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I’ve always been interested in nature and the local environment and since I’ve been living in London (nearly 30 years now, it is scary to realise) I’ve been involved in some inspiring projects in our area:

• Oxleas Wood is an area of 8000-year old ancient woodland on the slopes of Shooters Hill, London SE18. It is a stunning place with woodland walks, open grassland and fabulous views and it’s hugely popular with the local population who like to walk themselves and their dogs there or take picnics or photograph the bluebells in spring. Sadly but only too predictably the folks at the Department of Transport also thought it would make a splendid site for a nice dual carriageway road. The campaign to stop this piece of  bureaucratic lunacy was long and arduous and involved thousands of local people who basically said “over my dead body!”. The scheme was finally dropped in 1993 (although, like Dracula, one can never be quite sure that such schemes have ever really gone away for good).

Oxleas Wood in spring

• Woodlands Farm is just over the road from Oxleas Wood and was bought in 1997 by a community trust which I helped to set up as a semi-derelict former working farm. The Woodlands Farm Trust has run the farm since then to keep access to the Farm for community use on the principles of sustainability, conservation, organic farming, education and community involvement. The farm has been lovingly renovated and brought back into use and is a beautiful and really interesting place to visit.

• Transition Westcombe is a recently - established transitions towns project for Westcombe Park (the bit of south east London where I live). The idea is to help get our local community engaged in practical ways to move to low-carbon ways of living and working as soon as possible, in the face of the twin threats of climate change and peak oil. Daunting but exciting too and definitely worthwhile!

Sheep at  Woodlands Farm