Inspiring
FEEL-GOOD FACTOR
SADDLE UP!
8. NEW FOREST
Learn to ride like a cowboy on a Western Riding session in the New Forest. The cowboys of the Wild West would spend all day in the saddle, so the Western riding method developed as an easy, relaxing and more comfortable way of riding than the traditional English style. You’ll ride Appaloosa horses on a trail ride across open plains, wooded enclosures and rippling streams in the New Forest National Park.
Price £49 for a two-hour trail.
ADOPT A DOLPHIN
9. Moray Firth
The Moray Firth in north-east Scotland is one of the most important areas in UK waters for spotting dolphins, porpoises and whales. It has the only known resident population of bottlenose dolphin in the North Sea, being home to a small, isolated and vulnerable community of around 140 animals.
They are present all year round throughout the Moray Firth, but favour particular areas including the Cromarty Firth (North and South Sutors), the Beauly Firth (North and South Kessock) and the Inverness Firth (Chanonry Point and Fort George) as well as off Findhorn, Burghead, Lossiemouth, Spey Bay and Portknockie. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society is committed to helping these dolphins. If you would like to play a part in protecting these highly sociable, intelligent mammals, you can adopt females Rainbow, Moonlight and Spirit, males Sundance, Nevis and Thunder – or Mischief, whose sex isn’t known. Adoption costs £4 a month.
IN THE STEPS OF JANE AUSTEN
10. CHAWTON, HAMPSHIRE
If you need a nudge to write that novel, visit Jane Austen’s 17th-century house at Chawton in Hampshire where she spent the last eight years of her life and wrote some of her best work. It was here that she revised Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey, and wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. What more inspiration could you want? Entry is £6 for adults and £2 for children.
www.jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk
SAVE THE BEES
11. COUNTRYWIDE Honey bees across the world are under threat because of viruses transferred by the varroa mite. Nearly all colonies in the wild have died out and without beekeepers
to care for them honey bees could disappear in a few years. Do your bit by becoming a backyard bee-keeper.
