about other places or times that you think other readers of this blog would enjoy? If so please let me know. Thanks.

• Rebel Footprints by David Rosenberg (Pluto Press, 2015)

When did you last plant a tree?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. We do this in a bid to be less polluting and tackle climate change while at the same time keeping a global outlook. Recently Cicerone Guidebooks kindly gave Around Britain No Plane a very young oak tree. But where to plant it? Words by Nicola Baird 

My new oak tree, safe for a while in a big pot away from the bantams.

If I've got a proper life regret, then it's that I haven't planted enough trees. We all know we should plant more trees - to mop up pollution, provide habitat,  maybe even offer a sense of continuum - it's just that I don't really have anywhere I can put trees. My back garden is titchy and the hens and dog are expert at ruining any planting schemes I might have. And I live in London where the dreaded word subsidence is always linked to trees. Subsidence by the way is allegedly caused by street and garden tree roots undermining your home in their search for nourishment and water.

Worse for my tree planting dreams, my last purchase was a bowsaw which I intend to use to reduce the height of my giant privet hedge.

But I still long to plant trees. One a day is the Man Who Planted Trees mantra - and I have planted a few, maybe 100. Some highlights include:

• Acorns taken from trees later felled along the Newbury Bypass which are now growing at my brother's house.
• The mini orchard (you only need five trees to make an orchard!) in my home's front garden.
• The new whippet thin hedge saplings planted when I was doing a three month long course with British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, now the TCV.
• The small native woodland trees my friend Hannah has got me to plant in Wales. Always done when it's freezing.
• The olive tree that got put in my children's primary school grounds when the playground was remodelled.
• At Christmas my brother and I had the fun of planting two crazy trees in his garden - a little hazel which has truffles added to the root ball; and a weeping willow which he hopes to use as a picnic den, about 10 years from now...

Where to plant this baby oak?
This obsession with wanting to plant more trees means that I was thrilled to be given an oak sapling in February during a promotion for Britain"s National Trails by Cicerone, the publisher that specialises in long distance travel guides. I love the variety of Cicerone's guides and have The Danube Cycleway by my desk and on the kitchen table there's The Great Glen Way, just in case I have to take off, now... In some ways there is too much choice - Cicerone has 350 guidebooks and as a result has provided me with proper anorak information about Britain's National Trials... for instance 2016 will be:

• 45 years since Offa's Dyke Path was established
• 30 years sionce the opening of The Peddars Way and Norfolk coast Path
• 20 years since TheThames Path became a national trail
• 51 years since Britain's first national trail - the Pennine Way - was opened.

My husband and kids exploring the oak and hornbeam
woodland of Hatfield Forest, Essex - just beyond
Stansted Airport's runway.

Who will help me plant trees?
Walking and cycling across a long distance route are exactly the sort of times that get you thinking about landscape. Should the UK look so denuded?

Well it probably wouldn't if there were less sheep on the uplands and a different emphasis on land use. But that doesn't mean people aren't still planting trees. And the great thing is that it's possible to have a go yourself, even if you have zero outside space. For example:

• The Woodland Trust is a fabulous organisation doing a lot of tree planting - thanks to people like you and me (well actually not me, but I hope soon to have a go!). See more about how to plant trees with them on local community land, at schools and even in urban areas, here.
• The National Forest in Leicestershire is transforming 200 square miles into a huge forest. They rely on volunteers - so if you live in Leicestershire, Staffordshire or Derbyshire, or can make a trip to the Midlands, then you can help them out in their ambitions to plant more trees. See all the info here.
• You can also look at Trust for Conservation Volunteers website - just type in your postcode - and loads of green (management tasks and tree planting) pop up. Rather sweetly some of these are called green gyms.

Seeing the wood and the trees
I can see a couple of trees from my window as I type this, but amazingly 45% of the land in Russia, more than 50% of Brazil, 31% of Canada and 30% of the US are forested.

