Theme for September - Do you really need to travel?

This month's theme is about road travel again.

We've already looked at ways to drive more efficiently. I've been keeping a log of how much fuel we put in the car and how many miles we do on a spread sheet and it's showing our average fuel consumption to be 42 mpg. We have an onboard caluclator thing, but I've been keeping a record of how much diesel we put in and how many miles we get from it - I'm not sure which is the most accurate.

For September, we're encouraged to consider our road transport both in terms of

• Personal travel
• The things we buy

22% of the UK's carbon emissions come from road transport so looking at these two ideas can help cut the country's overall emissions.

Now I have to confess that we do 'pop out' more than we should. We changed our car to a more fuel efficient one, but didn't change our habits much; in fact I think we saw it as a green light (boom boom) to be a little more careless with car use.

I talked to DH about this the other day and so far I've managed to walk to the shops once, instead of getting the car out. I have other issues that prevent me walking as much as I might, but I can build on taking one trip a month to the local shop or Post Office.

We combine errands wherever we can, but our downfall is the occasional takeaway, DVD rental or beer - those are the three things we get the car out for, but forward planning and more self discipline could stop all of that.

We do however, 'shop local' in the grand scheme of things. I'm amazed how many of my friends travel to Gloucester to shop when we have so many great places in a more immediate area. We have a butcher and library 3 miles away and a co-op and Lidls about 6 miles away. Our farm shop is about 5 miles away and we have an orchard 2 miles down the road. We're very lucky and supporting the orchard and farm shop also means we reduce our food miles because it's grown on site.

In addition we grow some of our own food - this year it was tomatoes, courgettes, beans, sweetcorn, potatoes, beetroot, salad leaves, kale, cucumber, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, pumpkins and we grow our own herbs.

I am vegetarian and eat a lot of rice and lentils - flown in from India and turkey no doubt. I think it's easier for a meat eater to eat locally; we can buy organic meat which is reared a few miles away and get local eggs and cheese (neither of which I eat).

I've been thinking about going back to supermarket delivery - that is a greener way to shop because a full supermarket truck keeps about 20 cars off the road. The thing is we're not very good at organising and shopping for an entire week.

This is all sounding like excuses, but I just know my limitations!

I travel into Gloucester once a month for a healing treatment, and we end up with a long list of things to do while we are there, like catching up with my friend who lives over there and going to shops to get things we cannot buy locally. I also pick up a suma order from Gloucester, and try and combine it all on the same day.

I think we do pretty well, but there is always room for improvement. We do all our leisure activities locally; most of it involves walking outside the back door into the fields. And this term, we've cut our daughter's clubs and activities from one every day to three per week so that will help reduce our car use. There is also talk of a local brownies group which means she can leave the one we drive to and join one within walking distance.

I haven't been taking readings for long enough to see our yearly mileage, but it looks like it's between 500 and 800 miles per month or 6000 - 9600 per year. I'm sure that is below 'average'.