Greek flame, UK route

It's all Greek to me.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to join in the Greek-lit Olympic flame on its journey around the UK.  This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).   

The 2012 Olympic flame was lit in Greece  - the original home of the games - using sun rays as they met a parabolic mirror on 10 May. Sounds like a super efficient way of creating fire to me.  And now  - whatever the weather throws at it - the flame is on its journey travelling up the UK from Cornwall. The route aims to take the Olympic flame no further than 10 miles from 95 per cent of the population. Quite an amazing piece of planning!

Look here to see where it passes you, and when.

As a little tribute to the moment the Olympic flame was lit I popped into a Greek bakery in Enfield (just by Oakwood tube) and bought a sesame seed loaf plus a box of olive paste-filled pastries as a gift for friends (see pic above). For £4 I got nearly 20 little snacks (rather different finances are used at the French bakery Paul where you generally spend an arm and a leg on daily bread). Yum.

Over to you
Will you see the Olympic flame pass? And have you ever used a parabolic mirror? For anyone interested in trying out a parabolic mirror for cooking, rather than just lighting a runner's torch, have a look at this video from the US. Or buy one for home cooking (assuming you are in the US) at http://www.greenpowerscience.com/SHOPARABLOICHOME.html

Lisbon 1 Durban 0

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here is a short news report on which gets more news coverage: the ministers meeting at Durban (on climate) or squabbling over the Lisbon Treaty (money). This post is by Nicola Baird 

I've been a poor sleeper for years, ever since I had children really. So this morning about 6am - after finishing the novel I was reading and messing on Facebook - I started looking on the web for info about the COP17 talks at Durban. These are important climate talks, not unlike the ones that hogged the world's attention when they were in Copenhagen. There is so little to find, although I did uncover a shocking post from Reuters about how the failure of these talks looks set to drown island states, with first on the list being Tokelau. In contrast the meltdown of the Eurozone (thanks again Cameron for messing things up) had headline after headline. 

In a contest of Durban v Lisbon, the latter is clearly the outright winner. Money drives news agenda a zillion times over attempts to save the world.

And yet there is some good news around. For instance I found this news item below on the ecogeek website. It's from the LA Times. I think it is good news that investments in renewable energy topped fossil fuels last year - although as the UK isn't exactly doing this, who on earth is? There's another glitch: the enormous sum of $157 billion was also invested in new natural gas, oil and coal plants - the fossil fuels that are causing climate change... 

Really you couldn't make this skewed understanding up - as I read in Rosamund Urwin's Evening Standard column yesterday we'd rather see our great grandchildren swim to school than pay just a tad more tax to try and tackle the problems of climate change now, when we actually still might be able to do something.

Investments in Renewable Energy Topped Fossil Fuels Last YearWritten by Megan Treacy on 29/11/11 For the first time, investments in renewable energy projects surpassed those in fossil fuel power plants, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.  Last year, $187 billion was invested in renewable energy installations, while $157 billion was invested in new natural gas, oil and coal plants. The increase in investments in the sector, even while in a down economy, has led to price drops in equipment and renewable energy power, making solar and wind power far more competitive with coal power. Renewable energy subsidies deserve a lot of credit for the spending increase:  about $66 billion in subsidies were handed out last year. It's a great bit of news as another round of global talks on the climate crisis is likely heading nowhere as we speak. via LA Times

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).

Smell the petrol

One family's thoughts on how to travel the world without leaving home, much. This post is by Nicola

I'm ashamed of myself really: in just two weeks of holidaying I've managed to drive nearly 1,000 miles. Most of this was local trips in Yorkshire, although the big mileage came from an up and down of the A1, plus a return journey from Carlisle to Wast Water. Although the family also clocked up the miles on the gear-changing, brake-waring crossing of Hard Knott pass between Boot and Ambleside.

Because we need to drive so little, I usually stick to a membership car club scheme, Streetcar. But this time it was more convenient to rent the cars from Sixt.

As a result of this I've been into a couple of motorway service stations - better for clean loos than most train stations still - and nowadays also serving a good cup of coffee, but otherwise soleless places. Assuming it is not an April Fool (and we are months out as I am writing this in August) there are plans in the Cotswolds to build an apparently "green service station" with a grass roof, electric vehicle refuelling points, and a veg patch. The full story is in the Guardian here.

