The oldest stones in the world take you where?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post takes a trip around the oldest stone circle in the world - in the heart of Wiltshire - and triggers some ideas about other ancient stone creations from Africa to South America. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

Avebury wasn't as crowded as this photo implies - this group of all ages, ranging from mid 80s to 2 and a half, are all friends of mine. Having a walk before lunch made a family celebration even more enjoyable.

Stones are all pretty old - but the complex sarsens at Avebury are hands-down winners. Whatever it was at Avebury - and it's certainly the largest stone circle in the world - was built 200 generations ago (it's roughly four people to 100 years).

So you can go there - and I took a train to Swindon and then a half hour bus ride direct to Avebury - and imagine yourself in any of the other stone wonders of the world, such as:

• the Parthenon in Greece, (447BC)
• the Mayan pyramids of Mexico (AD300)
• the end of the Incas in Peru 
• Great Zimbabwe (AD1350)
• Easter Island, Chile (AD1000-1600)

I expect Alexander Keiller found excavating Avebury as tricky as I found beating Nell at Connect 4 - one of the outdoor games provided by the National Trust.

Or you can enjoy the child-friendly facilities provided by the National Trust (they are very big on kids doing stuff - ideally 50 things to do before you are 11 and three-quarters) which for us involved a spot of Connect 4, an inter-active museum and a hunt for rare great crested newts along the edge of the pond.

There were also giant draughts boards and mini trampolines - as if we were at a wonderful street party.

Don't forget to have a good walk around the stones - it can be a short stroll or a long yomp over to manmade Silbury hill or even the long barrows that surround the main site.

More information and opening times at http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/avebury/ A nice surprise: it's free entry for English Heritage members.

London with more dash than cash

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. In this post the family is on the hunt for cheap London entertainment after discovering the public toilets by the London Eye can only be entered for 50p... 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.

London Eye fabulousness.

I'm lucky to live in London so have an endless variety of exhibitions, shows and trips to enjoy. However it's an expensive city - one of the world's most expensive cities, along with Oslo (Norway), Geneva and Zurich (Switzerland). We may not have run away inflation, like Zimbabwe had until recently, but my income is modest so day trips have to be planned carefully.
Result: lots of opportunities to explore all that London has to offer for free (not just museum, gallery and the Royal Festival Hall's free toilet facilities!).

This weekend a friend was celebrating her 50th birthday in a lovely way. Her husband had organised groups of friends and family to surprise her at various London sightseeing hot spots. I was particularly lucky to get a trip on the London Eye. It was a glorious sunny day and the half hour in the pod whizzed past as presents were opened and the Emirates stadium, Wembley, Crystal Palace mast, Ali Palace, Parliament and the MI5 building spotted... And then we said goodbye and off Debora went to her next appointment at the V&A gallery.

Find this tiny police station in Trafalgar Square - allegedly made from a hollowed out street light.

Inevitably I felt a bit low back on ground, so perked myself and my two daughters up by going to see London's smallest police station (installed in 1926 to enable one policeman to keep an eye on the demos happening in Trafalgar Square). It is a only a short - but stunning - walk across Hungerford Bridge from the London Eye and then past Charing Cross to Trafalgar Square. We took photos and tried to guess how many super-slim police officers could fit into this police box. Still at least it keeps the wind and rain off, and made my children dance around looking for Sherlock Holmes. 
As for the cost to look: zero pence.

We were then lured into the National Portrait Gallery where there's David Bailey's self-curated Stardust exhibition. Even for the £16 ticket it's incredibly popular... definitely worth gawping at the queue to see if you can spot a celeb. Once tired of that, aim to fit in a 30 minute-gallery talk (on saturdays at 12 noon) in front of a painting. You'll be given a stool and then hear an expert tell you its history, context and all sorts of gossip about it - and always for free. We found out about James 1/James VI's very strange interest in witches and how his booklet about them, and insistence that communicating with a witch should be a capital crime, inspired Shakespeare's Macbeth. I think it's lucky for James that he is better remembered as the man who made sure the Bible was provided in English rather than Latin. However I now understand why his witch-mania led to him being dubbed "the wisest fool in Christendom", a fact that I'm sure will be useful for pub quizzes...
Cost for a half hour history talk: free.

In the UK lots of secondary schools teach Geography or History for GCSE - it depends on the timetable. So if you feel you (or a child in your care) is missing out on history I reckon a cheap day ticket to London to Trafalgar Square area could be a rich investment in historic learning. If you bring some sandwiches and eat them in nearby St James' Park then that's a free day out. Enjoy.

