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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 25 March 2008

Inspirational reading

Nicola & Pete plus daughters Lola, now 9 and Nell, now 7, spent last year exploring Britain in a carbon-light manner. Our spring 2008 challenge is to give up waste from 24 March to 24 April. Most posts are by Nicola (as it was her silly idea). This is how it’s going:

During the long Easter weekend our bedtime reading was Stig of the Dump, by Clive King. I hadn’t enjoyed it much when I was little but this time around the girls and I thought it was great.

The book is only just older than me – published in 1963 – and follows the adventures of eight-year-old Barney as he befriends a stone age man, Stig, who lives in a den on the landfill near Barney’s granny’s house. There’s some great descriptions of how to reuse things – Stig skins and strips a large car; turns jam jars into a window; cans into a chimney and after dissecting an umbrella ends up with a waterproof skirt, small spears and tripod legs to cook turnips over an open fire.

Verdict: Stig of the Dump has inspired us all to look at things a bit more quizzically before we write them off as one-use items.

1 comment:

Karin said...

I loved that book when our teacher read it to us, but my kids weren't impressed.