As a conservation charity, we’ve been searching for alternative ways to get around the estates, gardens, and the places in our care, reducing our reliance on traditional diesel-powered vehicles. Thanks to a new collaboration with Raleigh, electric assisted bikes (e-bikes) are now helping us to meet our climate change objectives. Using e-bikes to travel from A to B will enable us to step towards a greener future, moving us closer to our goal of being carbon net zero by 2030. These Snowdonia Rangers tell us how the transition from four wheels to two has been going, and the benefits it’s having on their roles.
Snowdonia is a region in northwest Wales concentrated around the mountains and glacial landforms of massive Snowdonia National Park. The park’s historic Snowdon Mountain Railway climbs to the summit of Wales’s highest mountain, Mount Snowdon, offering views across the sea to Ireland. The park is also home to an extensive network of trails, over 100 lakes and craggy peaks like Cader Idris and Tryfan.
Rome is the capital city and a special comune of Italy (named Comune di Roma Capitale), as well as the capital of the Lazio region. The city has been a major human settlement for almost three millennia. With 2,860,009 residents in 1,285 km2 (496.1 sq mi), it is also the country’s most populated comune. It is the third most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4,355,725 residents, thus making it the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Its metropolitan area is the third-most populous within Italy. Vatican City (the smallest country in the world) is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city; for this reason , Rome has sometimes been defined as the capital of two states.
The Fondation Claude Monet is a nonprofit organisation that runs and preserves the house and gardens of Claude Monet in Giverny, France, where Monet lived and painted for 43 years. Monet was inspired by his gardens, and spent years transforming them, planting thousands of flowers.
This is the first of a few upcoming films from places that I probably would not have visited without the pandemic. Hallstatt is a small town in Upper Austria and with all the social media frenzy and overtourism I never had a great desire to go there.
However, last summer I spend two weeks vacation in Austria approx. one hour away from Hallstatt and with travel restrictions at the time it seemed that this would be only possible time were a place like this could actually be bearable for a day trip. While locals there assured me that the town was literally empty, it still had this tourist trap feeling to it all over the place. However, it is objectively really pretty and picturesque and all that, but it still is not really my cup of tea I guess. But check it out for yourself in less than 3 minutes – in miniature of course.
Below are a few interesting facts about Hallstatt from Wikipedia: Hallstatt’s tourism began in the 19th century but greatly increased after it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. It became popular among Asian tourists in 2006 when it was featured on a South Korean television show. Social media images of it, captioned “the most Instagrammable town in the world,” went viral in Southeast Asia. A replica was planned and then built in China in 2011 in Huizhou, Guangdong province, Hallstatt’s twin town. In 2013 it was rumored in China to be the model for the movie Frozen’s Arendelle village. In 2020 the town had a population of 780, and estimates of 10,000 to nearly 30,000 tourists per day, primarily via bus tours which bring tourists briefly into the town for photo opportunities, then quickly move on. Until the late 19th century, it was only possible to reach Hallstatt by boat or via narrow trails. The land between the lake and mountains was sparse, and the town itself exhausted every free patch of it. Access between houses on the river bank was by boat or over the upper path, a small corridor passing through attics. The first road to Hallstatt was only built in 1890, along the west shore, partially by rock blasting. Nevertheless, this secluded and inhospitable landscape counts as one of the first places of human settlement due to the rich sources of natural salt, which have been mined for thousands of years. A time lapse & tilt shift & aerial travel video by Joerg Daiber.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week: how green bottlenecks threaten the clean energy business, meet the voters that are turning former Labour strongholds Conservative in England (9:45) and, as curtains rise again, the theatre is set to look very different (16:55).
Windrush is a village and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England, approximately five miles southeast of Northleach. It lies in the Cotswolds on the River Windrush, from which it derives its name.
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. It is the largest country in Oceania and the world’s sixth-largest country.
The Frank Gehry design for the Louis Vuitton Foundation building was certainly innovative. But from a structural engineering perspective, there was nothing to suggest it was actually possible.
The building of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, started in 2006, is an art museum and cultural center sponsored by the group LVMH and its subsidiaries. It is run as a legally separate, nonprofit entity as part of LVMH’s promotion of art and culture. The art museum opened in October 2014.
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