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.

Three legs good

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… (even with three legs, see pic)

The Isle of Man's special symbol is a three-legged wheel, but at the courtyard of the Royal Academy in Picadilly there's currently a vast metal version of a Three Legged Buddha (with one leg resting on a handsome but detached head the size of a Wendy House) by the Chinese artist Zhang Huan.

Lola and I visited the Isle of Man in 2006, via a ferry that left from Liverpool. We thought it was an amazing place even before we appreciated that it is its own country, ie, not part of the UK, and has a Parliament that's been operational since the Vikings were busy. It also specialises in fairies, no-tail Manx cats, TT races and the sort of scenery that makes film crews regular visitors.

Upside down art

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 us doing a London day out upside down)

The adults walk around the Royal Academy gallery ignoring Lola & Nell's noisy disbelief - the pictures by Georg Baselitz are the wrong way up. Nell points out an eagle with his wings below his feet, and Lola gawps at a portrait. When Nell was in Reception she drew ffurg staog yllib eerht eht* - and the title - this way around and her delightful teacher took me aside for a private word. What would she have done to the venerable, clearly slightly crazy art hero Georg? This show is a must for anyone who wants to think outside convention, and your kids will love its rule breaking.

*the three billy goats gruff

School trip to the British Museum

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…

It would be odd if London school children didn't make an occasional trip to the British Museum - our school seems to go once a year, usually around the time classes are working on Black History Week/Month. We took the tube - something a handful of children rarely do - and then had a fascinating talk about the ancient culture of Benin which covers part of modern Nigeria. And just to prove the kids in Y5/Y6 at our school are up to the pressure modern parents put them under we also had a look at ancient Greece. It was a pleasure to escort the eight children I was assigned.

The British Museum was heaving with people, more like a Booker Prize announcement night than a damp Thursday because the prestigious Chinese terracotta army exhibition has just started (and runs until early April).

At #12 a ticket friends say it's a punitively expensive trip - but they usually also laugh when I insist that this is much cheaper than going to China, and by avoiding the plane saves you clocking up 3.75 tonnes of carbon emissions for a return flight. As the average household still uses around 10 tonnes of carbon a year for cooking, heating, travel etc, making a simple visit to China via the British Museum offers the sort of carbon-saving bargain break it makes sense to enjoy.

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…

Arsenal football

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…

Showing a 14 year old visitor around the outside of the new Emirates stadium (ie, Arsenal's ground) on a sunny morning I was struck by the building's scale. It is vast. And if you walk over the bridge from Drayton Park towards the stadium with even one Arsenal fan by your side (and I had two) it is hard not to feel reverential.

It is a shame thought that despite early designs suggesting this huge piazza-sized area would be greened with plants and trees the stadium surrounds are just a vast sweep of grey concrete. Think how it could be improved with St Mark's Square style cafes around it where glamorous Gunner fans could sip coffee in Venetian style as they watch the kids on skateboards, bikes and heelys' weave through the trees.

Capital Ring

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 is from all of us

The Capital Ring is a 75 mile (115km) route around London that we've been tackling in small chunks. The book by Colin Saunders has shown us that London is full of surprises - on our Sunday walk along the nearest paths to our home it even revealed two new footpaths along the New River.

Although walking Hadrian's Wall was dramatic the Capital Ring is a brilliant route often enlivened by the unexpected public and free events held around London. This time we were distracted by an impromptu visit to the Finsbury Park mosque (which was having an open day) and then the chance to ride an electric bucking bull in the greatly improved Finsbury Park as part of Haringey's Green Flag celebrations. Only a half hour rowing around the lake and ice cream cones for all revived us enough to get back on the Capital Ring track.