November on your bike

With the start of another month I turn to How Green Are My Wellies by Anna Shepard again. In the November chapter the focus is on commuting, biking and public transport. I wrote a little while ago about avoiding the car when going to work and the gym and so far I'm sticking to walking quite well.

I still haven't fixed up my bike but reading Anna's book makes cycling sound quite appealing. She gives five top tips for revamping bikes (just enough, so they don't look too temping to steal!).

1. Be creative: Make it look unique to you and unappealing to thieves- flowery garlands, glitter or ribbons on the handlebars make it stand out in a rainy day crowd.
2. Invest in a good seat: Especially if you're using a third or fourth hand bike a new seat could be the difference between giving up or cycling throughout the winter. Comfort is essential if you're trying to go out in the cold!
3. Take a waterproof seat covering: If you've spent the time and money on a nice seat make sure you keep it nice. Shower caps from hotels are great for this as the elastic fits nicely round the seat so it stays dry and avoids you getting a wet bottomw when you cycle off.
4. Get a bell: Making yourself heard will make your cycling safer. There are lots to choose from and you can make it as classic or as unique and individual as you like. 
5. Light up: In dark winter days having good lights on your bike is essential. When the batteries start to go and the lights get dimmer change they straight away. The greenest way to do this is to get a battery recharger so that you don't have to keep buying and throwing away batteries.

The chapter also talks about walking. Anna gives her top ten reasons for walking:

• To save money
• To feel and look healthier
• To slow down
• To gain perspective on her problems
• To make room for a teatime piece of cake
• To see what's going on outside
• To appreciate the seasons
• To unwind- mentally and physically for those tight muscles
• To hone the art of doing nothing
• To spend time with someone- or to be completely on her own.

I agree with pretty much all of these. I particularly like the being alone, doing nothing and slowing down ones. Walking to and from work allows me enough time to plan my next few hours, what I need from the shops or what the next weeks hold. But it also gives me time to think of nothing and just walk without being busy but still doing something. That doesn't happen very often in my day.

Walking definitely isn't as quick or convenient as driving, it takes me 90 minutes to walk to work and back. It also means you have to plan your journey more, as I found today walking home in the pouring rain without a coat. In general though i feel better for walking, healthier and smug that I'm saving money and getting a little me time too.

Halloween

The door's been knocking all evening with very scary small children in great costumes for Halloween. I've failed on the "green" snacks as I ended up buying lots of plastic wrapped sweets for the evening but they do seem to be going down well. It's easy for Halloween to become expensive and full of plastic which gets thrown away later. I have thought of a few green ways to get spooky though.

If you make pumpkin lanterns why not roast it afterwards? It cooks just like butter nut squash and can just be cooked whole which would make a great centre piece for a dinner if you'd carved it. You could also make the traditional pumpkin pie or try a pumpkin cake recipe. Those left over seeds can be used too like I did yesterday. Once you've done all that you'll have almost no pumpkin waste!

You've carved your pumpkins and filled them with candles so how about an electricity free evening? Tell ghost stories by candle light or play games in the dark. With Diwali and other festivals of light coming to a close this week it's the perfect time to celebrate the dark nights (even darker after the clocks change over) and look forward to Guy Fawkes Night next week.

Feed the Birds Day

Today is the RSPB's Feed the Birds Day, where they ask everyone to put food out for garden birds. Bird feeders are important all year round in urban areas but they're particularly important when wild seeds and insects are hardest to find during the winter months. My bird feeders are nice and full in the garden this weekend. I haven't seen many other bird feeders in the area but maybe there will be more after today!

Have a look at the RSPB's website for more information on feeding the birds in your garden and identifying what turns up. You could even have fun making bird cakes to hang up outside- a great activity for kids at the end of half term week.

Why not let me know what you saw on your bird feeders this weekend? I'm expecting sparrows and not a lot else but maybe I'll be surprised.

These boots are made for walking

The U.K. government website says

In the UK, more carbon dioxide (CO2) comes from people’s car travel than from any other kind of UK transport. Reducing your car travel is a key step to reducing climate change effects and local air pollution.

Nearly a quarter of all car trips are under two miles, a distance you can cycle in less than 15 minutes. Cycling and walking distances under two miles could help you get fitter and save you money in fuel. 

