Lost in Slow Travel

Welcome to LoST – the essence of supporting sustainable landscapes and communities through our walking, pedalling and paddling. LoST is about being lost in slow travel and being LoST means an approach to travel that supports the resilience and sustainability of landscapes and their communities.

Perhaps you’re starting out, wanting to know more about slow travel and what it means as you walk, pedal or paddle around landscapes and their communities. Perhaps you ask yourself  ‘How am I contributing to sustainable futures through what I do?’  Or perhaps you’re like me and see too much called ‘slow travel’ that forgets its spirit and essence – what it’s about in terms of both the art and the impacts of travelling and our ethics, values and interests as travellers.  Either way, LoST approaches provide us with opportunities to make a difference and contribute to communities and landscapes. And, following on from this, if we are to be LoST, we need to give some time and space for some thinking, some reflection, some re-imagining of our travels.

 

Here is the aim of LoST- to travel within a landscape rather than through it. To engage with a location rather than tick it off.

 

LoST is highly localised, with local benefits to both landscapes and their communities. It’s both a concept and an action – we think and we do. The ‘thinking’ bit is really important as our understanding of LoST, why we do it and what we mean by it, becomes the foundation for our journeys. The ‘doing’ bit is, of course, about how we travel and where we travel – guided by our ‘thinking’ and our understanding.

When we bring together the thinking and the doing, our own roles as travellers come into sharper focus.  We can ask ourselves some questions: How can we travel within landscapes, so that we understand more about landscapes, communities and our roles in sustaining both? As travellers, what do we need to understand about travel and our own approaches to travel, to be able to contribute to protecting landscapes and their communities? My attempts at trying to resolve these questions  in my professional life and my own travels have led very specifically to LoST. It stems from my 30+ years of professional experience at the intersection of travel, sustainable landscapes and sustainable communities.

Walking, cycling and paddling are means of moving through landscapes and engaging with them.  They are human powered and, importantly, allow us to travel and engage very locally. It’s this I mostly focus on – we slow travellers with an interest in making a contribution to sustaining communities and their landscapes through walking, cycling and paddling.

This website is your gateway to these ideas, practices, values, ethics and the contributions you can make to communities and their landscapes through your travels. Here you’ll find two kinds of information. One kind is about slow travel, being a slow traveller, slow travel through walking, riding and paddling, and about landscapes and waterscapes we can engage with. These are the pages and the posts of this website.

The other is focused on sharing experiences and ideas with others who are on similar journeys and have similar interests. This is the Collaboration Hub, a community where people with diverse backgrounds, experiences and interests but with a common focus on community and landscape resilience come together. You can get more information about the Hub and join by going to the LST Collaboration Hub.

 

What you will find is the essence of slow travel and its positive impacts on landscapes, the communities that are part of them and us – the slow travellers who get LoST in these places.

 

You won’t find how to pack a rucksack, or how to paddle a canoe, or much about routes. But I regularly find interesting articles and posts about these things. What I do is post these on my twitter and insta, using  #LST followed by the topic. For example, if I find something interesting on cycling, I’ll share it via my socials using #LSTcycling. This is the second type of information on the site – the relevant hashtags which I use to curate information published by others. Look out for the hashtags at the bottom of each page.

There are two things I’d like the website to do. The first is to provide information on the essence of LoST and its contributions to the sustainability of communities and their landscapes.

The second is to provide a space where we can discuss our interpretations of LoST as well as our travels. Discussing with others gives everyone new insights into our ideas about slow travel, LoST and our travels. It’s for these reasons I’ve developed the LST Collaboration Hub – a space to talk about, and reflect on, our roles as travellers sharing a common desire to make a difference through our travels.

This website is organised around the four key components of LoST – what LoST is about, the LoST traveller, the essence of riding, walking and paddling, and understanding our impacts on the communities and the landscapes within which we travel. Enjoy your LoST discoveries.

The site gets updated regularly with information and ideas. Come back often to see what’s new and interesting.