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

Ready to ski?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here are some ideas about how to offer a winter sports experience - like you might have in Austria - but much closer to home. This post is by Nicola Baird 

From late October, each week another Austrian ski resort opens up again after the long summer break. A good place to find out more is at this blog here. I've never skiied on snow, and only tried an artificial slope once, I think in Harrogate although xscape at Milton Keynes is far more famous, and there's the Chill Factor at Trafford with a luge run and the Snow Centre in St Albans, just 10 minutes from the train station. But last weekend on a brainstorm with the Geography Collective (working on their next Mission Explore book challenge) one of the bonding activities was to toboggan at the Chatham Ski Slope (apparently the longest artificial slope in Kent and the South East).

It seemed a shame to let the kids miss out this early winter sport pleasure so when I left the geographers, I took Lola, Nell and their friend Xander to Broadgate ice rink, just by Liverpool Street in the centre of London for a long skate on a chilly, blue-sky morning with near perfect mountain conditions (!). As you can see from their expressions, they loved it - as did Xander's mum Nicky. And you can try skating too from November - early February.

Obviously if we were thinking Austrian we'd finish off our skating or tobogganing with hot chocolate and cakes. Instead we ate noodles at Spitalfields market, but I guess when you are on a skiiing holiday, you never really know what you might do next...

Over to you
Where do you go in the UK to recreate a winter sports feeling? I'd love to try to ski my way around the UK using the artificial slopes...

Bike for a French feel

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. This post is by Nicola Baird (picture above about how freeing a bike can be, is by Lola, aged 9).


My friend Rachel went cycling in France during the summer. It was quite easy, she told me looking distinctly svelte, just 1,ooo km over eight days so we had time to sight-see. This is a staggering distance, how on earth did she have time to sight-see?  The answer is that she's cycle fit. She cycles most weekends with her partner, Andy Cornwell, who is an extraordinarily passionate long-distance cyclist and has a great blog with ideas about where to ride, and how to test your endurance. Should you wish to do something similar, have a look at the Lonely Planet guide, Cycling France.


Admittedly the world's most famous cycle race, the Tour de France is 3,600 km, and lasts 21 days, but those  competitors want the challenge - they are super-fit, lean, mean bike machines. 


I find cycling is a good way to cheer me and the family up.


It's lovely to cycle on autumn days when there isn't a headwind and the leaves are turning red and yellow as if you were mountain biking through a Canadian fall. I like the way you can stop exactly when you want to - no worries about parking when you see a bramble bush still laden with blackberries. When the first frosts come it will be time to stop at the blackthorn and pick sloes to  make sloe gin or flavour vodka ready for a Christmas treat.





Sustrans offers fabulous off-road cycling all round the UK. 


For anyone based in London there are also some great journeys to make - your personal Tour de France  - either direct from your home or via a train line that allows bikes. I particularly like the stations running north of Finsbury Park that take you out to Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridge and Norfolk. In a recent issue of London Cycling Campaign's magazine there's a great ride around Stevenage. It's 30 miles which sounds a long way - but do it at your own pace, on a lovely autumn day, and you'll be rewarded with the same feeling of triumphal achievement that those Tour de France cyclists get when they cross the finishing line. 

Sport binds us?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK.

In a series of lighthearted emails back in January 2010 the excellent head at Woodford International School in Honiara, Solomon Islands said my little Brit daughters could only attend his school (for a week) if our whole family promised not to support New Zealand's 2011 Rugby World Cup bid.

Well, that seemed like a nobrainer.

I've never enjoyed rugby (or to be honest understood the scoring). If he wanted me to cheer for Oz's side (the one that hasn't won the rugby world cup for years...) then I was happy to do so.

But it's 9 September 2011 today and the Rugby World Cup has started - with New Zealand the hosts until 23 October. The host nation are apparently favourites, and haven't won top honours) (the Webb Ellis trophy since the inaugural game in 1987. This seems to be an advantage, they've certainly played the first half of their first game rather finely. But don't worry Greg, I was just looking at the Tonga team's red strip, and then couldn't resist watching both teams doing their fierce Polynesian war dances before the game kicked off.

And thanks to Greg I've realised that there are seven weeks of sport to enjoy and lots of the teams are from a long, long way away. I'm especially looking forward to the Fiji v Namibia game on Saturday (watch it on ITV 1, 4.30pm).

