Riddle: What's ancient but still growing?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here are three bits of wood that were felled when they were already 1000s of years old, have done one job and are now treasured gifts offering just a hint of colonial America and pioneer Australians. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs).   


The answer to the riddle what's ancient, but still growing, is wood - wonderful wood. The picture is of my three most treasured cut pieces of wood. From left to right in the picture are pitch pine, red oak and huon pine. This post is their story.

RED OAK
This is my favourite. The plank of red oak was cut down by the first colonists from virgin American forests in the Appalachian mountains. The tree could have been about 1,000 years old when it was felled. The pioneers cut it down with a massive handsaw, and then made it into planks with a steam powered saw.

It became floorboards at a factory in North Carolina.

What's so exciting about red oak is that in some planks you can find Civil War bullets, and even native Indian arrow heads embedded inside and only revealed when the planks are de-nailed in modern sawmills. Lots more information about this at my friend Jason's brother's website www.thehistorictimbercompany.ie.

It's been with Jason for a while - he uses a similar plank piece to put behind his sink taps as a splashback. I gave him a bottle of whisky as a swap, and will be giving it to my godson who is about to be confirmed. George is 18, and is considering studying American history at university - no doubt because of summer 2010 which he spent visiting Amish communities as documented by Channel 4 in its documentary Living with the Amish. I'm sure he's expecting cash, I just think this is a richer gift (sorry George!). Pic shows George eating an Eton Mess pudding off his i-plank gift...

PITCH PINE
It smells so good and you can see beautiful knots in the grain. This is a piece of tongue and groove flooring from a cotton mill in North Carolina.

When the colonists first explored the new continent of America they met vast forests of pitch pine (also known as longleaf pine) - stretching 150 miles wide from the Atlantic Coast of south western Virgina down into Florida, along the Gulf of Mexico and into east Texas. The trees can live for 100s of years and grow up to 300ft high and 5ft wide. They are seriously big.

These virgin forests were used to source tar, pitch, turpentine and resin for the British navy. They are resitant to pest attack and survive well in water, even sea water.

According to www.thehistorictimbercompany.ie " Heavy exploitatiton of virgin longleaf pine beagn after the American Revolution and intensififed with the development of railroads in the late 1800s and on to England where the timbers were a key building material during the Industrial Revolution. By 1930 virtually all the old growth longleaf pine had been cut and used to build the factories, warehouses and terminals of industrial America and Europe.
"Today only 2 per cent of the orginal forest remains, with fewer than 1,000 acres of virgin timber still standing.
"A lot of the old structures the pine built are now being demolished which allows the painstaking process of re-salvaging a small piece of history. The Historic Timber Company rescues these timbers and ships them to our yard in Ireland where they are de-nailed, re-sawn and machined into historic pitch pine flooring."

My plan is to use it as a doorstop. I already have a box made from an old apple tree which works well as a doorstop - pity we tend to keep the doors shut all winter!

HUON PINE
This is scrap wood reclaimed from a dump in Tasmania, Australia. My friend Paula brought this Tardis style box back to us after we helped look after her daughter Izzy and their pet guinea pig. It's a much paler wood and was turned into a box by workers at Resource Work Cooperative, a not for profit which runs the Tip Shop  and Collectables - both sell items found on the South Hobart tip, mostly from McRobies Gully tip site. This is a real example of art for trash. Here's what Paula said about it when she gave it to us:

"Huon pine is one of the slowest-growing and longest living plants in the world. It can grow to an age of 3,000 years or more. Only the bristle-cone pine of North America lives longer.
Huon pine is found in western Tasmania, the central plateau and in the Huon Valley. Houon pine is a relic of Gondwana - the first pollen records date back 135 million years. 

"International headlines were made with  the discovery of a stand of Huon pines on the west coast that is more than 10,000 years old. [Wow!] All the trees are male and are genetically identical. No individual tree in the stand is 10,000 years old, rather the stand has been in existence for that long.

"Convicts on Sarah Island in the west of Tasmanai cosntructed ships from Huon pine. The wood contains an olil which retards the growth of fungi, hence its early popularity in ship bilding. later piners on the Franklin and Gordon rivers felled Huons and floated them downstream.
Today the tree is wholly protected and cannot be felled. However wood on the forest floor remains usable after hundreds of years and is still prized by modern woodworkers, not least because of its sweet aroma.

