third year of flight free pledge

Flight free travel Its 2023 - I am now entering my third years pledge via flight free UK, flight free travel can seem troublesome at first thought! But is it? I cannot deny that my first year 2020 was a major challenge for me, at that time - I was still working on a gas plant on Shetland, this work was fly in fly out to work every three weeks, it was 2020 and the world was coming out of its pandemic, I informed my work I would no longer be taking flights home from my work, this is not financially beneficial; it cost me money, not that I expected the company to pay to me any savings they made, that’s not how the system works due tax relief among other things, it was my own choice! In 2019 the previous year I read about an anti-flying movement known as “flight shame” – or flygskam in Swedish, where the movement began – it has been gathering pace in Europe. I now fully support it, I now feel guilty about the amount of flights that I have taken in my life, I am absolutely ashamed of this now and apologies to future generations, it was done in ignorance, previously to my pledge - I would generally fly home from work then jet of somewhere on holiday, this was how I was socially conditioned by my community to believe that this was living the dream! I love to travel flying is made cheap and easy by my government, this has to stop we are in a climate emergency, I have acted on my words by taking my pledge, the government has to act on theirs, but right now they are doing the exact opposite with bojo taking a jolly on a fighter jet and rishi flying from Leeds to London, it’s easy to see by their actions what they think of the climate emergency! Taking the flight free pledge has led to me having some amazing adventures, the first of which was my Shetland trig point adventure which was a massive undertaking, I took this challenge stupidly during winter! the first three months of 2020, then; I gave up work disillusioned with not only the gas industry, I also had a realisation that socialism was dead in the UK, this also tied in at that time with my loss of faith in humanity, who: to me seem hell bent on self-destruction, I have a problem I have heard or read about somewhere called ecostalgia, I was seeing signs of ecosystem upheavals all around me. In this time of climate change I made the mistake of looking deeper into it, reading lots of books, this made my nostalgia for fading ecologies, turn into a realisation that its all lost, there was no point in me planting trees to offset my carbon footprint! As due to climate change those trees will be in areas too hot dry/wet windy for that type of tree. It blew my mind that we could be talking orange or mangroves in Scotland in the not-too-distant future, this is all being done deliberately now! there’s no excuse any longer, this is how I lost my faith in humanity I felt alone I was surrounded by people that just don’t care, my original intention was to run the cape wrath ultra, then finish work cycling away from work, then head off alone around the world by bike, due to an injury and the pandemic the ultra-run had to be put on hold, my revised plan was that I would shorten the cycling challenge to cycling the UK`s flagship cycle route - national cycle network route #1, this cycle route begins in Dover and ends on the Isle of Unst at skaw beach, I would choose to begin from the cycle route end once I left work on Shetland, I intended to use this journey to promote the pledge to go flight free and also promote sustainable transport, along with a few pointers on biodiversity loss and climate breakdown, I did cycle away from work and started down the NCN 1, ( without too much promoting or pointers sadly people don’t like to hear the bad news) I stopped the cycle route at my home area of central Scotland, putting the cycle adventure on hold to take care of schtuff, I wanted to be around home for COP26, eventually taking part in the Marches and demonstrations for cop 26 in Glasgow, where; I became involved with a few environmental groups and activist’s, I was originally going to do work for the just transition movement from an environmental conscious point, as that’s supposed to be a joining of socially minded people and environmentally minded people coming together, BUT; from what I witnessed the socialists wanted to dominate not pull together, the red flag was getting waved more than the green, this led to me later joining just stop oil as they get it, this meant a delay in ending the NCN1 completion BUT; I have now completed that cycle route, yet another string added to my cycle adventures bow, having done a LEJOG and a C2C plus the NCN1 with many other cycling adventures, I can proudly boast that I have truly cycled the length and breadth of this country.

There was an event organised for COP27 which I heard about through the green runners (which I am a proud fully pledged up member of) this event was a relay baton, it was leaving from Glasgow the city for cop26 then; the baton was to be passed from runner to runner cyclist to cyclist, no motorised transport all the way to Egypt for the start of COP27, I have yet to count how many stages of this relay I done, I was at the start in rainy Glasgow (obviously) doing a few of the first stages then through the night at the borders then Nottingham, eventually doing sections across Europe all the way to Athens – I chased the baton all on public transport flight free mostly by train but I had to take a couple of buses ( Bosnia Montenegro and Albania) as this was by now my second years flight free pledge, the running out of time relay was great it gave me hope and the knowledge I wasn’t alone, it restored some of my faith in humanity there is good people out there, in Athens I waved the baton off to sea, then returned home to Scotland firstly taking the train to the village where my sister and brother have houses in Bulgaria, I have now travelled to and from that Bulgarian village a few times flight free, and shall do again

Future plans? I have the cape wrath ultra this year then once that is over, I will dedicate more time to just stop oil, why? when I truly want my life back! I had a great life previous to discovering how bad things were, I spent as much time as possible playing in the great outdoors running swimming cycling hiking, I have a massive list of adventures to complete and a wish list to start, but how can I do that? When; I know what I know about how imperative it is to make a date to end our fossil fuel addiction (if I can do it anyone can), that date starts at the very first step (every journey starts with one step) we have to stop at once all exploration and new licences, the time to act is now, I once thought we were already out of time which we mostly are, its about damage limitation now or damage control, how the world will look when my son is my age is all about how we act now, the faster we take action the better? that’s the wrong word! The less bad that world will be,

This knowledge gives me a responsibility to do all I can to stop living the way i used to, and push for the systemic changes needed to halt ‘business-as-usual’ consumption and pollution. Pledging to be flight free is one of the ways I am doing that. i also bank totally ethically now and no longer eat meat dairy or fish, I vote with my purchases and as important my non purchases - repair reuse upcycle, and I also now speak out and protest, if everyone just done something for the greater good then we will win,

I am easy criticised when I speak out as I am a hypocrite we all are! your either a hypocrite or choosing to be blind and deaf, or selfish it’s a bad word but I understand it - we all need to be selfish sometimes - just not on a global extinction level, or you’ve chosen to be fooled into taking the easy option and trust that our honest government have this under control (spoiler alert they haven’t ), I choose to be a hypocrite, I don’t judge individuals, but I am judging our so called leadership, the politician’s, the billionaire owned media, the law courts and the health and safety executive, shame on them! stop the new licences and all further exploration please, then my bike can head to the horizon again, flight free of course

Kenny