In the UK only 11% is forested.

Depending on your point of view woods can be beautiful, calming, wildlife and ecosystem havens. They are also a huge source of our cultural capital - lots of stories hint at the dark deeds that could happen "if you go down to the woods today". That mix of oasis and death trap does perhaps confuse the way we react to the idea of a walk in the woods. I certainly prefer to go into woods with my dog - although he's no friend to the larger animals we meet there (squirrels, munjac deer etc). But in the woods I notice how much calmer I always feel, it's almost as if time stops when I make the effort to touch and smell the bark of a large tree trunk or look up into the canopy.

Devon woodland - a place to stand & stare.

What to see
In winter I love the architectural quality of trees. In spring it's fun to compare the shades of the new green leaves, and see if you can spot love birds quarrelling over which is the best tree. In summer they just offer wonderful shade, and then autumn it's the joy of catching falling leaves and enjoying the array of reds, auburns and yellow displays.

Thank you
So thank you to the trees, and thank you to anyone - like Cicerone - who has ever made it possible for me to plant a tree. As you can see from the photo at the top of the page my baby oak is currently in a pot and at some point is going to need relocating so the roots can get growing properly. But here's to a year of planting many more and enjoying the ones that we know best. Let me know your tree planting stories. Here's a cheer to anyone who manages to plant even one tree, and proper envy and big respect to whoever plants the most!

When all you want is Glamour in Chinese

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here I find a tiny shop in London where you can find 139 Conde Nast titles (like GQ, Vogue and Vanity Fair) published in 25 countries... Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs). I also publish an interview every week with people who live or work in Islington at islingtonfacesblog.com - there's a prize for the 100th follower.

Around 39 million people read Vogue each month
 - so can you guess how many countries Vogue is published in?

Tucked beside a high street bank on the less glam side of Hanover Square there's a slim, white-walled newsagent which only stocks Conde Nast titles. The result is amazing - a wall of fabulous magazines in different languages, discretely ordered using the correct national flag.

If you want to learn French reading a glamorous magazine, travel like an upmarket Italian or swot up in the hope of joining Conde Nast's research team for the few countries which don't yet have their titles, then this is the newsagent to visit.

We all know Vogue and GQ, but since 2001 Conde Nast has organised 86 magazine launches around the world. There are now 20 Vogue, 18 GQ, 14 Glamour, eight Architectural Digest, two Tatler (Russia and the UK) and six Conde Nast Traveller.

2014 will see two new launches - a French Vanity Fair and a Traveller for the Middle East.

For any magazine addict it is a pleasure to visit this shop and imagine the zillions of different readers throughout the globe opening up a fresh copy of their favourite magazine.

Verdict: The perfect place for virtual travel, or simply try the website 

Enjoy Exeter even in the rain

On a walk near Drogo Castle, Devon look out for
dippers - or brown trout.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post shows how Devon is much more than cream teas and summer seaside pleasures, plus ideas on what you can do on a rainy March weekend visit. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

We played pooh sticks with twigs, to improve
the game Sally says use logs (maybe not here)

Venetian chandliers, Norman-themed libary, Lilliput doll's house in the garden  - all ought to be on the must see list when visiting Castle Drogo, the last castle to be built in England. But on a short weekend visiting friends in Exeter I managed to forget my National Trust card and so was kept outside this promising family home. And what an outside offered in the grounds of Castle Drogo - wild views of Dartmoor, steep sides of the Teign valley, bridges you just have to cross (even though you don't want to be on the other side of the river bank) and wonderful wildlife including a really good sighting of a Dipper. I'm ashamed to tell you I only know this bird thanks to a Country File special. But with its distinctive white breast, plus the ability to fly, dive and swim underwater it's definitely a must-look-out-for-bird. The few other people we saw walking along the river bank were invariably peering through binoculars too.