"Huon pine can be seen along the Huon pine walk at Tahune in the Huon Valley, the Teepookana Forest Reserve, West Coast, Heritage Landing on the Gordon River and near Newall Creek on the Mount Jukes road south of Queenstown. The working sawmill in Strahan will give samples of the timber to visitors and many craft outlets sell Huon pine woodcraft.

Over to you
Go admire the wood you are using - it's sure to have a fascinating story to tell. And if you do buy any new wood (or wood products) be sure to check that it has the FSC tick logo that assures you it has come from a woodland that is sustainably managed.

Essex discoveries part 1

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love travelling around the UK. Here's some ideas to fill your holidays and keep your carbon footprint low. This post about Essex is by Nicola

It's a swap thing: Pete was born in Herts, and I was born in Essex. But he's all Essex humour and I'm the posh bird from Hertfordshire. Although we didn't meet until I was 29 years old for a time we'd both lived pretty much equi-distance from Bishop's Stortford, the Hertfordshire market town that protects us from Essex. Or vice versa. Anyway, ahhh.

Nell, 9, is intrigued by Essex, she's hardly ever been there and yet there's a map on our corridor wall with rings around all the places that are family important (and yes, Nasty and Ugley, High Easter and Cold Christmas - we lost control of the highlighter pen!). And so the plan is get-to-know Essex better. It also means we've got a travel theme and Nell hopefully won't feel so cheated by her friends and their climate-bashing tales of "when I was at the airport...".

We've started well this Essex-themed Easter holidays well with a quick walk through Hatfield Forest, just outside Bishop's Stortford. Hatfield Forest is a remnant of the Great Essex Forest, mimics a medieval working woodland and is now run by the National Trust. As an added bonus it's opposite Stansted Airport working as a seriously green lung by the bypass and perimeter fence. Using a very easy to follow map we walked around the lake created by the one-time owner, a Hugenot refugee, who built a shell house for picnics - the shells (see pic left) are from the Caribbean and Africa, brought to the UK in the ballast of the ships that created such wealth for some of the old families (there's clearly a link to slavery here). The nice volunteer guide inside the Shell House encouraged the girls to play with these shells... And I swear I spotted the shells of African land snails too...

A family hunt
Next stop was just outside Great Dunmow (a place Pete could remember his Dad recalling the Saracen's Head and his mum rolling her eyes at the metropolis) for Great Garnetts farm by Barnston. This is where his dad, Denis May, had his first tenancy farm, eventually moving to the other side of Essex when offered more land for his dairy herd.

The big house at Great Garnetts was Elizabethan, with tall chimneys. There's still an interesting arch in or out of the stable yard and we hope to find out more when we go to the farmers' market held just about once a month (except August when everyone's too busy harvesting) - in 2010 they are on the 2nd Saturday of each month so try 10 April, 8 May, 12 June, 10 July, 11 Sep, 9 Oct and 13 Nov.

When Pete's mum, Sheila, moved in to the semi-detached farm cottage (see pic above) there was no heating except wood fires. I think she said there was no water as well. It must have been terrible for her especially looking after a four year old and Pete for his first eight months. No wonder he puts up with the cold... The farm cottages look picture perfect now and I think Lola and Nell were a tad jealous of the three children rolling outside with a pack of black labradors.

We also went to the pub that Denis used to walk to after his chores were finished. Lucky for us The Spotted Dog, in Bishop's Green (tel: 01245 231598), a lovely old thatched place, had just been redone and opened on 1 April (five days ago) as a gastro pub which still served real ale. We had our dog, so we ate on a bench outside, thinking about Denis all those years ago propping up the bar with a few old farmer friends. Maybe.

It's an irony that Denis felt so strongly that organic was a fad, and now even the old pubs are going all foodie and his old farm has recreated itself as a farmers' market. Obviously it's not all organic, but the locally grown element - pork and turkey - is key to this farming renaissance.

Tree heaven

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - but try not to rack up their carbon footprint as they go. Here's how...