The picture above is more relevant than it might seem, it's a Pijin-language slogan Tshirt meaning we can do it together (tugetha iumi save duim) - which I took at Honiara's Lime Lounge during an annual award ceremony for Courageous Women. The Solomon Islands award was won by a woman who'd done a huge amount of surveying to discover that more than 60 per cent of women aged 15-49 had experienced domestic violence. This is a very high rate, and besides Papua New Guinea, one of the highest in the Pacific region. It's also shocking - it's dads, uncles, step fathers, grandparents, brothers and cousins who are hurting their wantoks (relations).

Scary jobs
I've been sniffing around the internet finding out more about this and discovered a just published Amnesty International report that surveyed Solomon Islands women collecting water in an area of Honiara that is off-grid (actually it's off-grid for about 90 per cent of houses). During the day only two men went to the water pipe, everyone else was female. When the women were asked why the men weren't helping the answer was "They are playing sport or drinking kwaso (a potent homebrew)." Here is the Solomon Star link.

I guess seven weeks of sport is good for nation building and bad for a lot of non-sport mad partners. Especially the ones collecting water (and in my London home that probably includes washing up duty).

Anyway, enjoy the games. And if you have to collect water, do so safely...

Wales at easter

Pete with pretend-to-be cossacks Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel but stay off planes to keep their carbon footprint down. Here's how they satisfy their passion for travel, this time using one of the oldest ways of getting around - on a horse

Wales used to be the UK’s best kept secret. It’s got the most gorgeous scenery, rolling hills that are steep enough to make you puff just looking at them; castles; activities, coastline and those green, green valleys. It’s got great poets, Taliesin(s) and lyrical Dylan Thomas to heroes such as Glyndwr and that girl from the Mumbles (no, I'm not thinking of Charlotte Church).

It’s also wooed and won a lot of my friends so in order to make a visit to Llanidloes we were happy to housesit a combination of geese, hens, cats, horses and seedlings while our hosts took a mini break in their camper van from housesitting her mum’s place while she’s off working in Lesotho. A complicated bit of house swapping to organise (as a friend of our hostess also moved into our house in London), but five horsy days for me and the kids doing country stuff.

For Lola the highlight was bareback rounding up of sheep (!). Nell was delighted to go on her first hacks, have the big dog lick her hand and watch her mum treat geese as nervously as if they were a herd of rhinos. There scarier in fact.

A real treat was to saddle up the horses – grey Herbie and liver chestnut Rosie who was born on the farm – and take the girls for a ride up over the hills. It was hot and the last few lambs were popping out in one field which inspired lengthy discussion about why sheep don’t eat their placentas (much), how many placentas twin lambs create and human connected fact of life questions.

And then it was time to trot to the moor and Lola lent forward, clutching the mane, imagining herself as Laura Ingalls Wilder (of Little House on the Prairie fame) galloping bareback On the Shores of Silver Creek. While Nell was being a Nellie – find out which you are at the cute quiz site Are you a Nellie (spunky) or a good natured Laura, http://www.littlehousebooks.com/fun/nelliequiz.cfm

Content as I was, riding out with my two girls – who I’ve taught to ride despite their London address (a miracle really but it may come in handy come the fossil fuel cutbacks as this is the original renewable way of getting around until the bike was introduced) - I couldn’t resist dreaming of other horse nations where the mum would stick the kids on the GGs to make getting around more fun, and a great deal quicker. And within seconds the beautiful 360 degree skyline of wind farms and bleatingly busy ewes disappeared so Lola, Nell and I could cross the old soviet steppes Cossack style on our way to summer grazing. And as we looked for finger posts taking us along the National Trail my imagination was ticking off the horse-lovers Stans – Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's a bit like TV Alexandra Tolstoy's rides with horse people of the word (see what the Guardian makes of her show here).

But less posh - because back in 1985 visiting a uni friend, Nicky, whose family were based in Islamabad, Pakistan I went to the North West Frontier Province, after a bumpy flight from Peshawar up to Chitral, which is very close to the Afghan border. I remember being aghast at the number of kalashnikovs slung over men’s shoulders, and stunned by how many Afghani refugees were forced to make new lives in an area that looked so bad for crop growing – although maybe I visited in the wrong season as this part of the silk road is famous for apricot orchards.

