I Hate Wild Swimming*

*Well I hate the term. No one talks about ‘tame swimming’, or ‘pool swimming’. Why label it? Sea and river swimming is normal swimming. However, although I love swimming outdoors, I’m not a massive fan of cold water. While some friends have braved lakes and oceans through every season, I’m a get-in-really-slowly-and-try-not-to-shriek kinda person. I’m more likely to be found using Wim Hof breathing techniques to help me survive in a super-hot bath. The pandemic … Read more

Tern Heads With A Tern Electric Cargo Bike

Lockdown life tested my ethical car-free lifestyle choice to the limit. Other people were zooming off to the seaside for their permitted ‘daily exercise’ but my family hadn’t been beyond a 3 mile radius of our home for over three months. We usually rely on public transport to get around, including the occasional taxi for hard-to-reach places. What if I needed to take my child to a medical appointment? Or one of my parents got … Read more

Heatwave Hotties

Here in the UK we are getting an unusually big dose of sunshine, and my family’s pale skin needs protection from the harmful UV rays. I used to love Yaoh’s ‘hemp’ sun cream, thinking it must be a good option because anything with hemp in has got to be healthy, right? Sadly I was mistaken: some of Yaoh’s suncare range relies on a chemical barrier called Octinoxate which listed on The Campaign For Safe Cosmetics … Read more

Plastic-Free Paris

One of the reasons why I set up The Green Shopper is that I’m a compulsive researcher. I love to travel by train, and found advice from The Man in Seat 61 very helpful when planning a recent rail trip to Paris and Venice. Before departure I also like to make a list of interesting looking vegetarian restaurants and health-food shops at my destination: the Happy Cow website is a really useful resource for travelling … Read more