Walking along the twisting sanded path between some of the rarest, most impressive and unusal trees in the world is a treat. Add autumn colour from mid October through November from Japanese maples and you ‘re in for a sensory treat at Westonbirt, the National Arboretum in the postcard perfect Cotswolds. The collection is split into two enormous woods, the Old Arboreturn which dates back to the 1850s, or Britain’s largest collection of maples (and others) in the Silk Wood - an area so large it can take two hours to tour even without detours and the opportunity to gaze up trunks oohing and ahhing.

Lola’s learning the history of the Silk Road at the moment – the trade route that allowed East and West to switch influences, more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road – so it was no surprise that she turned us towards Westonbirt’s Silk Wood for a Sunday morning stroll. We enjoyed finding the tented weeping holly and a weeping Japanese cherry, the ubiquitous sequoia (not yet super tall but big and soft enough to be easily recognizable). But our party’s favourite – all ex or current Friends of the Earth employees/contributors, bar the two children – was the rare Japanese tree that smelt of caramel/burnt toast.

Westonbirt Arboretum is huge and plays an important role even now collecting rare species, preserving seed and raising super-trees. It’s a tree gene pool but also a feast for the eyes. Autumn inspires many tree events, most you can just turn up for, but see the list here www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt but there’s also xmas lights, winter walks, photo displays, fungi hunts etc. If you’re taking younger children, get your under 5s trying the “exploratree” play area or other activities, see www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt-families.

Like Kew Gardens Westonbirt showcases British gardeners’ ability to grow just about anything, hinting at the English colonial presence all over the world, but it’s also a place you can know nothing about trees or plants and just enjoy a stroll knowing you won’t get very lost, and even if you do someone will be able to direct you to a coffee shop.

And if you’ve never been there before, don’t be distracted by the woods, first go to the Great Oak Hall, open from 10am-4pm, and find out where to see some of the 100 champion trees (VIP trees with blue ID tags) and when to join the free info tours.

Westonbirt Arboretum is disappointingly hard to reach by public transport (and you’ll need to pre book taxis) but if you do arrive by foot – try the Monarch’s Way www.ramblers.org.uk/ out of nearby Tetbury http://www.visittetbury.co.uk/ which bypasses Prince Charles’ Highgrove – then the entrance fee is slashed.

Hen on a bike

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

This is the way my hens travel – on the back of the bike. This contraption carried nine of them yesterday for their summer break at Freightliners Farm.

We need transport too as we are invited to a wedding in a pear orchard in Kent and finding it hard to get to. As a result Pete has developed a new green radicalism. “There aren’t even instructions on how to get there by public transport,” he keeps moaning unable to find the nearest station (or a taxi rank) without ringing the long-suffering groom for instructions.

I explain that most people have cars, remembering my book The Estate We’re In: who’s driving car culture (Indigo, 1998). Pete says they don’t.

So we try counting the people we know with primary school aged children who don’t have cars. There are just five of us out of an acquaintanceship of more than 500 in this area (that’s thanks to school networks not enormous friendship powers). Normally Pete loves creating lists, but this time he seems a bit depressed.

For me it is a lesson to book the car club car in better time. Then we’d have the moral high ground and the wheels to make it to Kent with tent, food, spade and really wedding heavy gifts. For Pete it is an attempt to stop me getting more pets. “OK, we can do it by train this time,” he growls, “but if you got a dog then we’d have to have a car. And you don’t want that, do you?”

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

Christmas tease

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.

We’re going to have a green Christmas. Nell wants it white of course and Lola wants what the Christmas cards depict. I want it to be fun and as keeping to our principles as possible – so locally acquired food, homemade treats and a sense of celebration without excessive spending.

That's easy to sort out for food and gifts. But what to do about the Christmas tree?

Around 6 million get cut down each year for their two week stint holding up the fairy. In some ways this is good – fast growing trees soak up carbon and if they are then left out with the recycling and shredded they act as carbon sinks. Where we live there aren’t many locally grown pine trees around so I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a potted real tree with healthy roots. The hitch is that potted trees don’t thrive in dry summers, especially with the neglect it will have to expect in our family.