Dressed up in shalwar kameez (and sun glasses which rather ruined the common touch) Nicky and I looked at the sites, ate the delicious apricots and debated maternal health until we were invited to watch from the Prince’s dias (well he said he was) the amazing game of buzkashi played (in Uzbekistan it’s called uloq). Buzkashi is a kind of polo with a goat carcass used as the ball.. It’s very fast, only men do it (I think only men watch it but I guess Nicky and I were treated as honorary man) and at that particular contest a clarinet and drum band beat out a rider’s signature tune whenever they were on the ball.

It was a surreal afternoon – English polo has never seemed so exciting again, even when it’s injected with Argentinian verve and skill.

Now even the simple pleasure of a morning ride with my daughters surprises me. It's not just that we live in central London, or that Nell's asthma is made worse by the beasts, or the cost (although all are relevant) it's the surprise of having got to be old enough to hack out with my own children. The Welsh views may distract eco-bunny me - we counted enough wind turbines to provide energy for nearly 7,000 households but I'll have to check this - but when I'm around horses I feel just as I did as an eight year old out for a ride: happy, ready to canter and in touch with the place I am.

Horsiculture is maligned for being elitist, pricey and a little bit obsessional - so as a part time riding coach I'm delighted to see that a few environmental writers, specifically Mark Lynas and Sharon Astyk, have suggested horse transport may be the way to go. I don't for a moment think they were serious, but it's a good reminder that everyone used to be able to get around without using any fuel save grass, hay and oats.

Dragon stance

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world without racking up their carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

Korea is one of the countries I don't expect to know about. It's far away, mysterious and I haven't yet had any students from there. China yes. Taiwan yes. But this half-term week after a fascinating detour to the V&A museum (the Natural History Museum was just too crowded) we all found out about Korea's early writing programme for the masses, the way Buddhist texts were written up and the importance of dragons. Most of the dragons were on decorative china pieces but bold, lithe and perfectly scary. As we'd just seen a lifesize sculpture of George slaughtering a dragon in the plaster court, dragons seemed to have become the dominant animal force in the East wing...

While there a text pinged in from the girls' tae kwondo instructor, Michael, suggesting that they used half term to prepare for some tests (belts). That's how I know that this amazing hand/foot discipline was born in Korea on 11 April 1955. Bizarrely for the past couple of years our family has even been using a few Korean words - all thanks to the stances the kids learn in tae kwondo - without realising just where they came from. Not long ago Pete even wrote about it in the Guardian, see here to find out if we ever found our 'indomitable spirit'.

I'm afraid to say that there wasn't really a dragon's chance for me.

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...

Crowded train

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three 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’s a September Saturday and we’re off to our friends John and Ann’s wedding in Bristol. They’ve organized a BBQ and lazy afternoon at Bristol Zoo so we aim for the 10.05 out of Paddington Station. The Circle line seems suspiciously crowded but when we get to the main line station it is a sea of gold and green shirts worn by the crowds of one-time Sydney residents trying to get to Cardiff Millennium stadium for the World Cup rugby match between Wales and Australia. There are probably some Welsh fans in the melee, and less sporty travelers too but at Paddington’s glass-covered concourse it looks as if Australia has the most supporters.

The one charter train has already packed itself to capacity and left for Cardiff which means that we share our service with hundreds of fans desperate to get to the stadium on time. Our carriage is so crowded it would be wrong to sit in all our reserved seats, even if we could persuade people to shift, so we squeeze all four of us on to just two. Inevitably that means we have to earwig the surrounding conversations and that’s how we learn that Australians – when not talking about the rugby – are obsessed by European traveling, budget insurance (eg World Nomad), and have a check list of places to visit while in Britain which includes Brighton, Cornwall, the Regency circus at Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon and a pretty Cotswold village. Edinburgh Festival (in August) and the Munich beer fest (in October) are also obligatory.

Pete regularly travels on trains full of footie fans so he’s not phased by the over-crowding or surprised when our train is unable to pick up passengers at interim stations even ones as big as Reading and Swindon. Instead he enjoys the bonhomie, shared bottles of cider and sport talk.

In contrast I’m shocked that the train companies, like First Great Western, are so untogether that they don’t run longer or more trains to get fans to the ground. These big sporting dates aren’t a surprise so why do train operators let us all down by making zero effort to handle the demand? And why are trains allowed to be so over-crowded in an age when allegedly health and safety is a top priority?

As for the result: a 71,000 crowd see Australia beat Wales (20:32) in an allegedly good game. And because we were cheek by jowl with the Ozzies for most of the journey we can’t resist shouting a good on yerrrrr - even though we're now having a nice day at a white wedding.