 The two mile rule is commonly used to separate journeys which should never use cars and those which it's OK to drive for. According to Google Maps my work place is 2.4 miles away by car and 1.9 miles away if I walk so I'm just under the key limit. It takes me 40-45 minutes to walk to work which I don't mind if it's an eight hour shift but if I'm just going to the gym (which is on the same site) for an hour I spend more time getting there than the activity. Now, I know it's ridiculous to drive to a gym when you can walk it (you're going for the exercise!), but a 45 minute walk on dark rainy streets just doesn't seem as appealing as working out comfortably inside on a treadmill with a TV attached. I am trying thought.

Next week I have three early shifts and I'm going to walk them all, at least I won't have to work as hard at the gym. Walking rather than driving also means I get to know my local area better. I read the street signs (best one I've see yet is Penguin Street) and look at local shops. I notice the weather more, appreciating the sun when it's there and really feeling the change in seasons. I'm not saying it feels better than the 10 minute drive and the extra 30 minutes in bed but I am feeling more connected to the place I live and less in a bubble of one.

Cycling to work would take a lot less time and it's something I mean to do in the future. Over the summer I was given a second hand old bike which needs a lot of TLC before it's ridable but once pay day comes I'll be kitting it out ready for the winter months-anything to give me 5 more minutes sleep when I'm working earlies!

Almost everyone is used to having a car nowadays. Living in the countryside you think of hiking and nice walks but I find it much easier to avoid car journeys now I'm in a city than I did before. A 45 minute walk to the next village seems easier to justify the car for than one across town to the gym. We're lucky that we don't need the car for any essentials very often. My boyfriend can walk to work (and is much better at it than me!) and we have small shops close by that we can walk to for essentials. The veg box gets delivered when we need it and we only have to use the car for long journeys to visit family or for a big monthly supermarket shop for bulk buying essentials like tinned food, pasta and rice. I'm begging to get addicted to the smug feeling when you can see the fuel gauge in the car is still about the quarter tank mark, weeks after first filling up, but as the winter creeps in I'm worried my will power won't last. I'll just have to make sure my boots are ready for lots of walking and see it as an extra gym session.

Which green habits do you find hardest to stick to and what does the change in seasons mean for your weekly routine? I'd love to hear from you so just post a message below!

Reserved

This week I've visited two nature reserves owned or managed by the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside. I've begun volunteering with the Trust's education and outreach department and so far I've been a Viking for the day and also helped with a survival day, learning how to build shelters and fires in the wild.

Both days were great fun (more about what I actually got up to later in the week) and I'm sure part of it was having the activities in such wonderful surroundings. My Viking experience was run on Booth's Plantation, near the Trust's Education Centre in Penwortham. The plantation is lovely thick woodland, well sheltered and far enough away from roads to feel like you really might have travelled back into Viking times- except for the large substation on the hill behind! Due to funding cuts (both for the Wildlife Trust and the National Grid who owns the land) this was the last event to be held at the Education Centre and Booth's Plantation. This is really sad as the Centre has been built up over 15 years with orchards, allotment plots and  beautifully painted classrooms with pictures of nature everywhere. The care and passion that has gone into producing such a wonderful asset is obvious and it must be devastating for those who work there to have to leave it all behind.

But leave it they must and move to their new reserve which will be the Trust's base at Brockholes. I haven't visited this site yet but hopefully I will soon, anywhere with a name that means "badger holes" in Old English has got to be a good place to protect wildlife!

The survival day I helped with was at Mere Sands Wood reserve which has a huge diversity of habitats from around Lancashire, including heaths, woodland, lakes and marsh. We worked in the deciduous woodland and while rain threatened all day it held off mostly. It was great to be out in the fresh air and nature and I'm looking forward to visiting the reserve again soon to have a proper look round all of the 105 acres.

With a chill in the air Autumn is a brilliant time to get out and warm up with a walk. Where's your nearest nature reserve? Why not find out this weekend and visit it, or if you already know it visit somewhere you've never been to before. That reminds me that I really need to go for my weekly walk before the weeks over!

I'm Back!

After a week offline I'm back! Lots has happened in the last week and I'll be talking about some of it over the next few days. I'll have updates on my veg box ventures and my weekly walks, why I was dressed as a Viking for a day and recent environment news.

Suddenly Autumn seems to have really arrived. With the first frost last night and the clocks changing in just over a week the nights are feeling a lot longer and darker. The heating has come on at home as we need somewhere warm enough to dry clothes. The occasional sunny days are enough most of the time but when washing stays wet for days inside something needs to be done. Our lights are on more now too and since the weekend all our bulbs are energy saving, saving us money and fossil fuels.

