the footpath Caroline Smith

Caroline Smith

At this pretty site, we’ve wandered off to forage for interesting finds (and helpful information), to help restore our green and pleasant land. If you prefer farmers’ markets to FT indexes, coastal walks to car traffic jams and community shops to big supermarkets, you’ve landed in the right place! Grab a cuppa – and stay while!

England is a beautiful country full of compassionate people who adore animals, the countryside, the seaside and (sometimes) other people! We are a land of indie shops, wildlife rescuers, Morris dancers, wild campers and stargazers. Yet modern politics and corporate consumerism are in danger of destroying our world completely. Find stories and resources to help us head back in the proper direction.

You can’t ‘solve climate change’ with solar panels and wind turbines: we need to turn the notion of how to live, on its head. A tourist in Ireland asks for directions. The Irishman replies ‘Well, sir, if I were you – I wouldn’t start from here’. That’s kind of it. We can’t solve issues, by asking the same media, politicians and businesses that creates them. Pop back sometime, for a different view!

We have to shift our attitude of ownership of nature, to relationship with nature. The moment you change from ownership to relationship, you create a sense of the sacred. If we had kept the vision of interconnectedness, we would not have created the kind of environmental crisis facing the world today. How much can I learn from a tree! The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer. Satish Kumar

At the moment, the entire global economy seems to be built on the model of digging things up from one hole in the ground on one side of the earth, transporting them around the world, using them for a few days, and sticking them in a hole in the ground on the other side of the world. George Monbiot

Village fetes, country lanes, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, hot water bottles and drizzly Sundays. What a wondrous place. What other country could invent a game like cricket that goes on for three days, and think it not the least odd to make judges wear little mops on their heads. Bill Bryson on what he loves about England