And even if I’d gone down the tree from the corner shop route (with no certification that it was from a well managed woodland) it is still difficult to carry home. Last year I re-used the school’s real Christmas tree – for just a fiver – but it was needleless from the start and this year impossible as they’ve switched to an artifical creation.

I’ve also tried making glitter twig arrangements but the kids don’t really approve. Besides I love the idea of having a tree in the house, especially as we are having friends to stay in the run up to Christmas and family on Christmas Day.

So I lucked out when I found an artificial tree dumped on the roadside for the bin men. It’s about 1.5m high, folds flat - which made it easy to carry home - and will look fantastic covered in decorations. Not only does our tree come with a story, I hope it will be with our family for life without ever dropping a needle.

There'll still be real trees at Christmas for us as I'm planning a trip to see the lights switched on the huge Norwegian spruce in Trafalgar Square (from December 6 or if you missed it, see the pic above). This is one of those gifts - from the people of Norway given each year since 1947 - that Londoners can really look forward to, even though they know what they are getting. I'm also hoping that Pete will get me a very special Christmas present this year, a young apple tree to add to our mini orchard (three espaliered fruit trees) from tree 2 my door.

Midnight walk

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

It’s 10pm and I’ve just got back from taking Lola and Nell on their first dusk-to-dark nature safari. We crossed the common at dusk dodging puddles left in the ruts of 4WD while admiring the mist that had hangs like a willow the wisp across this area making it feel very spooky. But this isn't a ghost walk, so to cheer the children up we walk on the road past Norton Cottage where the owls are shouting out for company and then out into enough open space to see the full moon rising, and then getting caught up in the hornbeam trees.

Hearing the owls reminds Lola of the time we were camping by Ullswater in the Lake District and she was woken on a wet night by a hungry owlet barracking its parents for food. Owls don’t fly when it’s wet – presumably because the voles don’t show – so this poor owlet would have had two choices: pester power or munching up its sibling (assuming there was another in the nest). Lola was too sleepy to realize this and just sat up in her sleeping bag to say loudly, but politely, “Please can you stop making that noise.” I think it worked, anyway we all fell back into a very fretful sleep and the next night the little owl wasn’t so persistent.

The big block is a mile best walked anti-clockwise. It can be busy but at this time of night on a bank holiday Saturday there are only two cars. As they pass we press ourselves into the verge, me hoping they’ll dip their lights when they see my pale trousers. But when the road is restored to its usual tranquility we get to see lots of bats using the silvery lanes as if they are they are selecting insects from the pick and mix counter.

We then turn right and out into the country with a stubble field to our left and hay-scented golf course on the right. Wherever there’s long grass on the roadside verge the crickets are up for it, shouting and partying. But all’s quiet in the stubble tonight: yesterday there was a couple working the north west corner by the passing point with a huge metal detector. I think all they got was mud on their boots.

As it grows dark the golden light shillueting SPELLING the far hedgerow closes down the colours into a grey blue and then inky night. On the golf course the grass is now soaked by dew and the moon gaining enough strength to give us moon shadows.

"It looks like the moon is a planet," said Lola teasing me, she knows I get very mixed up dealing with the solar system. Nell agrees and I resolve to learn them once and for all - I'm sure there's a nymonic SPELLING where John Likes Susan's Violet Eyes to help me finally get those planets under control.

Then just as the kids grow tired and we can spot more stars than planes (hard near Stansted Airport on a bank holiday weekend) we are over the five-bar gate and into the farmyard. Here the children turn on their torches so they can dodge the giant puddles and avoid the pond. Now we are on the final straight – strolling up the lane arm in arm listening to a neighbour’s teenagers celebrate GCSE results with a loud – and good – rendition of I would walk 500 miles by The Pretenders. It's a good choice!

Back home Granny Fiona is mystified by a walk in the dark: the terrace is her night time limit. Yet when pressed she says she enjoyed night fishing as a child on Strangford Lough, in Northern Ireland, and coming back by the moonlight with the oars dripping phosphorescence. Our midnight safari is not nearly so glamorous, but what a fine way to end a summer’s day.

