Wild flowers are what we want

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling 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

Much of north west Norfolk is an agricultural desert for most birds and insects which struggle to cope in the over-pesticide drenched fields, under the plastic-forced veg or the bare soil, so it was a delight to go for a walk over the permissive paths at Courtyard Farm, near Ringstead. Courtyard Farm is run by Greenpeace's former boss, Lord Melchett on organic principles.

We took a two mile loop over Ringstead common (which is almost hilly and smelt intoxicatingly of hawthorn blossom, aka May) and then across several stunning hay meadows awash with flowers. Supposing we'd strayed from the path it would be impossible not to crush the many flowers - cowslips, ox-eye daisies, vetches, scabius. The fields aren't just eye candy for visitors, we enjoyed hearing larks and learning from the useful free leaflet provided at the car park.

"Artificial fertilisers actually kill life in the soil. English partridge chicks need to eat insects in the first weeks of their life, and chemical sprays kill insects. so baby partridges, tree sparrows, corn buntings, yellow hammers and skylarks starve to death. Weed killers kill the native plants that hares and turtledoves depend on."

"50 years ago, most crops were planted in the spring, and fields left over winter provided food for wildlife. Now most crops are planted in the autumn and the sprayed fields provide no food for wintering wildlife. So birds and other animals have declined because adults starve to death in winter, and their young starve to death in the spring."

"Over the last few years we've seen wildlife return as we changed to organic farming. We have stopped using artificial fertilisers, and sprays that kill insects and weeds. Life has returned to the soil... We have 4 times the number of skylarks and 3 times the number of hares since we started to go organic..." In 2002 there were 90 partridges (the low point was just 16 birds in the 1980s).

Melchett clearly loves his land, it must have been his vision of Courtyard that helped inspire his brave anti-GM crop campaigning. He also got a Bill through Parliament that prevented some birds, eg, curlews, being shot.

"Many do not accept that modern farming has done all this damage, and have put the blame elsewhere. People walking in the countryside are accused of disturbing wildlife. More popular villains are magpies, crows and foxes....

Melchett reckonsthat: "organic farming provides more jobs, far better welfare for farm animals, uses less energy and produces healthier, tastier food..."

If this is true (and I obviously think it is) why can't all farmers be like this one?

And why do shoppers think it is OK to buy so much cheap meat farmed horribly on land that was once rainforest, then flown in all the way from Argentina? It's enough to make me want to pick an annual meat budget (say #100 and then just enjoy tucking into a few tasty, well farmed UK-raised, memorable dishes over the year).

The only other meadows I've seen like this were in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, near Malham Tarn, owned and managed by the National Trust. As the springs pass I hope I'll see many more.

If you want to see the flowers, and don't like picnics, you can also treat yourself to a posh lunch, and local ale, at The Gin Trap, Ringstead. And if you don't happen to be in the area on a Wednesday afternoon when you can buy organic beef, pork and lamb from the farm, then purchase freezer packs at the superb General Stores at Ringstead (open seven days a week stocking basics, papers, Post Office stuff and affordable antiques). Price list from Robert Giles, 01485 525 251, couryardfarm.organic@virgin.net

Pony girl thinks Olympic

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling 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 (pic is at fence 12 in front of Houghton Hall).

I played a wicked trick on my family to get them to go to two days of the three-day international event at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. It's the second year this has been held and rain is becoming a firm tradition. All I had to do was pretend I didn't want to go to see the show jumping on the final day in order for the others to launch a campaign persuading me that I did... eventually I let myself be talked into day two.

Luckily the first day (saturday) was gorgeous and we were able to all walk the cross country course watching some great horses and Olympic hopefuls for China 2008, including William Fox Pitt, Jeanette Brakewell, Oliver Townend and Sharon Hunt.

Equestrianism is the only discipline where men and women compete equally - thus a good one to share with your children.

On Saturday we plopped ourselves on a picnic rug by the water fence and enjoyed seeing the riders tackle three complicated fences, patting other spectators' dogs and cooing at the ducklings on the pond. On Sunday we ducked between the beer tent and umbrellas to watch damp horse and rider combos trying to make a clear show jumping round in a very tight time. Bliss for me; not sure if the family will fall for this horsy trick again though...

Out in the park

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling 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

I Love Parks Too event is coming up soon (14 June, noon-4pm), designed to tempt people on to those big green scary spaces that many wrongly think are littered with dog poo, insects, fag ends and forgotten baby socks. At Highbury Fields, near me, on the Saturday of Love Parks week (14-22 June) there will be music, loads of free activities (eg, face and leg painting so you really can turn your tot into a wild tiger or a hairy monkey) and stalls run by community groups. More info from the ranger on 07825 098451.

My family mock me for prefering the parks when it's raining and they aren't so full, but fiesta style days are a great way of seeing just how many people value our fantastic urban breathing spaces and how much children enjoy the chance to be outside, playing. Best of all Londoners have got lots of choice about which park to stroll around - pity New York with just the one, Central Park (as seen in the latest Sex & The City movie).

