You’ve finished reading How to have a low-carbon adventure (LCA) and I had a low-carbon adventure (LCA2) and now you want more! Here are some places to get started, with practical resources and inspiration to carry you forwards. These are just starting places and all these lists could be a lot longer.
If you’re interested in learning more about the contributors to the zine, there are brief profiles (and a behind-the-scenes reflection on the zine process) on the Mostly Good Ideas blog here.
Note that these resources have some degree of bias towards bikes, and (for obvious reasons) most of this information is Aotearoa specific, but if you have ideas of what you think should be here, get in touch! If you want to have a low carbon adventure, there are so, so, so many possibilities, so ultimately the best resource is your imagination and willingness to research wherever you specifically want to go.
Resources
- Bike trips around New Zealand: The Kennett Brothers “Bikepacking Aotearoa” and “Classic New Zealand Cycling Trails” guidebooks are full of ideas and also dry humour
- This blog post from Electric Bike Team has some good ideas about taking your bike on the inter-regional bus in New Zealand
- The Topo50 series of maps is super helpful for route planning, best combined with looking at your local council’s public transport routes or using the ‘bike path’ overlay function on Google Maps. The maps in LCA2 are very cool and can be used to annotate your adventures but are not suitable for actual navigation because I am not a cartographer.
- A reasonably complete list of day walks accessible in New Zealand without a car. It doesn’t include Silverpeaks in Dunedin though.
- Paddle Journeys has maps + lots of ideas for getting started with sea kayaking
- Community bike repair workshops are places you can fix your bike for free or for a donation. Whangārei, Auckland (with heaps of bike hubs!), New Plymouth, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Vancouver, New York, London, Manchester, Sydney, Singapore, Berlin, Brussels, Melbourne and many other places. Look for one in your local community, or get some friends together and start one yourself!
- Go on a low-carbon foraging adventure and find some food on the journey! This book and website is a great place to start.
- Want to cycle through Europe? The Eurovelo website has lots of routes and info.
Inspiration
- The New Story Run and New Story Ride – two human powered journeys that aimed to tell the stories of local climate activism happening in different parts of Europe
- LCA2 contributor Isobel Ewing and her friend Georgia Merton’s film Inshallah, featuring their bike journey through Pakistan in springtime. It’s so beautiful! Also, Isobel’s newsletter documenting her ride through central Asia and the occasional opinion about resource consent law in New Zealand.
- This article about a day taking all the trains in Auckland and a series documenting a journey from Rakiura to (nearly) Cape Reinga via public transport
- This piece is a fun itinerary for taking bikes, cable cars, buses and trains around Te-Whanganui-a-Tara. Shaun Baker’s blog has lots of pieces about transport in New Zealand, especially Auckland, if that’s the kind of thing you get excited about. (and if you’re reading this there’s a high chance it is)
- Some Aotearoa Adventures podcast episodes, including biking from Cape to Cape, bikepacking to every single New Zealand ski field (we are so excited about Pedals2Powder’s upcoming film!), sea kayaking in Fiordland, hitchhiking between Great Walks, and an interview about low-carbon adventures with oh, look… Shanti Mathias!
- Some low-carbon adventures on the Mostly Good Ideas blog, including to Wairarapa on the train (but first the overnight bus), to Miranda via train, bike and ferry and to the Waitakeres on bike and foot
- This article about LCA2 contributor Mika Hervel and his wife Anya Hervel taking the bus to their wedding. Love and buses are a great combination <3
- It would be impossible to list all the cool bike-related films that exist, and if you’re interested in this huge genre you should go to The Big Bike Film Night. But special shout out to the Freedom Seat project and film which is about the joy and connection of a tandem (and raising money for combating modern slavery)
- Danger is my middle name, by Robbie Danger Webb, with dispatches from his journey to become the first trans person to cycle around the world
- An essay by me (Shanti) about taking trains through India (also links to this less-inspiring but definitely interesting article about the double bind of decarbonising Indian rail which I think about all the time)
- One great type of low-carbon adventure is fungi-spotting trips. LCA2 contributor Liv Sisson has an immaculately photographed guide to New Zealand fungi you can take with you!
- Low carbon music videos and songs, like Your Light (bikes!) and Archie, Marry Me (sailing!), Old Images (trains! I would have loved to attend the Rail Land tour…) and Bike Ride (yes, it’s about bikes)
Activism
- The Future is Rail, which has lots of ideas for how trains must be part of transport plans in New Zealand’s present and future.
- Climate Liberation Aotearoa’s cruise ship campaign, which raises awareness with passengers and pushes politicians to place limits around cruise ships, which create 3x more emissions than planes.
- The Free Fares campaign, which LCA2 contributor Mika Hervel is involved in, is advocating for affordable public transport for everyone (especially students, young people, Total Mobility Card holders and people with Community Services Cards). Affordable public transport = more adventures.
- 350 Aotearoa, which LCA2 contributor Adam Currie works for, has a campaign against private jets, which are incredibly emission-intensive and also very inaccessible. Low-carbon adventures are about joyful, affordable transport for all, not just a few people who can afford it.
- Cycling Action Network promotes bikes being taken seriously as a form of transport around New Zealand
- Living Streets Aotearoa advocates for people moving around on foot, to be safe and have fun
- Dangerspace, which documents near-misses with cars to show how many accidents nearly happen.