Tree hug

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

It turns out that a stroll in the country is packed with scary moments – there’s the unprovoked wasp attack on Lola; avoiding giant hemlock along the River Cover which can blister your body and dealing with bored young bullocks that want to charge a short-legged yapping daschound (Truffle) mowing down the humans in their field in the process. Luckily my godson George, and the rest of our gang survived to tell our tale of derring-do (ie, how we threw ourselves over the barbed wire fence and did a major detour during the six and a half mile walk). In this photo we are measuring a very fat and fine beech tree on the path from Jerveaux Abbey to the Cover Bridge Inn. It came in at five hugs. Apparently the Woodland Trust want all ancient trees recorded, and you can find out how at http://www.woodland-trust.org.uk/.

Chasing Harry Potter

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

Lola missed getting Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows one minute after midnight, but she was treated to a hardback copy on the first day it was out. We bought this from WH Smith in Berwick-on-Tweed (we couldn’t find any other bookshop in the town, but this may have been because it was raining so hard we lacked motivation). The shop assistants said they’d sold 450 copies that day – later the papers said more than a million CHECK copies had been sold on the first day. It’s an astonishing success for JK Rowling – and a great relief that she insisted on having FSC certified paper for her book and that… but I can’t tell you the ending can I?

We're tree huggers today

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 and Lola (Nell is on the far left of the pic with her friends).

Just when we were deciding which digital camera to take on our trip, who was going to housesit and planning our leaving party we discovered that nearly 20 trees were to be cut down along the avenue we walk along to school every day. We were so shocked that it was easy to set up an instant action to try to stop our council doing this.

The council says the trees (mostly Raywood Ash which look like Rowan) have to go for health and safety reasons. Translated this means that they might drop a twig on a passer-by's head, which could be fatal. It is hard to imagine them as killer trees when Drayton Park is a nightmare of building, construction vehicles, groaning cement mixers and through traffic.

Lola takes over: “In Islington there aren't that many trees, so these are especially important because they are on a big road with big grey buildings opposite. The only bit of greenery along Drayton Park are the trees that the council wants to cut down. The department cutting the trees down is actually supposed to be looking after Islington's trees. I don't think that's right,” said Lola to one of the newspapers. “When it's spring they flower and it's really nice, when it's raining you can shelter under them. When it's sunny they give you shade. So they are useful all year around. So why the council wants to cut them down I do not know. I always walk to school so I've become very attached to those trees, they are like my friends. They always brighten up my day, and they help tackle climate change.

Admittedly Lola and Nell did nearly get into trouble because they were late for school on Thursday 17 May. This time it was because they were giving out flyers to all the people who walk down Drayton Park towards the Arsenal tube. The flyers made it easy for people to ring the council or contact the man responsible for cutting down the tree. As a result his emailbox was swamped by pleas and opinions from outraged residents. Lola was relieved not to be told off by a Year 6 teacher. When he heard she was busy campaigning his answer was that it "was better to save trees than to be early for school!"

At 4pm that day Nell and some of her friends set up a pop-up tent under one of the doomed trees. We added bunting and waved homemade banners saying “We love Drayton Park’s trees” for photographers from the two local newspapers, The Islington Gazette and the Tribune. It felt a bit like being one of the characters in Lauren Child's book, What Planet Are You From Clarice Bean? when Clarice's family camp up a tree to stop it... being chopped down.

About 20 people turned up for this press call including our brilliant local Green Party councillor, Katie Dawson.

Two hours later, back at home, my email box had fantastic news: a message from the council saying the trees would be cut down in September, instead of tomorrow. We were all so pleased to get a three-month breathing space.

It’s amazing how citizen action can work when you are lucky.

Lola and Nell would be devastated to see this avenue cut down, but they couldn’t believe there were no plans to replant any of the so-called killer trees in that street.

They were also shocked to learn that in lots of countries in the world you run real risks protesting. We wouldn’t have dared do this if we lived in Zimbabwe or the Democratic Republic of Congo or Iraq. Twenty years ago we wouldn’t have dared do it in South Africa or Chile. I think our save-the-trees day helped us realise how very lucky we are to live in the UK. The Grk novels (eg, Grk and the Pelotti Gang) for 9-12 year olds by Joshua Doder are a good way to get this message over to book worms too.