The UK has all those other type of parks too; posh people's playgrounds surrounding a stately home. The pic of bracket fungus on a splendid old oak tree is from Houghton Hall (you say How-ton) built by Britain's first PM, Sir Robert Walpole in Norfolk. Walpole had to shift the villagers to keep his park public free (a bit worse than paying #10k for a new kitchen in your second home I feel).

Nowadays the Marquess of Cholmondeley (you say Chum-ley) positively touts for visitors over the summer to help pay for this Palladian mansion's upkeep. The house and gorgeous walled gardens are open on wednesdays, thursdays, sundays and Bank Holiday mondays.

Goodbye hen harriers

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer 2007 traveling 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

I've been told off by my friend Jane for knocking Norfolk - she knows the area around Norwich and isn't prepared to put up with my niggles about what should be a beautiful county if you could help green the people who live there. I want to believe her but today on Radio 4 one of the news stories is of two hen harriers being killed close to the Sandringham estate last Sunday. I am incensed by this story as we'd all been at Sandringham and then Roydon Common looking skyward hoping to see these super rare birds. There are only 20 pairs in the country and now there are 19.

Hen harriers are beautiful (I'm judging by the books as we didn't see the doomed birds) but there main diet is game birds which means the shooting obsessed of Norfolk don't much like them and even if it is illegal to kill hen harriers people will find ways to do so, and then deny everything. One of the horriblest elements of using Norfolk roads (OK Jane, the roads around north and west Norfolk) is that they are littered with run-over pheasants. So many birds are killed this way that the local custom is to drive on if you do the hitting, but the car (or person) behind can stop and take the bird home for a road kill tea - assuming you know how to pluck and gut etc. I must find out iif hen harriers take as many game birds as the cars and 4W4s on the county roads? And even if they do (which I doubt) at least they eat them up rather than leaving the carnage on the tarmac.

Losing our green glow

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

While we’ve been staying in Norfolk we are acutely aware that our impact on the environment is bigger than usual whether we stay in or go out. The house has no cavity wall insulation or loft insulation and though modernish is therefore expensive to heat. We are miles from a shop and though there is an hourly bus service (except on Sunday) it is all too tempting to get in a car and drive to the farm shop, or even one of the many supermarkets that ring King’s Lynn.

Pete has really lost his good green halo this week. He had to fill up the car with his first tank of petrol (he says he did do it once before when he was 17) and ordered and paid for 500 litres of kerosene mix to heat the house. Strangely he seems to like feeling normal, but I'm miserable about how easy it is to slot into eco-inefficient behaviour. Even if I huddle up in a blanket and read the electricity is on a regular tariff too so we’re not supporting renewable alternatives either. Obviously Pete and I could do something about these things if we moved here. Generally people in Norfolk have a high environmental impact – some way above the national average. (For number crunchers in Norfolk a person uses 5.69 global hectares [gha] compared to the UK average of 5.4gha. The target amount for everyone to have a fair share of resources is 1.8gha, a figure a little higher than a person in China currently uses and a great deal less than an American’s giant 9.74 gha).
Given their (possibly) careless use of resources it is likely that people in Norfolk will have to make drastic changes to their lives sooner than if they lived in a hillier part of Britain. If sea levels rise somewhere between the predicted 27 and 80cm over the next 80 years the coastal towns, roads and plenty of houses hugging the shoreline will be doomed.

Stinkhorn and snakes

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 post is from Nicola (pic is of Nell with a puffball found earlier in the year during a Yorkshire walk)

We are staying near Roydon Common (NNR), a mix of heathland and boggy areas fringed by oak and silver birch, which the Norfolk Wildlife Trust calls “one of the most important wildlife sites in the country.” For anyone not used to Norfolk it takes a while to see this wildlife. The birdlife requires early starts and dusk patrols; the knowledge that there are adders is scary enough to keep you on the track (even though snakes are not really around at this time of the year) and the heath itself is patrolled by Exmoor ponies who are expected to keep the grass short and keep the bilberry bushes low. The ponies would have to be very greedy to manage this in such a big area, and as a result the golden autumn colours of the longer patches of grassland transform this heath into lion country. I’ve never seen anything like this in Britain but it isn’t dissimilar to the baked grassy area below the Ngong Hills in Kenya (famous for Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Isak Dinesen in the film Out of Africa).

Along the footpaths mushrooms are springing up. My in-laws were farmers of the old school so didn’t seem to rate any of the country’s natural gifts (blackberries, damsons, nettles, elderberries etc). As a result I had to buy a new fungi book in order to identify what we’re seeing on our walks. Most exciting spot so far is the spectacularly rude looking Stinkhorn (the best known member, arf arf, of the Phallaceae family) with its crumply, wet look black thimble-shaped head and a longish (15cm) cylindrical stem. It smelt horrible, but is not old enough yet to stink out a big area around it. We’re now hoping to find an unhatched Stinkhorn egg to try and hatch out on damp tissue under a jam jar.