As I've said before while we're tucked up in ever warmer houses the wildlife outside has to find other ways to cope with the onset of winter. The sparrows in the garden are at the feeders constantly and I'm going to give them all a good clean and make sure they're filled before the RSPB's Feed The Birds Day on the 29th.

Flowers in the Rain

I managed to find almost an hour of no rain yesterday for my walk. It was still very damp and dreary but nice to be out in the fresh air. Now it's part of my routine it's easy going out for a walk but the trickier thing is remembering to take my headphones out. When I remembered yesterday there wasn't much to hear other than the wind in the trees. Occasionally I heard sparrows but there were very well hidden, hopefully in the middle of nice dry hedges.

It wasn't just the sparrows hiding from the rain. I saw my usual pigeons and mallard ducks but even they were sheltering under branches and reeds. There were moor hens, which were quite happily bobbing around on the canal, and I saw my first blackbird on my weekly walk. In fact there were two blackbirds, chasing a pigeon for some reason. The black headed gulls were numerous overhead but noticeably quiet, it was one of those days where everything feels muffled.
The most exciting bird was right at the end of my walk. Just before leaving the canal I saw a grey wagtail! These birds are really pretty, grey on top with a very long tail and a yellow tummy. This yellow tummy always makes me think they should be called yellow wagtails but looking at their pictures on the RSPB website the one I saw really was more grey.
I didn't think I'd seen many birds but now I've written it down it doesn't seem too bad!

There were less people around because of the rain too. Normally I see about 6 people or couples out for leisurely walks but yesterday there were 3 very quick dog walkers trying to get home as fast as possible. Once I was actually out in the cold and wet it wasn't too bad but after the heat wave of a few weeks ago it's definitely Autumn here in Preston with warm coats and scarves all round.

Despite being October there are still lots of flowers out along the canal. Mostly pinks and purples but also yellows and whites. I took some photo's of them so I could identify them at home. Here are my attempts (from left to right, top to bottom), if you can fill in my blanks or if you think I've got any wrong please let me know!
Welsh Poppy, Dandelion, Hedge Bindweed, unknown, Spear Thistle, Herb Robert, Himalayan Balsam, Some type of Hawkweed?, unknown, unknown.

 

After a week of strong winds across the country I expected almost all the leaves to have been blown off by now but there is still a surprising amount of green on the trees. The pond weed has also grown back on the canal so it's green too at the moment! Here are my pictures from the top of the canal from the last few weeks.

Week 3

Week 2

Week 1

Curtain Twitching

Going out for walks to see wildlife is great, but we shouldn't forget what's right on our doorsteps or out of our windows.

Yesterday I looked up from typing and saw two birds right at eye level flying past. They were black headed gulls, although already in their winter plumage their heads were confusingly white. While you might associate gulls with the seaside black headed gulls are more commonly found inland and are the most common inland gulls in the UK. You'll often see them flying behind ploughing tractors or anywhere with a good supply of worms, fish or insects. The way they glided past my window was breathtaking, completely still except for moving forwards with the wind.

Later in the day I saw movement in the corner of my eye and looked up again. A flock of about fifty starlings were flying round and round our row of terrace houses. Autumn starling roots are beautiful. What I saw wasn't really a proper roost spectacle, those at the RSPB Otmoor (video here) and Fen Drayton Lakes (video here) reserves are truly stunning. Thousands of birds flying in beautiful patterns just like shoals of fish in the sea. This behaviour helps to protect them from predators, flying in a flock makes it harder for birds of prey to pick out individual birds, but they also roost in large groups for warmth and to exchange information.
While these flocks are huge the starling population has dropped by 70% in recent years. There used to be common roosts over big cities such as Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Edinburgh but now you're much more likely to see them in rural areas. The reasons behind their decline aren't certain but could well be linked to increased use of chemicals on farmland and loss of permanent pastures.

So there are two really exciting birds I can see out of my window as well as my normal lovely house sparrows who are taking a while to find the new seed feeder, it's only two meters from the old one!

What's the most exciting wildlife you can see from your house? What's the most boring?

Falling Leaves

I can't believe how fast this week has gone! It's Monday again and I went for my weekly canal walk. I was lucky with the weather again too. Even though it had been raining all morning by the time I went out at 2:30pm it was a sunny day, although quite windy.

The wind was blowing lots of leaves out of the trees and the canal was almost covered with them in places. Most are still green but they're slowly turning yellow and some lovely oranges and reds. It's amazing how many different shapes and colours the leaves can be. Another colourful sight was all the wild flowers that are still out. Maybe it was last week's warm weather but I'm amazed how many flowers are still in bloom, even though it's October now! I saw three different types of purple flowers (the Himalayan Balsam I talked about last week is still there) and some white ones too.