Winds of change

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 10, and Nell, 7, like travelling around Britain on public transport (don’t laugh). We spent three happy months exploring during summer of 2007 but now we’re home, you can still join us for the occasional sightseeing - plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

If only the winds of change could speed through Zimbabwe in a safe and peaceful way. Here’s a stunning beaded wind turbine (really looks better on your table than in this shot), created by one of Zimbabwe’s versatile and talented craftspeople, which I hope to sell to raise funds for one community group there at the Gillespie Park Festival, London, N4 on Sunday 14 September from 1-6pm. Come use your change to buy a beaded beast or turbine and help a beleaguered country.

Tea for Zimbabwe

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

My friend Claire showed me a picture of a typical Zimbabwean shop a while ago. It had nothing in it except two packets of monkey nuts. Compare that to a Sainsbury's or Tesco "corner" store. Another Zimbabwe contact told me that he was so excited to see milk in a store that he bought the whole stock – then had to drink the lot in one go (sick making rather than exciting) because the days of power cuts wrecked his fridge.

People tell me that anything helps the communities in Zimbabwe, even at this tense time in the count down to the election run-off. This same contact told me that communities are being ordered to take their satellite dishes down and obliged to hand in their identity cards to buy essentials. These are not returned, which means they will not be able to vote. What did I do? Well I bought this pretty teapot painted by one of the many talented Zimbabwean craftspeople.

I do not need a teapot, and I probably kid myself that buying a teapot for #30 (a lot!) is of any use. But as a donation it comes under generous, and that makes me feel a bit better.

We are so very lucky in the UK to be allowed to vote for who we like without fear.

On the frame

Nicola & Pete plus daughters Lola, now 9 and Nell, now 7, spent last year exploring Britain in a carbon-light manner. Our spring 2008 challenge is to give up waste from 24 March to 24 April. Most posts are by Nicola (as it was her silly idea). This is how it’s going:

April is full of do-gooder events – join us at the Islington Ecology Centre on Sunday 6 April from 2-5pm to buy your own bit of Zimbabwean art done by 8-9 year old school students from Harare. All the money raised will go to support the Greystone Nature Reserve, a little pocket park around a dam in the suburb of Borrowdale. Since 2006 Greystone Nature Reserve has been twinned with Gillespie Park and the Friends of Gillespie are trying to raise around #250 a year to help cover the Zimbabwean park’s running costs.

Last night I was trying to frame the 12 sweet pictures my friend Nicky brought over from Zimbabwe in December. All were winners in the competition Greystone Nature Reserve holds every October for the schools that use the park. Although I’d rather use a second hand frame I just couldn’t find a dozen A4 frames and so turned to the Ikea solution. The Ram frame (incredibly cheap), made in China may make these pictures look lovely and sellable for the wanted tenner BUT it created a pile of plastic waste that I’ve no idea how to recycle.

Why every picture frame needed a thin envelope of plastic (only removable with scissors) and then two more bits of sticky plastic to be peeled off the cheap plastic facing that turns a page of A4 into a proper picture is mystifying.

Verdict: it’s harder than I thought to avoid non-recyclable plastics. If I get the energy I’m going to write to Ikea (which claims it is soon to charge customers for plastic bags) to ask if they can reduce their packaging. Or at least explain themselves...

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.

An even better waterfall

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

While we were wet camping by Ullswater we went up to Aria Force again knowing that the sheer volume of rain would make it and High Force show-stoppers. The waterfalls are owned by the National Trust, and have a lot of visitors. But you can just about escape the crowds by following the path up towards Gowbarrow Fell. In fact we got so keen on the ascent that we decided to climb the fell and have smarties (rather than a picnic) at the top.

Nell beat us all to the top this time, and then beat us all downhill too. Both girls will soon find their parents slowing them down at this rate...

The pic is of Lola by High Force which is a beautiful and noisy waterfall. Though it is smaller than the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe it could so easily have got the same name given that the Victorians were swarming over the Lake District 150 years ago. Just before Pete and I decided to give up plane travel in a bid to make more of a concious effort not to clock up even more carbon emissions we visited friends in Zimbabwe and toddling Lola (aged one and a half years) came too. There's a pic of her being carried in a backpack wrapped in waterproofs as we stroll through the spray looking for rainbows. How lovely to be able to do the same thing in Britian, without having to carry our daughter this time...

Perhaps the best part of this trip was seeing the girls realise why Ullswater kept rising during the day - inching steadily towards our tent - even when it wasn't raining.