My birthday is on a really rubbish day – the one after new year’s day. It’s a time when nobody feels like going out, celebrating or even vaguely marking the occasion. So, when Mr Snail asks me what I’d like to do for my birthday it can be quite difficult to think of anything that will ‘work’. In addition, not wanting to add to the ‘stuff’ that we already own, I generally don’t have a big list of presents that I want. This year, however, was different. This year I decided I wanted to visit some of the places and people I’ve been intending to see for ages. January not being the best time for this sort of excursion, we made a plan to have a trip away in May… a trip that we have just returned from.
With a bit of careful organisation, I managed to arrange to visit two people – one blogging friend who I’d never met ‘for real’ before and one old friend who I hadn’t seen for about 18 years – and to go to three places – two gardens and a Roman villa. Much to my delight we achieved all we had set out to do and more.
We travelled in our ‘tiny car’, which has very low CO2 emissions and uses relatively little petrol. We took our loose tea and an infuser, ground coffee and a filter, home made granola and bottled apple (for my breakfasts), a Thermos flask and water bottles, plus cotton shopping bags and reusable sandwich wrappers in the hope that we could minimise waste during our trip. We even managed to collect all compostable material that we generated in our holiday cottage and donate it to one friend’s compost heap on the way back.
All travelling has an impact on the environment, but we planned our’s to be relatively small – I think we succeeded.
So, here is just a tiny pictorial taster of what we did… details to follow…
The Snail of Happiness 
Mrs P
/ May 23, 2016Looks like the perfect getaway, 2nd born has the same birthday as your good self and has the non birthday bash rule 🙂
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 23, 2016Ah well – we can enjoy our delayed celebrations anyway!
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nanacathy2
/ May 23, 2016Lovely way to celebrate. Look forward to seeing where you went
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Pat
/ May 23, 2016Wonderful photos! Looking forward to the story. 🙂
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 23, 2016Lovely holiday… still thinking about all the great things and people we saw
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Ann
/ May 23, 2016You & Mr SoH are always welcome here – and although we have no seaside or amazing garden (work in progress), we will provide tea/coffee, apple juice and water – plus we have a compost heap or 4 that you can put your peelings on. 🙂
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 23, 2016Headed south this time… maybe we’ll choose a different direction for the next trip!
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coppicelearner
/ May 23, 2016What a lovely idea. Glad you enjoyed yourselves.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 24, 2016We had a great time.
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katechiconi
/ May 23, 2016You travelled far and trod lightly, leaving nothing but a footprint, and taking nothing but photos! Lovely! *Still* suffering from Eden Project-jealousy….
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 24, 2016You’d love Heligan too – the restoration is mind-blowing.
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katechiconi
/ May 24, 2016Yes, I saw the TV series and was blown away.
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unionhomestead
/ May 23, 2016Looking forward to hearing all about it…you have surely thrown down the gauntlet for any of our road tripping from now on and we thank you for caring as much about our “home” as we do.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 24, 2016The purchase of ‘tiny car’ has made a big difference to us. We can fit all our luggage in because there are only two of us and its so cheap to run! I am slowly learning what essentials to take with us to avoid generating waste, but there’s always something more that can be done.
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katythenightowl
/ May 24, 2016Wonderful pics, and I loved the mollusc! 🙂
Glad you had such a great time – you must be proud of yourselves that your footprint for the jaunt was so light – good for you 🙂
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 24, 2016I just feel I need a week to recover – we seemed to do so much!
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katythenightowl
/ May 25, 2016Isn’t that always the way, though? Needing a holiday to get over your holiday?
Glad you had such a good time 🙂
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insearchofitall
/ May 24, 2016I love how you celebrate your birthdays. An experience is always so much better than a gift to put on a shelf and dust. You seem to have the tiny footprint down to an art form. The photos were wonderful and glad you had a great time. Vacations are always somewhat exhausting if you do them right. I always need a vacation after a vacation. 😉
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