What struck me about the service stations on the A1 was they were an identical layout, and nothing to tell me where in the world I was. Apparently the kit-design is the way to make cost and building savings - you create a model that can be dumped anywhere you acquire the land, a bit like Lego. So if this so-called green service station was to go ahead it would make sense to build it just like all the others. Or to make a model that would be acceptable to all the other service station developers.

I wonder if there is still time to ask the question: do we need yet another service station? I'm guessing this is a no, even if you could pour unleaded petrol into your car while munching on a locally-sourced goat's cheese sarnie.

Oops that fell on my head

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell like to travel around Britain in a carbon lite way. On a recent round trip to Yorkshire we found a good way to break the monotony of motorway driving near Mrs Thatcher's old constituency of Grantham. This post is by Nicola, see more about energy efficiency in her most recent book, Homemade Kids: thrifty, creative and eco-friendly ways to raise children at http://www.homemadekids.co.uk/.



When bird poo lands on your head - observers laugh. The recipient feels slightly sick, then remembers that this sort of accident foretells a good luck day. When the young Isaac Newton sat under a tree and an apple fell on his head (or on to the book he couldn't take his nose out of being a bookish sort stuck at home to escape the plague in Cambridge) he began to work up a theory about the first, second and third laws of motion. Everyone knows these laws now. And who doesn't get gravity?

Fast lane
Driving up the A1 from London to Scotch Corner - this week I needed to drive 772 miles which seems a staggering distance (although it was only just over one tank of diesel, ie approx £65 of the rented VW Golf) - so I was desperate for a fun stop-off rather than a "services". The answer is at Grantham, the fascinating National Trust-run Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire which was the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton. At the science centre Lola, 12, and I used a prism to see how red, green and yellow light beams become "white", we learnt that Isacc's dad (who died before he was born) couldn't write and how the boy Isaac built models of windmills and then powered them by mice! We also picniced near the famous apple tree (see pic above).



"His discoveries included revolutionary ideas in mathematics, optics, gravity and formulating the laws of motion. His theories and scientific methods underpin the world of science today."
NT guide book

Six fingers seen by people in a Sixt rent-a-car
Fascinatingly the house is also filled with anti-witch grafitti scratched into the plaster. It is at the front door, in the hallway, in the bedroom even. How strange that the man who did so much to make science accessible grew up in such a super-superstitious household. Or maybe that explains it? Lola and I drove off powered up by ideas that kept a conversation about how to make our own pet mice produce some renewable energy last many, many miles past York. And the fallen apple we took as a conversation piece is now tucked into my compost pile.

Energy journeys

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel but insist on keeping their carbon footprint down. Here's how (this post from Nicola)

Just been infuriated by feedback from some riding teaching I did back in July in which a dodgy old Yorkshire lady sounded off about my apparent lack of energy around eight-year-olds and four legged ponies. Funny how much I mind (never mind it not being true!) considering that the rest of my life is spent trying to be far more energy efficient.

And how well we feel we are doing - not just the travelling without planes or living without a car - but the way our end of terrace has been turned into a renewable power house. Since the solar PV was installed in summer 2008, we've generated 1,246kWh of electricity. Given our current summer usage, this is the equivalent of the sun gifting us 311 free leccy days. Nice eh?

It's not a simple calculation of course, as we're not off grid, but I am hoping to get a cheque for a decent amount from Good Energy (like the other 1,000+ renewable energy suppliers spread around the UK) before the end of this month.

At the moment I'm paying around 12p/kWh for using electricity, but expect to get 15p back for every sun-generated unit our panels clocked up. And next year this looks set to soar to 35p. Clearly being a low energy pioneer has a good cash side. Even if it marks you out for pony club disgrace.

Useful contacts for energy savers - to buy an energy metre, http://www.goodenergyshop.co.uk/, or to join the zillions of families trying to slash their energy use by 10 per cent each year see http://www.1010uk.org/.

Bah humbug

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell are enjoying travelling the world without hiking up their carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

We are all sweet on Yorkshire and have already managed to visit for a weekend this January. Our friends’ house was a bit parky (you could see your breath in all the upstairs rooms and it was pretty chilly downstairs too before the fires were lit). But it helped us realize how tough people had to be before central heating, and how much warmer our home has become thanks to tackling the draughts.

