Green Holidays

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Instead of waiting until you have booked your green holidays – get planning now!

Think of all the time you have available now to learn something new or start saving for! Even if you don’t know when you will book your next trip – it’s never to late to start thinking about the things that will come in handy when you do.

For example, if you love South America or South-East Asia – then you know you will get there eventually even if you have a few local short breaks in between. And you know that you will want to spend longer there than normal vacations as you love the place. And you know that anything to do with the language, culture or wildlife of those places will interest you.

So, what are you waiting for?
You will never get time back, so why waste it watching that repeat on TV again when you could be reading about a nations history? Why wash the dishes staring out of the window when you could be working through an audio language course while your hands are wet?

And it’s not just the little things you could be achieving. Say for example you enrolled yourself on a distance learning TEFL course and spent a few hours a month completing that rather than searching for an elephant on Farmville!

Or took flying lessons, diving lessons, a photography course or rock climbing adventures. If you practice all these things in advance you can get so much more out of your green adventures – and you will regret it as I have seen people who are in the beautiful Maldives filled with endless coral and passing dolphins and turtles – but they are in the pool taking starter diving lessons rather than out there experiencing the real magic beneath the waves!

Just a few horse back lessons before you leave can build up your confidence for that sunset canter along the sandy beaches on the Caribbean, or a long trek up into the rainforests and mountains of the Andes.

Write Your Plan:
Get yourself a sheet of paper, and create a sort of spider diagram to highlight the places, people, wildlife, or experiences that you love or want to see or experience.  Keep adding to the flow as you think of things.

For example, writing ‘Canada’ could lead to ‘Rockies’ which could lead to ‘skiing’ or ‘horseback riding’; or it could lead to ‘Wilderness’ which could make you think ‘camping skills’ and ‘kayaking’.  Either way, if you read up on these things or gained the new skills needed before you arrived – your trip would become 100 times better.

I wouldn’t want to try setting up a tent for the first time in the middle of nowhere – and I certainly wouldn’t want to try to eat plants or mushrooms in the ‘wild’ having only just brought the book!

Once this diagram is complete, turn it into a 1 or 2 year plan – effectively finding out how long these things take to learn and planning backwards.

So, learning to dive might take around a week if you do it intense, whereas learning Chinese from scratch could take at least 6 months for general conversation – or more.  Fit these in around your existing plans and your work load to find out the best plan for you.

The First Steps:
The easiest first step is a trip to the library.  You don’t need to spend any money or risk any investment – just go grab some books about the things on your list and start reading.

It’s possible that you thought you could learn hieroglyphics yourself – but after reading the first book, you know you need help – or a lot longer!

Same goes for certain countries – what if you thought you liked a certain region and then found a better one – or you found out something about a region that you didn’t know about before and want to learn more!

Everyone has a spare 15 minutes a day to start reading stuff – so take the first step as soon as possible, and get learning!

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Hello again, and I hope you haven’t been caught up in all this airline trouble at the moment!

No doubt if you had booked a quiet trip by train across Europe, it could have been affected by thousands of other holidaymakers who couldn’t get on a plane! 

Your quiet out-of-the-way hotel could have been besieged by families waiting for a ferry or coach to turn up!  It could make for some really interesting articles but wasn’t much fun I’d imagine!

Anyway, lets get on with those already in the system – starting with a great post about travelling around the States using car-shares rather than the hassle of hiring one yourself or dragging your car across the country!  Follow the tips offered by Byteful Travel in How to Get Paid to Travel 1,000 miles: Craigslist and see if you can go on a great plane-free car-sharing friend-making adventure!

If you are traveling north to Canada instead then why not take a peek at the photos in Mark H’s article: Wicked But Stunning (Jasper National Park, Canada) where you can see images of pure tranquility! And imagine if you a life there for next too nothing – wouldn’t that make it all the more magical?

Eco Living Advice wants to share with you some destinations on the other side of the Atlantic with 7 Eco Friendly Tourist Destinations in the UK, showing that you don’t need to travel across oceans to see some great sites – you have plenty right where you are now!