While Sally and her son Kier zoomed nimbly along the riverside-path Lola and I were distracted discussing an Arthurian style battle clash on the steeply wooded river valley sides.  Later we all enjoyed a virtual battle victory veggie lasagne in a family-friendly pub about 20 minutes walk from Exeter quay, the Double Locks. It's the first pub I've been to that has a volleyball court, real beer and wood-pannelled bars.

Sally with Lola outside Exeter Cathedral. Pay
to enter or visit for free by joining a service.

Exeter has four twin cities: Rennes in France, Bad Homburg in Germany, Terracina in Italy and Yaroslavl in Russia. Clues to these places may be hard to find, besides it's hard not to think of this city without seeing classic English-Shire ladies or adding the word "cathedral" or "university" town...And when you get there, even in the rain, Exeter is lovely. There are plenty of craft and antique stalls down by the historic Quay, even the opportunity to rent canoes or a bike for off-road adventuring (the Exe trail bike path starts right here if you fancy a ride to Exmouth).

Midway between the cathedral and the newest branch of John Lewis, which opened in October 2012, Lola and I stumbled across the ruins of almshouses where all events seem to have happened on Saturdays. How do I know? Because each room space is marked with a paving stone into which info has been carved, eg, "new well bucket ordered". Clearly Exeter is ahead of the trend when it comes to making the past seem more accessible by focusing on very small daily details. Although no doubt "new well bucket" would be a red letter day for some poor old soul.

Bright pink lures in
visitors to Exeter's Museum.

Exeter has also got the country's best museum of 2013, The Royal Albert Memorial Museum - a space in town where everyone meets or wanders around after shopping. I loved the Devon paintings and the way the stuffed animals had been dusted down and given a dawn chorus soundtrack. The starfish collection is amazing, just for its size and in other rooms you can see displays on how people used to insure their buildings from fire; or ways fashion changed. There's a video re-enactment of how Devon's landscape was formed - a chance to enjoy lots of volcanoes exploding (we are talking deep time here) and dinosaurs walking around. Plus national exhibitions on tour - until mid May 2013 have a peek at the BP portrait prize and also the Veoila Environnement competition for wildlife photographer of the year.

Wheelie bees help make  Exeter  museum's
collection more fun for  kids.

Tots can drag along a busy bee suitcase to better explore the museum. There's a dressing up outfit, explorer trail and magnifying glass: very sweet.  Plus a lovely cafe run by Otterton Mill for the classic Devon cream tea, or just a decent non-chain cappucino. Cities - and towns - like Exeter that have created a must-go-to-often free attraction deserve a real thumbs up.

Nell insists we buy liquorice sticks
and apricots  in  St Austell.

What a contrast to St Austell - just two hours down the train line - which has no obvious central meet-and-play point. See the pic left of surely that town's most interesting attraction, a spice shop with a sign that claims hippies aren't welcome...

Useful

• Exeter museum - open tues-sun 10am-5pm. free.
• Read all about it: see the early part of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. 

Over to you
Where do you recommend visiting in Devon - and what do you like doing?

I'm hearing Russian, but who speaks it?

Anna Karenina didn't have it all.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how you can get a better sense of the vast influence of Russia here. First stop a trip to the UK's favourite store, M&S, followed by a London pub. This post is by Nicola Baird (for more info about her books see www.nicolabaird.com) 

At the start of each term I always ask my university students what languages they speak. Usually a few know Russian - and given how many countries speak Russian that should be no surprise. How many can you rack up - my list (after a bit of research) produced Latvia, Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Georgia and Abkhazia.

The founder of M&S, Michael Marks, came to the UK "a penniless immigrant" from Belarus.The shop's ongoing policy to green the consumer experience, with Plan B, has seen it back FSC certification for all timber and timber products; stock fair trade items and experiment with packaging.

Notes on a scandal
I think everyone knows that Stalin came from Georgia. It's enough of an embarrassment for the country to have removed Stalin's statues in his hometown of Gori. But do you know the rumour that Stalin and Lenin first met in London (in 1905) at The Crown Tavern, Clerkenwell Green, London. It's still offering pints in a wooden panneled room, so you could try to get a sense of that historic meeting.

