A warm welcome to the inaugural Green Spot, your free monthly digest of green news, ramblings, and avarice-inducing eco-friendly holiday stays.
As an homage to the slow action of the world’s governments, this first newsletter arrives well overdue.
It’s my four-year-old’s first day of school today. Alongside her donning her gingham dress and logo-emblazoned cardigan for the first time will be me, joining the ranks of parents doing the drop-off on e-bikes alongside SUVs on narrow country lanes.
Read about what prompted this newsletter at my About page.)
Obviously taking kids to school on bikes is nothing new (although with the ‘e’ tacked on, according to the Sunday Times, it’s very on-trend). And e-bikes, I was reminded the other day while chatting to a weathered pioneer of the category who had a battery like a WMD strapped to his rusting two-wheeler, have been sailing up local hills (in the West Country at least) for over a decade.
Somehow, despite the prevalence of rental e-bike tours, I hadn’t as yet ridden one in my professional capacity as a travel writer.
Reader, what a revelation.
The ups have always been the downs for me when it comes to cycling. But now no more the burning knees of the hill climb, the agonising mismanagement of gears mid-ascent, the depressing wobble preceding the eventual stall.
I was mildly disappointed to discover that I actually had to exert at all, but there it is: it’s still a bike. And the kids love it. I’m full-bore about this new chapter and all the more delighted to not have to contend with finding a second parking spot in overcrowded Bath streets.
KUDHVA, CORNWALL
Kudhva (Cornish for ‘hideout’), sited in an overgrown slate quarry just inland from Cornwall’s Trebarwith Beach, embodies the hospitality ethos Green Spot has been created to champion.
Off-grid. Middle of nowhere. Intriguing experimental architecture.
Designed by architect Ben Huggins, this Cornish digital detox-par excellence is sited in an abandoned 45-acre quarry just south of Tintagel.
Chuck away your phone (or lay it gently on a soft, mossy boulder) and go for a bracing wild swim in the lake. Afterwards, mellow out in the wood-fired hot tub as the stars emerge.
There are four different kinds of accommodation available: the Danish Cabin (six-man), Kudhva stilt-cabins (two), Tree Tents (two) and Shanti Tipis (two).
With Kudhva’s commitment to low-impact tourism, expect compost loos, solar-powered showers (linked to a ‘proper boiler’), and only a fire pit to cook with. Check out their sustainability page for more on their philosophy, or even book a chat/lecture about sustainability while on site.
Or you can just get lit and eat some Yarg.
https://kudhva.com/
THE LONDONER, LONDON
And now for something completely different.
With Leicester Square now swept clean of broken glass, shattered Euro dreams, and unfortunately-inserted flares, it welcomes the 350-bedroom ‘boutique in feel’ hotel, The Londoner opening this month.
For all of its much-ballyhooed rooftop robata, member’s club, and Yabu Pushelberg design, what really caught my eye was its green intentions.
Two years ago, its owner, Edwardian Hotels (The May Fair; Radisson Blu Edwardian), announced the securing of a ‘Green Loan’ from HSBC.
(A Green Loan is exactly what it sounds like: money provided for sustainability projects or developments. A set of Green Loan Principals, intended to be a mitigant to greenwashing, have to be met in order for the loan to be secured. Learn more here.)
The Green Loan secured for the Londoner was, at the time, a first for the hospitality industry, with the £175 million secured intended to assist the Londoner in exceeding BREEAM Excellent category in its environmental and sustainable performance.
For the uninitiated, BREEAM Excellent is not dEElicious fish, but a neat-ish acronym for the deeply unruly “Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology”.
The Londoner intends to use 30% less carbon than is required by law. The owners claim that it’s been constructed with an eye to using materials with a low environmental impact.
There’ll be new technologies, such as a liquid film that reduces energy loss and evaporation from the indoor pool. A heat network connection will be set up that contributes to the sustainability of neighbouring buildings.
And while my focus in this green travel newsletter is on smaller operations, with less marketing clout than a company the size of Edwardian Hotels, I think it’s important to engage in a consideration of how larger hotels like this one are attempting to achieve some kind of sustainability. Especially when the construction of one large hotel has such a significant (and ongoing) impact on the environment.
And it can be hard to find stripped-back, solar-powered Scandi-style cabins in central London, so I hear.
UPPERS AND DOWNERS
Pushing us firmly through the destiny door marked “Mad Max” we have this study, published in Nature, that demonstrated how the Amazon is now producing more CO2 than it is absorbing (never has the yellow sticker of old news been more disturbing)…
…while this summer also saw the release of the UK’s decarbonising transport plan, although there were concerns that the government was relying too much on the emergence of new technologies to solve problems like flying…
…while this article in the Guardian takes a look at how the aviation industry can solve six of its major issues…
…and as Extinction Rebellion continues its disruption in the capital (to the qualified approval of the FT’s Henry Mance), there’s a manifesto for a new kind of travel journalism from the Independent’s new travel editor.
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