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What's this blog all about?

Hi, I'm Nicola - welcome to a blog begun in 2012 about family travel around the world, without leaving the UK.

I love travel adventures, but to save cash and keep my family's carbon footprint lower, I dreamt up a unique stay-at-home travel experience. So far I've visited 110 countries... without leaving the UK. Join me exploring the next 86! Or have a look at the "countries" you can discover within the UK by scrolling the labels (below right). Here's to happy travel from our doorsteps.

Around 2018 I tried a new way of writing my family's and my own UK travel adventures. Britain is a brilliant place for a staycation, mini-break and day trips. It's also a fantastic place to explore so I've begun to write up reports of places that are easy to reach by public transport. And when they are not that easy to reach I'll offer some tips on how to get there.

See www.nicolabaird.com for info about the seven books I've written, a link to my other blog on thrifty, creative childcare (homemadekids.wordpress.com) or to contact me.

Tuesday 17 July 2007

The last polar bear

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, Lola and Nell (pic reminds you that you should always let sleeping bears lie, ahh)

At last we've seen Mercedes - the last polar bear in Britain. Put another way she is the only polar bear in a UK zoo and at her Edinburgh hill top home acts as an ambassador for all the wild polar bears in the North Pole which are suffering because of climate change. We all feel very lucky to have seen a huge, white polar bear, understand more about the problems they are facing from habitat loss and climate change. And we did that without making a polluting return air trip to Hudson Bay, Canada where other polar bear lovers go. There was one dicey moment when Lola realised that her favourite animal (a polar bear) was being fed raw meat taken from her other favourite animal (horse). Luckily she's got used to the idea that not everyone is a vegetarian - or in many animals's cases can be a veggie.

Lola: "I loved her. Mercedes was a wild polar bear in Canada but she got caught three times eating garbage. She was going to be shot but the mercedes car company gave Edinburgh zoo enough money to get her to Scotland and build a cage for her. That's why she's called Mercedes."

Nell: "You should stop driving cars, and especially flying areoplanes, because if you could see how much pollution we are putting into the air you'd actually give up. Ice melts and the sea level gets higher. And the bottom of the world [the low lying coast land and low islands] might get flooded if we don't stop. That polar bear was very lucky because if she was in the North Pole she could have drowned finding her own food, because the polar bears can only swim a certain amount, but there is more sea now. They have to find food, and it's not easy. And if they have babies, and they're looking for food and they drown then the babies [cubs] will die too because they need their mum to give them food and teach them to swim. And their dad isn't very good with children. You would have thought a dad could look after a polar bear baby, but no. Their life is difference to ours. When a dad sexes with a mum polar bear the dad doesn't just stay to see the babies it goes away, not even hoping to get a glimpse of them!"

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