Great West Way Travel Magazine | Issue 07
Follow the paths through England’s idyllic countryside, quaint villages and elegant towns where our best-kept secrets from the past meet twenty-first-century hospitality.
Follow the paths through England’s idyllic countryside, quaint villages and elegant towns where our best-kept secrets from the past meet twenty-first-century hospitality.
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UK's first official Cycling City. Here you will find a
thriving sustainability movement, from zero-refill
shops to electric scooters for hire, and local awardwinning
pie company Pieminister's ‘eat pies, plant
trees’ scheme.
Just down the road in Bath, a clean-air zone
has recently been introduced to reduce fumes and
emissions in the city. Bath was built on England’s only
natural thermal springs, and if you visit Thermae Bath
Spa or Gainsborough Bath Spa you can enjoy these
naturally heated waters for yourself – lovely and
warm without the need for any non-renewables to
heat them.
Attractions and museums
If you’re a lover of nature, you’ll be keen to discover
some of the conservation charities and nature reserves
along the Great West Way which are working hard to
protect biodiversity and wildlife.
While many of the Great West Way’s nature
reserves are found in the quiet of the countryside,
our cities have some surprising offers. WWT London
Wetland Centre on the west of London is a huge awardwinning
nature reserve.
Providing safe haven from wildlife of all kins –
birds, bats, amphibians and more – London’s first
large-scale, man-made, inner city wetland reserve is
well worth a visit.
At the other end of the touring route, visit the
University Of Bristol Botanic Garden to see their huge
variety of cultivated plants; the five-acre site is home
to around 4,500 plant species.
The Great West Way has its fair share of ecofriendly
farms too, which you could argue have had a
head start on most when it comes to adapting to be
more socially and environmentally aware.
The Farm at Avebury produce more energy than
they consume, including their holiday lets, from their
solar panels and they don’t use any fossil fuels for
heating thanks to air source heat pumps. On the farm,
they work with The Small Robot Company who are at
the forefront of agricultural sustainability, increasing
productivity whilst protecting soil health, water
quality and biodiversity – and over the last 10 years
they have planted thousands of trees. They sell their
produce locally and to guests, with all their food being
grown within one mile of the farm.
Visit Roves Farm in Swindon and you will see
their sheep and hens grazing the grass beneath solar
farm panels – accounting for almost 40% of their
electricity required to run their 400-acre estate. Plus,
they use wood chip biomass boilers heating the visitor
centre during the colder months.
They produce all of their own beef, lamb and
pork on the farm, including supplying their café with
handmade sausages, beef burgers and mince. →
Pictured left to right: Clifton Suspension Bridge,
Bristol; Rams at The Farm at Avebury, Beckhampton
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