Norfolk is very low lying and much of it is reclaimed land. Even in the garden this is obvious – especially if you are used to the heavy clay soils of Essex/Herts/London – as in Norfolk the soil is loamy enough to run through hands like sand. Sometimes I even find shells, but I think they’ve probably been put in the borders by Lola and Nell after day trips to the sea. Given that climate change will see the sea levels rising it’ll be interesting – horrifying? – to find out what panic plan this county has for dealing with flooding. My next task is to log on to the council’s website and have a look…

Flying geese

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 post is from Nicola

It’s one of the best sights in the world – skein after skein of geese, some arrow-headed but all making that heart-stopping geese gaggle as they search for the best night time stop over. The pink-footed geese (with distinctive white bottoms and, obviously, pink feet) have been in Iceland all summer but in late September/October thousands appear around the shores, marshes and grass fields of Holkham, Norfolk swiftly followed by bird watchers with hefty binoculars (bins), tripods and industrial sized Thermoses for piping hot mugs of tea.

Seeing the geese is a small miracle - and even more so since the world's total breeding population of these birds (approx 100,000) has been under threat in Iceland as it is at the same spot as the proposed site of two hydro-electric dams. My details are not up to date, but it makes me giddy how easy it could be to destroy these birds' essential habitat for ostensibly a good, low carbon project. What a terrible loss the end of the geese would be.

If you are at Holkham when the geese come in at dusk (or maybe drinking tea or beer in the nearby Victoria Hotel – a Chelsea-on-sea style pub with wit, atmosphere, dogs, Rajasthan fittings and a hearty game menu) then it is easy to suggest the earlier part of your carbon-light day. Go for a cycle around the collection of villages prefixed Burnham so you can hero worship Nelson, enjoy village ponds, prowl around antique and boat yards, stop-off at Bircham Windmill on the B1153 and finally get to Holkham with its craft village, big house and shrine to agriculturalist Coke before going to see those honky tonk stars on the grassy side of the marshes near the pine-wood bordered dunes.

Tractor but no queen

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 post is from Nicola, Lola and Nell

Nicola: Sandringham - the Queen's Christmas & New Year bolt hole designed to be cosy rather than stately - is near where we are staying in Norfolk. It was about the first country park to be opened to the public (600 acres), back in 1968 and also broke ground in 1994 when the visitor centre, which is covered in cedar wood tiles and diamond-shaped windows, was opened to extract cash from the crowds. The Queen still has huge numbers of staff (see what looks like adult school photo groups) and clearly many are equally adept at looking after visitors from Easter to the last weekend in October when Sandringham House and Garden are open. We spent a full day at Sandringham which included a quick walk in the woods (there's a sawmill where you can buy kitchen counters etc), a tractor ride past the house where Princess Diana was born and a tour of the house and gardens.

Nell: I nearly lost my bandana at Sandringham but my dad found it again 20m from the big oak tree that Lola and I were climbing. There was a playground with a boat in it (Sandringham is only three miles from the sea although this is impossible to tell when the leaves are on the trees) and I found a 50p which I gave to Lola.

Lola: I really liked the tractor ride because the man who was driving it told you lots of interesting things about Queen Alexandra (the Queen's great grandmother) who built it with her husband in 1870. And I got to take my Silvanians on the tour which they liked. I climbed up a big oak tree, I went so high it was a bit scary! Inside the house there were lots of posh things, like full size paintings of Alexandra. I was a bit upset that we didn't get to see the Queen or the Queen's bedroom - she can look at mine if she likes!

Nicola: I spent enough on our visit for the Queen to buy a few luxury Christmas presents, and tip a few pheasant beaters, thanks to the temptations in the excellent craft and local food shop (eg, Norfolk honey, walnut liqueur, Norfolk apple juice, Norfolk lavender oil) in addition to the #20 house and garden entry fee for the four of us. But you could go to Sandringham and spend nothing as much of the woodland on the other side of the road is all year open access. When Pete's parents were alive they often went up to these woods with a flask of tea and a biscuit tin and had a quiet walk between the larch and silver birch trees. If we lived this way I feel certain we'd do that too - hopefully reaching Sandringham by bike rather than our borrowed purple car.

Things change

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

How things change. Lola, Nell and I were just due to go from Bishop's Stortford station up to London and home when Pete's Dad, who is 80, fell seriously ill. The advantage of three months travelling is that we could immediately set off in the opposite direction for his home in Norfolk. Very sadly Dennis died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn the next day.

It's left everyone here at his house (where we are now staying) feel empty, sad and worn out - and perhaps even more aware that if you don't enjoy what you can, when you can the opportunity all too soon slips away.