Over the weekend we soon realised that you need to keep busy - ideally outside - in order to stay warm. I cycled miles to keep my blood circulating, and the kids rode ponies too (well Wurzel, see below) for added adrenalin we had a close encounter with a hedge trimmer...

Maybe only visitors feel the cold up North? The 13 and 9 year old who live there didn't seem to think it was that chilly and rarely wore more than a T and a sweatshirt.

I should have bought them all thermals, instead for a treat I let the younger kids all choose a monster bag of sweets. In the pic at the top Nell, 7; Lola, 10 and Ned, 9 show off their swag.

You don’t have to go to Masham (also the home of the Black Sheep Brewery) in North Yorkshire to get your hands on their aniseed balls, fudge, flying saucers, traffic light lollies and other favourites. You can also log on here for old-fashioned sweetie choices.

Cold Christmas

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell keep on exploring Britain. As we go we watch our carbon footprints... This post is by Nicola

Staying in the gorgeous country town of Buntingford over Christmas, we couldn't resist a detour (in the car club car) to a well-named, nearby hamlet. It may have been minus 2C at times over the Christmas holiday, but my mum's new cottage is lovely and snug. She has a new condensing boiler - and barely uses her electric oven - which may well make her house's energy requirements more efficient than mine.

On Boxing Day I was given a tour of an astonishing wood boiler (provided by Rural Energy)which is fed with wood chips. The plan is for it to provide all the hot water and heat a house, office and swimming pool, saving around #4-5,000 a year in bills. It's big - you need a large barn to house it in - but this is a real energy pioneer's gadget. The big switch on is due in February 2009.

Our power station

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

Today - 19 August - is an historic day for our family: we've turned our home into a power station.

Thanks to a grant (not yet collected) we've just installed solar PV panels generating electricity whenever there's light. That means even a teeny weeny bit is generated when there's bright moonlight. Because we are not off grid we can't see the meter going backwards. But we can watch as the sun generates electricity for us and clocks up the kilo watt (kWh) hours.

Last year we looked at all sorts of power sources including hydro and wind turbines. Interesting as these trips were the sun is the no brainer when it comes to turning your home into a power station. Even in our dodgy British summers - and the effects of climate change - there's enough light to make these solar electric panels charge up theoretically slashing #350 from our bill each year.

Five days later: we've used 14kWh of electricity - and generated (despite overcastness and rain) 13kWh of our own electricity. This may not pay off our investment (ie, we won't make a mint - hence the photo), but it's certainly going to bring daily running costs down. Having sun power is a fantastic feeling.

Solar grants

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

It’s hot outside and our solar panels are blazing. This morning the water was so hot from yesterday's sunshine boost – over 50 degrees – that I had to add cold water in order to have a shower. We’ve had solar thermal panels on our roof now since May 2008, and as a result have only needed to use the gas for 20 minutes since then. For once I’m looking forward to a power bill.

The Green Living Centre offers advice to Islington residents about energy efficiency, climate change grants and energy efficiency tips such as loft insulation. It also has info about subsidised water butts and even wormeries. http://www.islington.gov.uk/environment/GettingGreener/Green_Living_Centre/
222 Upper Street, tel 0800 953 1221

Non Islington residents can contact the Energy Saving Trust's ACT ON CO2 advice line - 0800 512 012 (Mon-Fri 9am - 5pm) or visit www.est.org.uk

There are also grants available for a range of renewables (once they’ve been installed) from www.lowcarbonbuildings.org.uk/

The last pit pony

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

His name is Robbie and he used to work at Pant y Gassey in South Wales. He’s now retired and living in luxury (well a very comfy stable deep with recycled paper bedding) with the added benefits of a well kept field, plus other horsy friends at the National Coal Museum www.ncm.org.uk. At one time (1913) there were 70,000 horses down the mines – often quite big cobs like Robbie – but tiddlers too.

It wasn’t until 1942 that any of the ponies down the mine were guaranteed some daylight – two weeks in August when the miners had their annual break. I still remember watching Blue Peter on TV and seeing pit ponies enjoying their summer grazing. Life for the horses must have been very hard as the men just wanted them to behave so they could get their job, shifting coal, done quicker. As a result there had to be a Parliamentary ruling that no pony could do more than three shifts in 72 hours. Bonnie, the centre’s horse keeper told us one very happy story about a former miner who told her how a pony saved his life, simply by uncharacteristically refusing to move. Moments later the roof caved in where they would have been.

