I have been back from my travels for a week now, the dust settling on so many inspiring experiences in remarkable countries.  I have spent two months travelling through the Netherlands and the southern half of Norway as part of a Churchill Fellowship to understand how to enable nature connections for older people, particularly those with care needs.  The long journey home via ferry and train gave me chance to reflect on what I had observed about people’s relationship with nature, in a country where nature is a huge presence in every sense. (more…)

*Friluftsliv; a handy word meaning open-air living, capturing the Scandinavian approach to living life in harmony in nature.

In the countryside near Løten, the gently rolling hills are dotted with the red painted barns that are so indicative of the Norwegian landscape.  Crops are sprouting in the fields and a herd of cows with their new calves are munching hay in a farmyard.  This is proper farming country, but I’m on my way to a day care centre for people with dementia.  As I photograph some milk churns at the end of the drive, a taxi full of elderly gentlemen pass me, also on their way to Lillehov, a farm that has provided day care services for over twenty years.  Ingunn Sigstad Moen meets me outside her house to welcome me in. It is a beautiful wooden farm building, full of fascinating old kitchen implements, but the group are already sitting around the table drinking coffee and talking about the day ahead, so I go to join them.  Lillehov doesn’t feel like a care facility, more like a warm friendly home, and that’s because it is. (more…)

*Friluftsliv; a handy word meaning open-air living, capturing the Scandinavian approach to living life in harmony in nature.

How do you imagine your life when you are older?  Perhaps you picture a retirement of travel and adventure, more time devoted to your family or pottering in your garden.  But beyond that, how do you picture your life when you get even older and functional abilities start to decline?  If we are lucky enough to get that far, we know that we may need help with everyday tasks  in the form of professional care.  When that happens to us, I think most of us would hope that we can continue to experience the things we love and that our days will still have meaning.  But if age or illness prevents us from having full agency over our lives, how can we be sure that will happen? (more…)

*Friluftsliv; a handy word meaning open-air living, capturing the Scandinavian approach to living life in harmony in nature.

Its Good Friday and I am sitting next to a campfire in a secluded bay amongst the archipelago of islands off the south-east coast of Norway.  Heldrig, the wooden boat we sailed here on, is moored up, Annita is reading, Sigurd is fishing and Adrian and I are cooking tea while listening to the bird life, our only neighbours in this stunning setting. I feel completely calm, happy and at one with the landscape around me.  I have come to Norway, as part of a Churchill Fellowship to learn more about ‘friluftsliv’ and what we can learn from this Norwegian concept, to enable our older generation to spend more time in nature.  If I wanted to experience friluftsliv for myself, this surely is it.  But what is it, and what can we learn from it? (more…)

*Friluftsliv; a handy word meaning open-air living, capturing the Scandinavian approach to living life in harmony in nature.

It’s a warm spring day and I’m following a group of pensioners on a hike through the forest in Sandvika, near Oslo.  I can hear robins and a nuthatch singing noisily overhead and blue and white wood anenomes are blooming on the forest floor.  I have been invited to join the Demmensturgruppe (dementia walking group) organised by Bærum Frivillgsentral, a volunteering organisation for the local municipality.  Having met in town and dropped off by a minibus taxi at the edge of the woods, the group are putting a good foot down and walking with purpose.  Apart from the occassional pause to look at the flowers, watch running deer or chat to hikers coming the other way, the group keep up a good pace until the official lunch stop outside a hytte (cabin).  There is a large firepit we could use, but its warm today, so not required.  Suitably sustained with coffee, sandwiches and Kwik Lunsj, (like a Kit Kat, its an essential part of the hiking experience in Norway, I am told!), we carry on through the woods and farmland to complete an impressive 6.5k.  Many of the group are living with dementia, others are volunteers.  Its not clear who is who, and everyone is carrying the same branded rucksacks, so we’re all part of one big friendly group. (more…)