In the mood for Russia with lovePerhaps the best-known Russian novel is Anna Karenina (by Tolstoy), and a new film version of the book comes out in September, so I'm taking advantage of this to re-read the book. I had forgotten how fat it is, how slow the story - all meandering scenes and remarkably little plot in the first 50 pages, but so rich and enjoyable if you have the time. The film is much faster of course, and full of gorgeous dresses, see the trailer here.



Anna Karenina is a masterpiece about love and double standards. Even this tiny trailer has left me tearful - not sure how I'll last either the whole of the book - including being parted from your child - or indeed the film when it's finally released with Keira Knightley playing Anna.


Over to you
Are you a Russian fan? Is there somewhere in the world (other than the obvious) that makes you think of Russia in any of its incarnations - old imperial, communist, super-rich or anything inbetween?

Russian pancake week

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Come see what a traditional Russian festival is like... in a London tent. This post was made in Feb 2012 by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs).   Pic is from telos.tv and shows Stravinsky (the composer) with Matisse's amazing picture - the Rite of Spring.

What's the point of Russian pancake week - a bit of paganism? A chance to eat up sweets, sort out quarrels and  play party games? No, I think it's a proper goodbye to winter. In London Russians met up on the seventh day in Trafalgar Square for the Maslenitsa Festival. My family scurried through the square on the way to Charing Cross Station and orchard pruning in Kent so we could have joined in, if we'd known what was going on. See more here too.

Luckily two days later one of my talented students at the university where I teach feature writing, Alisa Antonova (who is Russian, and had just come back from a trip to Moscow) told me:

"Malslenitsa is the start of spring, it's when we say goodbye to winter. Traditioanlly we burn a big doll (a scarecrow?) who is wearing traditional Russian clothes - a simple dress and an embroidered scarf. We sing songs and have tea from samovars and eat pancakes with berry jams, honey and sour cream. It's my favourite celebration in Russia, because it's so much fun - especially when I was at school. We played traditional games and were able to go dancing together. I like that we still have this festival to look forward to - so many traditions are dying in Russia."

Certainly in the UK this year, this Russian festival has it's timing absolutely right. Spring has sprung - I could smell blossom, and probably plants growing as I cycled around London this week.

Over to you
If you'd like to enter an easy peasy poll on what signs your family uses to check that spring is here, click on this link:

Cold, need Canadian gloves

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This February old snap leads to questions about how people cope in really cold countries.  This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs). Pic is of my daughter Lola checking the post box hasn't frozen...  

Misery on my bike yesterday as both hands appeared to freeze during my 50 minute journey from Elephant and Castle back home. I wondered how cold it had to be to get frost bite. But I was wearing gloves - it's just that they are an old lady's pair, from a charity shop in Colchester. Moaning to fellow cyclists (forced to stop by me at red lights), all sympathised, but pointed at their cosy fingers claiming their gloves were warm as toast.

I think they meant bought in Canada or suitable for winter extremes.

"No such thing as bad weather, only bad gloves"
Although I have had toasty, ski gloves the problem is that one, then the other, always gets lost. Strangely I find it harder to ride my bike if I'm not in matching gloves (does anyone else have this problem?). So what I'd like to know is how to avoid losing wet gloves, damp hats and scarves. Do you know a system that makes it far harder to lose things? People living in cold places must have some secret - perhaps like gloves on a string I used when the kids were toddlers.

It's an east wind but shops are too hot
This particular cold snap comes with high pressure, and a very full moon so dry and bitter cold nights. You can see how the cold has leached the wet out of London's grey pavements. But on a shopping trip today (to get a warm duvet for Nell, for her birthday) Pete and I struggled to be warm enough for walking the streets, without dying of overheat in the Oxford Street shops.

