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Amsterdam’s green light areas

I have found it hard to accept that one of my sons, aged eleven, just doesn’t really like cycling. He comes along on trips, pedalling patiently with a smile through gritted teeth, but really it just isn’t his thing. So it was either me taking a homeopathic approach to curing the complaint, or just being in total denial, when I decided that we should go on a mum-son break to Amsterdam. The city of cycling. It’s a bit like throwing the child who doesn’t like to swim in at the deep end really, isn’t it? Until I watched him stride down the canal, head held high on his tall Dutch bike and joining the throngs of other cyclists who rule the roost in this stunning city, and I realised that suddenly he had got it. He had found that feeling of freedom, allowing a whole new world to open up to him over the next few days.

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Sustaining the wonderful island of Sark

Sark, one of the car-free Channel Islands

If there is one place I could go back to this mid summer, it would have to be Sark. One of the Channel Islands, it takes a good while to get there but it is so worth it. Sark is a car-free and sustainable Channel Island lying 11 km east of Guernsey and about 40 km west of the Cherbourg Peninsula of France. I discovered it on a trip to (also gorgeous, but not quite so special) Jersey a few years ago, which I was heading to by ferry from the south of England. I got chatting to a crowd of cool young ones, who told me they were en route to Sark. They come every year around midsummer to gaze at the stars, because Sark is not only car free, but it is totally free of street lights and so an astronomical Arcadia.

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Do punters give a toss about responsible tourism?

‘Responsible tourism? Oh please. Does that mean not dropping your litter as you walk through the rainforest?’ was the scathing reaction of a colleague when I told her that I was taking on an MSc in Responsible Tourism Management over a decade ago. I tried somewhat pathetically to defend my tiny corner. Then, a few years later, an award-winning travel writer said loudly in my direction at the ABTA convention,”I am so tired all of this f***king eco shit” which was met with a round of back patting and communal cackling from his peers. By then, I had learned to smile politely and walk on. But oh, how they laughed.

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