Down the mine

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 (sorry pic is sideways)

Visiting the National Coal Mine http://www.ncm.org.uk/ was a real surprise. It’s the final stage of our power tour (we’ve been to a hydro pump station in Scotland; the Sellafield visitor centre next to the nuclear reprocessing site; ogled on and offshore wind turbines in Cumbria and elsewhere; seen a water wheel at work in Devon; taken the train past the carbon dinosaur cooling towers at Doncaster; stayed in a house with superinsulation thanks to its turf roof; enjoyed showers in Yorkshire from solar water heating and now we’ve been down a coal mine.

The underground tour at Caphouse Colliery, which takes more than an hour, is free. It was also the best of all the numerous guided tours we have been on throughout the past three months. Our star guide Andy, a former miner at the much deeper Thorne pit in Doncaster managed to explain the whole process of coal mining to his group of 20 adults and children (all over five, but none older than nine years). We were shown how to use a safety lamp to check for black damp (no oxygen) with a big flame low down; and fire damp (methane) by looking out for a blue glow above a tiny flame higher up.

If you only go to one place in England – which I hope is impossible– then go here, to the National Coal Museum midway between Wakefield and Huddersfield. The only downside was that I hated the food (the children ate chip butties, yuck, but as everything else is free it seems only fair to purchase snacks there). There’s a housewife from the 1920s giving a chat about life for mining families; displays explaining how to mine; a 300 million year old fossilized tree; and loads of banners and info about off-duty miners too with their sweet peas, cricket leagues, leeks and racing pigeons. Most noteable were the displays drawing together the events during the strikes of 1984 and 1985 to stop pit closures. I cried three times reading about mining: the bosses were so callous trying to slash wages whenever the price of coal fell even though one miner died every four hours. I must have worn a Coal not Dole badge, and given a few pounds at least to the NUM support funds for that strike, but it’s only now that I realize quite how those closures destroyed the communities Margaret Thatcher insisted shouldn’t, didn’t and couldn’t exist.

In just one year, 1923, 1,297 men were killed in mining accidents and more than 200,000 seriously injured. Yet for most of coal mining’s history workers got no sick pay or social security which meant when they fell ill, typically with the lung disease pneumoconiosis, they ended up getting into debt and even losing the house that their boss rented to them.

The tour was an eye-opener even without having to cope with any of the machinery noise or dust. Our group was only allowed down after handing in our contraband – anything with a battery which included my watch, camera, spare torch and a heap of other useless stuff I drag around. After crawling under the lowest chocks (hydraulic props which replaced the wooden props to stop the coal seam above collapsing on to you) and then whacking my helmet head along the slightly taller chock props, with only my helmet light to see by… and thankfully doing this I am in serious awe of anyone who willingly went down in a mine. Indeed getting me down the 430m drop in the cage (about the height of Blackpool Tower) makes me think I deserve a long and full life in the sunlight.

Burning coal is one of the big contributors to the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions: 34 million tonnes of coal are mined each year and there are still 11,000 people employed in the industry (for comparison:in the early 1900s there were more than a million working at 250 pits producing 250 million tonnes of coal annually).

There are still at least 33 open cast sites in Britain plus big mining industries in the USA, India and China. After this visit I don’t plan to burn coal in my fireplace again (a treat bit of winter heat) once my last two sacks in the cellar are used up. I’m not sure that was the aim of the centre but I just hadn’t realized how damaging coal is to people, never mind the environment.

Ice house

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

Here's a picture of the old-fashioned way to keep your stuff cool - it's an ice house at Crathes Castle, http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/crathes/crathescastle/index.html. To make one of these you need a bit of ground. Then earmark a patch out of the direct sun, dig a big hole (or use a cave if one is around) and then insulate with turf and grass. During the winter harvest any large chunks of ice from a convenient pond/ bucket etc and then store in this underground room. This is your ice house.

Admittedly it's not Smeg trendy, and it doesn't dispense ice cubes with quite the same clink-into-glass but it is tried-and-tested, and very cheap to run (ie, free). And it's an absolute beauty too with the soft grasses and wild flowers growing all over the roof.