And if you want to take along some pretty unique clothing and accessories when you travel – maybe for yourself (laptop bag) or for others (hair bands and wallets) – then take a look at some of the links which Gabriella White has in the post 100 Amazing Upcycling Ideas Anyone Can Do and maybe give one a try! It makes using all your rubbish so easy – and you get something totally unique virtually for free!

However, if you want a taste of a country without actually going there, take a look at the huge choice given by Rowena Hebert for travel literature that summons up the taste and feel of exotic or distant destinations that could interest and inspire you: 100 Novels That Let You Travel The World Without Leaving Home. I have added a few to my reading list that I hadn’t heard of before……

……but if you want to see rather than read, then take a look at Daniel Jones’ list of Top 100 Travel Photography Blogs and see some amazing shots – and like me you might wonder why you aren’t doing your own travel journal like this!

And finally, Jerry Rogers offers up a huge list of links for the student and includes a small section on green travel links 100 Essential Blog Posts for Students Going Green, and you might even find something else inspiringly green that you weren’t really looking for as well!

So, get reading and change today for the better…….

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Now you can wear stylish, mainstream Fair Trade sneakers – no more frumpy brown eco friendly shoes!

How about buying your next pair of comfortable trendy shoes from a Fair Trade source – that way you will know that your choice of footwear isn’t depriving workers elsewhere in the world of basic wages – or their health.

We know that Fair Trade comes with a whole host of other benefits to the many workers who make up the production or farming chain in the Fair Trade system, so why aren’t we making more of an effort to make such a choice when buying clothes and shoes?

The Reason:
Most consumers don’t have a closet full of Fair Trade clothing and footwear, as there isn’t really that much of it about within easy grasp.

Yes, I know – and so does everyone – that if you want something in particular, you have to go and look for it.  But, what if you only have a short lunch break in town, or have young children to carry around with you everywhere?  The choice isn’t always so straight forward then.

And, just like food, if you are looking for a new pair of shoes – you want choice (and the right price).  So if you only find 2 pair of fair trade shoes in the shoe store – and you don’t like the style of them or they don’t suit your needs, then that’s your choice made for you.  You can’t buy them – you have to buy non-Fair Trade alternatives.

There just isn’t a large enough selection of Fair Trade goods in normal retail stores to make the ‘right’ choice.

You normally have to go out of your way to get them or buy styles that aren’t to your exact requirements – and sometimes then pay a premium for the privilege too!

New Shoes:
So, I have just found a picture of some very ethical sneakers advertising a green living show in London this weekend, and found the products online.

Amazingly, the shoes are not only made of Fair Trade cotton and all the cotton is also certified Organic; their rubber soles are FSC certified, and their manufacture in Pakistan also has Fair Trade certification!  And on top of all that they are guaranteed vegan and 100% plastic-free!

Plus – they are virtually the same price as the famous brand they resemble – around £35 or $54.

At last an ethical product that doesn’t involve any compromise!  Rather than having to choose whether to wear boring brown sandals made out of chemical-free non-animal leather or to have some fun blue or pink sneakers that you actually liked – but that also contained all sort’s of nasty chemicals – you now get the best of both worlds!

A great pair of brightly colored (or brown) shoes that are not polluting the environment, harming farmers or under-paying hard-working communities!

Take a look for yourself right here: Ethletic Sneakers

All around you are trees that are doomed to die before their first adult leaf - but you can help them!

Basically, last autumn, loads of seeds fell from trees as part of the natural cycle of things – and many of them will grow for ever and become great adult trees.  Some in churchyards, some in woodlands, along a river or around the edges of a field.

But those that have fallen in your lawn and have spent all winter growing roots and hiding under the snow, could well be doomed when you get out your lawn mower for the first time this spring!

Baby Trees:
All around you outside you should be able to find these baby trees really easily, as they nearly all grow identical first leaves (see picture).  These first leaves look absolutely nothing like the mature tree leaves, so you won’t know what they are unless the seed casing is still attached.