Over to you
How do people manage this conundrum in really cold places like Moscow or Stockholm? Are there vast, efficiently run cloakrooms in their stores? Or do they just keep the store temperatures lower than we do in London .(In John Lewis quite a few of the staff were able to be in shirt sleeves - a habit which people often take home and might partially explain why the UK's carbon emissions rose by 3 per cent. It's the first time emissions have not been on a falling trend since 2003 (see story here). Horrible.

Chernobyl makes me mad

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).

Get me Florence Nightingale

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

Izzy is too ill to go to school, but that means her mum can’t go to work. So she’s ended up staying the day at our house – with classmate Lola who is also ill. Izzy arrived in the sort of red PJs that reminded me of George Macdonald-Fraser’s invented anti-hero, Flashman, who joined the Light Brigade entirely for outfits. Though I’m not sure he would have stooped to balaclavas.

The PJs made me want to turn the girls’ bedroom into a Crimean field hospital – before the lady with the lamp got there.

“Mum, please don’t make me a bed of straw or feed my friend raw horse meat,” rasped Lola who clearly knows me too well. Izzy, with an equally sore throat, stayed quiet, hoping I’d go back to my office.

In the end I had to be satisfied with digging out books about the Eastern Question and provide updates about Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. I think I've also convinced the sick children to learn Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1854 poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and get them to measure the distance from bed to bathroom in half leagues...

We also had a quick debate about where the Crimea happened – Russia or Turkey. As I remember, that was the crux of the problem, everyone else thought that bit of land around the Black Sea ought to belong to them.

Exhausted by this surprise educational attack Izzy clearly thought she'd blundered into a house of crazies and thus took the only possible exit strategy - flopping weakly back on to the pillows to wait for her mum to come and pick her up.

The things I do for...

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

Well, the things Nell will do for ice cream include walking up hills, down hills, taking big trips on trains, visiting castles etc. Current favourite flavours (as sampled at the stunning Aunty Betty's in foodie town Stonehaven):

Nell: strawberry and cream ideally with chocolate flake

Lola: mint choc chip in an oyster shell (wafer covered in chocolate, coconut and nuts with marshmallow inner)

Pete: rum and raisin

Nicola: strawberry and cream (or chocolate) in a sugar cone

Is ice cream Italian or Russian? It's a constant debate as we make our sweet treat purchases. Nell reckons ice cream makes more sense in cold places, like Russia and Scotland; but I think it's an Italian invention perfect on hot days.

Selling Sellafield

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 Pete

Sellafield nuclear power station is desperate for good PR. When we phone to ask if the visitors' centre is open they immediately send a minibus to pick us up from the suitably apocalyptic looking Sellafield station (where the rust on the phone - see pic - comes from sea storms rather than fall-out). Yes, we've all gone fission. Alan our driver has worked at Sellafield for 21 years and happily chats about his son. The plant still employs 9,000 local people even though it's being decommissioned and many Cumbrians are avidly pro-nuclear.

The Dr Who-like visitors' centre, all silver piping and corridors, contains more friendly staff and is free to enter. The children receive free pencils, wrist bands and 'bangers', pieces of card and paper that make a pleasing bang. It has interactive games (ie you jump on various circles to represent each power source) devised by the Science Museum and an area for the kids to make badges and draw.

The displays are surprisingly even-handed, with the argument that nuclear power is green carbon-free energy balanced by a section on the risks of nuclear terrorism; the 1986 Chernobyl accident in Russia that resulted in 28 immediate deaths and an estimated 10,000 cancers; Sellafield's (then Windscale) own near-catastrophe that may eventually result in an extra 30 cancers in the area; andthe fact that no-one knows how to dispose of nuclear waste safely for the next few thousand years. Should you go? Well there are few other visitors, you get loads of free gifts, a vague idea about atoms, and a lift back to the station. It's a surprisingly enjoyable trip. Plus of course, the kids all leave with a healthy glow.