House sitting near Aberdeen

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 taken while all of us - except the dog - were watching Live Earth on 7.7.7 http://www.liveearth.org/)

We now have 10 days caring for a Basset hound pensioner, Fleur. She sleeps in until midday, and appears to be delightful unless you are a postie or try to share her sofa.

House sitting is brilliant - made all the more so by memories of our wet camping week. We have beds! Hot water on demand! Kids' toys and an internet connection... Both Lola and Nell have commented on how easy it is to take these things for granted, though they sensibly learnt the lesson in just four days sleeping under canvas. Our new home (near Aberdeen) is particularly enviable - an enormous wood and stone converted kitchen with a grass roof to keep it cosy and dry in all this rain; energy efficient lightbulbs and appliances; raspberries in the kitchen garden; plus recycling systems in place.

There's also a stream where the kids can try to scoop out minnows and bikes for exploring the neighbourhood.

The catch is that this idyllic rurual spot - down a grass drive - is also under threat of a bypass (the Aberdeen western periphery route or AWPR) that no one locally believes is needed or wanted. A recent list of people against the road was signed by more than 2,500.

The 46km road is due to wreck several rural communities, destroy around 20 homes and will see Aberdeen's International School having to be knocked down. And it'll cost a staggering amount, #395 million! You can find out more at http://www.road-sense.org/documents/PressRelease_15-Nov-2006.pdf

Perhaps the cost of this plan is the real reason why the new First Minister [since July] Alex Salmond, has been saving up his two salaries (as an MP and SMP)?

TOP TIP: You can find out how to housesit all over the world using formal sites on the web, but so far we've only tried it in Britain.

Our main success has been with relations who want someone living in to reduce the chance of burglary or families who need their pets looked after (in one memorable case we also got left with an 11 year old as his passport was out of date so he couldnt' go on holiday with the rest of his family!).

About five months before we wanted to go travelling I sent a letter to loads of old friends (my Christmas card list which I rarely get round to using) asking if anyone was willing to let us stay in their homes. Most replied! There's usually more house sitting opportunities than house swapping (more of that later), presumably because you don't both have to work to the exact same dates.

Wet camping IS fun

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 Lola & Nell (currently in the dry using a wi-fi connection at the Rhegged centre in Penrith)

Lola: "Wet camping is very odd, especially if you are by a rising lake like we are (Ullswater, in the Lake District). Every night I go to sleep I worry that the tent will flood! I don't much like going to the loo in the wood because... you can use your imagination. It makes you think what it would be like to live without a permanent roof. I miss toilets, laptops, telephones and beds. Daddy misses coffee."

Nell: "I think it is fun because it is actually quite nice when you have a boat house to go into for breakfast or lunch. It's really good listening to the rain on the tent. We had a BBQ yesterday and I ate croissants stuffed with veggie sausages. We also had chocolate banana and apricots stuffed with chocolate. Mummy says that you have to have lots of treats if it's raining a lot when you camp. I miss toilets, cutlery and plates/bowls etc and a pillow."

1st electric-lit library

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

Cragside House, in Northumberland, is a Victorian masterpiece. The owner Lord Armstrong, known locally as the Geordie Genius, didn't just build a huge house he added every comfort. As a result it was the first house in the world to be lit by hydro-electric power - in the 1880s. In fact the first ever room to be lit up was the library, and the power was switched on by the youngest member of staff, a 10-year-old boy. Lola was definitely jealous.

Armstrong went on to give his home hydro-powered central heating, a passenger lift, rotating spits to help the cooks in the kitchen, fire alarms, phones, servants' bells and even an electric dinner gong. At the time it was dubbed "the palace of a modern magician" and Armstrong was affectionately described as having "water on the brain". Going round the house now it still seems super-comfortable. There's a Turkish Bath (aka spa); vast rooms with cosy nooks around the fireplaces to warm your toes or read a book and telephones. His passion for modern inventions didn't however stop him from hanging numerous family portraits on the walls or pictures of dying heroes mourned by their dogs.

There's also several lakes which have a wildlife benefit, but were used to keep the hydro system working. They have a very good name, Nelly's Moss, albeit this seems to be refering to a local witch not our six-year-old.