This way – it is even more exciting to save them as you will have to wait a while to find out what trees you have actually saved!

Some trees have obvious seed cases, like the one’s I found that were still in their sweet chestnut casing, and others I have found were still in their little ‘winged’ cases, but generally, you can only guess at.

Birds carry a lot of seeds inside their guts after berry eating in the winter, and can drop them well away from the adult tree or bush. And yet other seeds can sit in the ground waiting to germinate for up to 2 or even 3 years – so before they start to grow they could have been dug up and moved to a completely new garden without you knowing about it!

Why Save Them?
Well, we all know that planting trees is great for the planet, so instead of buying trees from a garden center or specialist – why not just help the ones in your own garden to grow naturally.

Not only is this free (yippee!), but it is great fun AND it will help wildlife to be attracted to your garden or local woods.

So, you need to make sure that you move these little trees out of the path of the lawn mower and take them to somewhere where they can grow safely.  Don’t forget that trees take years to grow to any noticeable size, so they aren’t going to over run your garden - unless you wait about 30 years!

And, they aren’t all going to survive anyway as deer might eat them or whatever, so don’t worry about about planting them close together if it’s easier for you and depending on where you can move them to. 

They won’t need looking after at all once moved – and all of mine from last spring survived sitting under thick snow for 2 months solid over the winter and are all doing fine this spring!

So, get out there and get digging!

Write an exciting live travel diary of your green holidays to share with your friends!

We all know about writing blogs these days – as they are just like an online diary.  However, as they are updated live across the world in an instant, they are a great way for all your friends and family to be kept up-to-date with your adventures, without you having to email them all individually.

There are so many around these days that there is bound to be one that you love out there, but the problem is sometimes finding one amongst thousands that you like!

And, you need to find one that is easy to use – namely a ‘WordPress’ (Wp) theme.  This type of blog is very easy to use and update – and you can add loads of extras these days – called ‘plug-ins’. 

There are plug-ins, for example, that allow you to easily add your photo’s from Flickr to your travel blog, called flickrRSS; and there are even ‘plug-ins’ that can be used to translate your blog into other languages if you meet people on your journey from other countries who want to follow you on your trip!

Finding Your Theme:
You can search online for a ‘WordPress theme’ but you will get about 8 billion sites coming up to wade through, this drops to just over 46 million if you want a ‘free WordPress theme’!  However, many of these will be just a handful of themes, and at the other extreme, there could be 1000′s to choose from.

But how do you check them all and find your favourite wp blog themes?

Thankfully, there are websites out there that let you choose based on the colours that you like, the appearance that you like or even the particular genre you like – like ‘pets’ or ‘beaches’.  This type of listing and wide choice is perfectly suited to those of you that are thinking or writing a vacation blog and need to find a nice theme for it. 

And if you want it quick, you can cut down your search time with a site that gives you a miniature graphic of the theme.  This way you can see if a particular theme is worth looking at in closer detail before you click into it and have to wait for another page to load up!

Choosing Your Theme:
So, find yourself a WP Themes site that allows you to view anything up to 7000 Wp themes for the best choice (I know this sounds like far too many – but don’t forget you only want to look at a handful of theme types, so the more they have in total the more likely you are to find a nice selection to choose from in the style you like!).

Then think about what you want your online diary to represent.  Are you looking for it to represent the sunshine (yellow and beaches), the adventure (green and tropical scenes) or maybe the people you meet (culture and buildings).  Or you are into nature (frogs, green, lizards), or maybe travel itself (trains, boats, bicycles or just a winding road!).

Also consider what information you want to show on it.  Do you want just 1 column showing your everyday updates?  Or your updates as well as a second permanent column with your location and other ‘exact details’.  Or a section that rotates your latest pictures?

There are even some that come ‘AdSense ready’, so are able to immediately start earning you money from the  ads on your site to fund your green adventure!

Why wouldn’t you do it?