June 2,
I can feel smug about this month’s green challenge. My carbon footprint as regards flying is the size of a mouse’s and a particularly small-pawed one at that. You see, both my husband, Tim, and I detest flying and only do it when there is no other way we can get to where we want to go….
The only time I’ve flown over the last five years is to Nice in the South of France with my sister, Serena. Being a neurotic flyer, I’ve found the only way to travel is with a confident blasé traveler to whom flying is pretty much the same as going on a bus, only the views are nicer. While I’m clinging to the arm rests and memorizing the emergency procedures, she hardly seems to even register the fact we’re taking off – more interested in what drinks are on the menu or what special offers there are on the duty free list. Meanwhile, whenever I fly with Tim (last time was 14 years ago), we wind each other up and end up not flying for another 14 years…
My daughter treats us both with open exasperation. While her friends jet off to all sorts of far flung pleasure spots, we generally pack our bags and go off to exotic Devon or Dorset. And British holidays, nice though they are, sometimes just don’t cut it for an urban 13-year-old keen to explore the world.
However, the compensation for not traveling further afield is that we have got to know far more about the variety and beauty of the British countryside. Three years ago we discovered the Landmark Trust, a wonderful organization which buys historic properties, renovates them with infinite care and rents them out to people like us. Over the last three summers, we’ve spent a week in an Elizabethan gatehouse in Dorset, a Jacobean gatehouse, again in Dorset and this summer a Georgian townhouse in Devon. Staying in places like this is a real privilege – they are furnished with furniture from the period and even have libraries of poetry books from local poets. No TVs or washing machines though which made it, initially at least, a hard sell for both Vicky and I.
As for traveling further afield, why not consider traveling by train? There are few places in Europe which are further than a day’s travel away. We’ve been to Berlin, Prague, Sicily, Gibraltar all by train. There are few more exciting things than turning up at the Gard d’Austerlitz in Paris at about 8 o’clock in the evening, after dining well at a Parisian brasserie, and finding your (OK, I warn you tiny!) sleeping compartment as the train pulls out through the Paris suburbs. The dining cars, particularly on the Spanish trains are superb. Steak freshly cooked on a griddle on the overnight train to Barcelona as the fields of northern France thundered by was one of our best experiences.
Lucy Wildman
I'm Lucy Wildman, Research Editor at Reader's Digest magazine which means that I'm in charge of making sure that everything you read in Reader's Digest is accurate every month. I live in Highbury in North London, a stone's throw away from Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, with my husband, Tim, a writer, daughter, Vicky, 13, who's in year 9 at school and has just made her GCSE choices and son, Max, 3, who is convinced he is a Superhero and jumps off high objects at every opportunity. With food and energy bills soaring, I'll be bringing the cold hard eye of family economics to the RD Green Challenge. We, along with most hard-pressed families, can't afford to pay much more than we do already for goods and services and any changes we make will have to fit in with our family's budget.