There was still lots of birdsong all around but I think the birds must have been hiding today as I didn't actually see many. I did see mallard ducks, moorhens and pigeons and I'm sure some of the birds singing were sparrows but that was it.

Four red admirals on the ivy-can you see them all?

Even though it was windy there were other things flying around. I paused by a large ivy bush and noticed lots and lots of hoverflies moving from flower to flower. I shouldn't have been so surprised as I'd recently read September's Bug of the Month on the Buglife website, which is all about the golden hoverfly and it's fondness for ivy at this time of year. More on Buglife later in the week.
To my surprise, as well as the hoverflies, there were about six red admiral butterflies on the ivy. These big butterflies are really beautiful-although a few today looked quite tatty and might have survived a fight with a hungry bird at some point. When I looked them up on Butterfly Conservation's great website I discovered that red admirals are actual migrants. Last week I was impressed that house martins fly from Africa, I'm much more impressed that some of these butterflies do too!

As a walked back along the canal I tried to see whether anything had changed in the past week. There were definitely more fallen leaves and those in the trees still are definitely changing colour. It wasn't as warm and there were lots more berries on the hedges. I saw blackberries, haws, hips, sloes and plums, all just out of reach annoyingly. On the left below are pictures from last week and on the right are today's. Can you see any big differences? I can't get but I'm sure I will as the weeks go on.

Week 1

Week 2

Week 1

Week 2

Growing My Own

It's Friday and that means a new veg box arrived yesterday!

This week my vegbox was

• Onions
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Salad leaves
• Red peppers
• Leeks
• Cauliflower

All of the veg is UK grown except the peppers which come from Spain. My UK veg comes from Home Farm in Yorkshire and is grown by Peter Richardson and his team of farm workers. The farm was converted to organic in 1996 and Peter clearly feels it gets them closer to both their crops and customers. On the Riverford website he says

"You feel more of an intimate relationship as you weed the crops, rather than just going across with a sprayer. "

"There’s a closer connection with the customer, there’s no two ways about it. "

He has a closer relationship with customers because, unlike before, the veg is now packed on the farm. He can see what is being sold each week and it leaves the farm exactly how it arrives on my door. Previously the veg left the farm to be packed and then sent on to be sold.
Another benefit is that, unlike for the supermarkets, there are less restrictions on size and shape of the vegetables, just taste and quality matter. For the supermarket packaging courgettes had to be less than 21cm, now they just have to be delicious and ripe.

Looking forward to cooking up some yummy meals with all this. Last week I used the sweet potatoes, carrots, potatoes and onions to make soup. It was great and very orange. We used four portions up after we cooked it and I've frozen another 5-6 in the freezer. All I did was fry/roast the veg, blend it all and add about a pint of chicken stock and some spices.

Lettuce on the left and middle, chilies on the right where you
can see the cardboard sticks they were planted next to.

I've been growing some food of my own too. Three weeks ago I planted some very old lettuce and chili seeds in a box on my kitchen windowsillNow they've started growing and soon the lettuce will be ready to start picking and chilies will be ready to be planted up into separate pots. I love having nice green leaves growing in the house while everything outside is dying back. It was so easy, as long as I don't forget to water them every few days!

Stop, Look, Listen

When I'm bored the first thing I normally do is turn the TV on, even when there's nothing in particular I want to watch. Watching the TV when I'm on autopilot can't be good for me and definitely isn't good for the environment. It's a habit I'm trying to break, replacing it with different habits. I'm swapping one hour of TV a week for a walk along my local canal. I'm going to try and really pay attention to where I'm going, what I hear and what I see, rather than wandering along wrapped up in my own thoughts.

Walking is great. It's good exercise, can reduce the risk of some cancers and helps with metal health too. In 2007, Mind (the mental health charity) carried out studies into how walking affects people. After a country walk 94% of people felt their mental health had improved. The study also showed that walking around a town or city shopping area tends to depress people. So walking through nature is a free way to improve fitness, health and mental well being. Fantastic! Definitely sounds better than sitting in front of the TV not watching. Don't forget that even in big cities you can always find tiny pockets of green in parks or along rivers or canals.


