Being LoST

Welcome to LoST – the essence of supporting sustainable landscapes and communities through our walking, pedalling and paddling. LoST – landscapes of stories and time – is an approach to travel that supports the resilience and sustainability of landscapes and their communities.

It’s grounded in the unique cultural, ecological and historical context that is place. It goes beyond the idea of being ‘local’ in a geographic sense and instead emphasises deep, situated engagement with the specificity of place – its stories, relationships and rhythms. LoST invites you to ask who lives here, what stories can be found in these communities and these landscapes. It prioritises presence over superficial experience and challenges the patterns of much tourism.

At its heart, LoST is a reflective, ethical practice. It requires slowness, not just in pace but in mind – allowing us to be reshaped by place rather than attempting to shape the place to outsider expectations. By valuing the deeply local, LoST transforms travel beyond simply where we go, but how – and with what attention, intention and responsibility – we act and learn.

 

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.

 

In this way, 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 LoST travel, being a LoST traveller, becoming LoST through walking, riding and paddling, and about the 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 LoST travel and its positive impacts on landscapes, the communities that are part of them and us – the travellers who get LoST in these places.

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 link to the LST Collaboration Hub – 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.

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.