Armstrong made his money building battleships (as well as less harmful objects such as bridges and cranes), but he is best remembered for generosities such as giving Jesmond Dene to the people of Newcastle - it is an amazing park - and his former home, Cragside, is one of the jewels in the National Trust's crown. It was good to see that the NT was selling Save Cash & Save the Planet in the gift shop...

Cragside isn't the only home we've seen recently with it's own power history. At Kettlewell our host, Anna, explained that this Dales village used to have its own electricity supply until it was forced to go on the national grid in the ?1950s. In a flatter part of Yorkshire the house we stayed in had solar panels to heat water and at our Aberdeen stop-off we are looking forward to enjoying the insulating properties of a turf roof.

I keep reading newspapers that maintain that it's getting easier to install solar - for instance planning permission may be dropped - but if the system remains as complex, convoluted and ridiculously expensive as it is now most of us will continue to think that creating your own power, by sun or water, is just a game for the super creative or uber-rich - the Armstrongs of today - rather than a logical local solution which helps tackle climate change.

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.

Wind farms from the train

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 Nell (pic of a turbine outside Workington a Cumbrian town that generates the most renewable electricity anywhere in Britain).

Nell says: "Wind is good for the world."

For a journey with a difference take the train from Carlisle to Barrow-on-Furness to spot the wind farms. Even if it's raining you should be able to see more than 30 turbines and to ensure the conversation goes with a spark you get to look at (or visit) the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site.

Make your own hydro pumping station

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. Here's an experiment copied from Lola's travel journal:

Experimant! This is how a hydro pump storage power station (eg, Ben Cruachan by Loch Awe) works.

Need: 1 glass of full water. 1 sausepan. 1 straw.

1) Pour the water over your finger into the sausepan

2) Suck the water back into the glass

3) Repeat this until your board of it

Notes: This is how a hydro station works. First the water falls down from a reservoir hitting the turbine so it generates electiricty that gets sold to the national grid. At night the water gets pumped back up when the electricity is cheaper to buy.

Power tour

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of loads of 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.

Part of our Grand Tour will include counting the hundreds, yes hundreds, of wind turbines generating renewable electricity along the coast and skyline of the Barrow – Carlisle railway. This area is also home to Sellafield’s nuclear reprocessing plant and the Drigg nuclear waste dump. In this part of the Lake District there are strong feelings about the best ways of generating electricity that is clean, green, sustainable and will reduce the carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) which are causing our climate to change. The nuclear industry is a big employer in the area and we are looking forward to going to the Sellafield visitor centre to see how the industry’s operators can explain away the problem of having toxic waste that lasts for years? Had the Romans stationed along Hadrian’s Wall been using nuclear power, their waste sites would still be toxic all these centuries later.

At home we already have an electricity tariff provided by Good Energy because it is one of the few companies that only generates electricity from renewable sources. Good Energy http://www.good-energy.co.uk/ gets its supply from wind turbines. As all power companies have an obligation to produce some renewably generated power (eg, from the sun, water or wind) it means that whoever you buy your electricity from can offer you a "green" tariff. If you only do one thing to tackle climate change buying renewably generated electricity is a great decision.

Even with a renewable electricity supplier there is still more that we can do to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions our home produces. When we moved in I applied for a 50 per cent matching grant (approx #200) to insulate the loft. Roof insulation is just like having hair or wearing a hat: it keeps you warmer. You can tell which houses in your street are not losing a quarter of their heat through the roof because they are the ones which retain the snow for longest during those very few snowy days in winter/spring.

We’re also vigilant home energy efficiency freaks thanks to a combo of draught proofing, thermostat reducing, timer setting and jumper wearing measures. We also have double glazed most of the windows.

Next step is to add solar panels to the south facing roof so that the sun will heat up our water rather than the gas boiler. Unfortunately there is a lot of administrative pain to get to this solar gain – partly the time it takes trying to find an installer (although our local Energy Advice Centre helped) but also completing the council’s planning permission. At least six, multi-page forms need to be completed and then submitted in quadruple quantity. It’s a horrible task, and it takes ages. But if done then the council offers a grant covering a third of the cost of the solar panels (approx #1,000); our energy bills go down again (especially good if the price of gas goes up) and we know that our home’s carbon footprint is cut as the amount of CO2 emissions it releases shrink, whatever the weather and whoever is housesitting in it for us.