I started today. As soon as I got down to the canal the sound of traffic lessened and the sounds of pigeons and sparrows surrounded me. The canal still looks quite summery, especially today when it was sunny and warm. On my walk, as well as sparrows and pigeons, I saw mallard ducks, moor hens, swans and signets, long tailed tits, coal tits, a blue tit, a spider, two white butterflies and a dragonfly. All within a short walk of my city house.

Not having my headphones in (another habit I'm trying to break) also meant I heard far more than normal. Walking past hedges I heard birds cheeping an so I stopped and looked. Doing this helped me find lots more birds and pausing on the bridge to actually look at where I'd walked and was going meant I stayed still enough to see the butterflies and dragonfly.

Other than birds, spiders and insects I also looked at the plants around me. I found blackberries (almost all picked or under ripe), oak trees, haws (the lovely red berries from hawthorn trees!) and also lots of Himalayan Balsam. This last one is also know as Policeman's Helmet and Kiss-me-on-the-mountain, it's an invasive non-native weed in the UK. It has very sweet, strong smelling flowers which are a beautiful purpley pink. You'll have seen it around rivers or boggy ground but did you know their seed pods explode? I didn't. This plant has swept across the UK and is out competing other, native, species, which isn't great for them. One positive, however, is that bees really like the flowers and it seems to be helping increase the dangerously low UK bee population.



At the moment going for an hour walk is easy. The weather's still quite mild, it's nice and light and it wasn't raining today. It will get harder, I'll be much less enthusiastic when it's dark, rainy and cold in November. But starting now will hopefully mean it's a habit by then and that will make it easier. One thing I'm particularly interested in is how familiar places change over the seasons. Each week I'll take a photo of the canal to capture how it changes as the months pass.

What's around the corner near you? Comment and let me know!

Hungry Sparrows

Yesterday I wrote about what makes me notice Autumn. More jumpers, darker evenings and higher gas and electricity bills are probably the main differences in my home life. But the colder weather has a much greater effect on the lives of the animals outside.

The house martin nest on my friend's roof.

By the end of September thoughts of swallows, swifts and house martins are normally long gone. But this week some friends found what we think is a house martin nest on their new house. The nest still has young birds in. They look very cute from the street below but I hope they grow up before it gets too cold.
In September and October these birds fly south over the Mediterranean Sea, across the Sahara  to Southern Africa, not bad for birds that are only 13-15cm long. And after a warm winter breeding, they fly all the way back and build mud nests for their own young. 


In the small backyard of our terrace house we encourage visits from local birds. We have four bird-feeders, two with sunflower seeds and two with peanuts. One of each are stuck to the kitchen window. At the moment the local sparrows seem to love the sunflower seeds, but only in the feeder away from the window. Tomorrow I'm going to swap the feeders around to see if it makes any difference. It's great to look out the window and catch a glimpse of five or six hungry sparrows nibbling at the seeds.
The RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) has some great tips on how to look after the birds in your garden throughout the year. They even have a special day when they ask everyone to put out food for birds in their garden. Feed the Birds Day this year is on the 29th October, so you have just over a month to get ready for it!

Autumn

Today is the Autumn equinox, so it's longer days and shorter nights from now on. There are plenty of other signs around that the seasons are changing; that familiar chill in the air, blackberries in the hedges and the changing colour of the leaves.
It's easy to miss the gradual changes when we're tucked up in our houses and away from the countryside. Today I went looking for a feel of autumn, I visited Beacon Fell Country Park for the first time, and it was great! It's a wood on top of a hill full of  wildlife, quite a few people and (today) rainy fog.
Walking around there were great views of the surrounding countryside and it was an autumnal picture of fields, moors and, in the distance, the sea. The distant shoreline was particularly interesting as you could pick out Blackpool Tower and pleasure park, an onshore wind turbine and the offshore wind farm just outside Morecambe bay. I've never seen an offshore wind farm before. I quite like how they look, dozens of tall points on the horizon, almost like they're standing guard on the coastline.
I wasn't just looking out from the hilltop though. There was lots to see in the park too. Within minutes of getting out of the car we passed some people looking at a shrew they'd found and among the birds we saw were:

• Mallard Duck
• Robin
• Coal Tit
• Blue Tit
• Great Tit
• Green Finch
• Chaffinch
• Tree Creeper
• Long Tailed Tit

It was great to get outside and into Autumn. It's an exciting time, whether you're kicking up colourful leaves on a walk, picking yummy fruit for crumbles and pies or using it as an excuse to snuggle up in lots of jumpers and blankets rather than turning the heating on. Autumn shouldn't be thought of as the sad end of summer. It's a brilliant time of year.

What tells you it's Autumn?