“It’s hard to beat an electric bike for sheer travel joy”: Conrad Quilty-Harper’s low-impact living tips

Latest low-impact life reset
“I sometimes borrow my wife’s Swapfiets electric bike which she is renting under the cycle-to-work scheme. The government should provide more tax incentives for bicycles. The UK’s £3,750 electric car grant is more than the price of most high-spec electric bikes! It’s hard to beat an electric bike for sheer travel joy. In the summer you can make a 30-mile round-trip, picking up a load of shopping on the way back without breaking a sweat.”

Favourite planet-positive products
“The Schwinn bicycle I bought 20 years ago because it’s still going strong, and in my house, the Airex smart air bricks we got installed and roof insulation which keeps us warm.” 

All-time top second-hand find
“It’s a tie between the Sharp word processor with a built-in printer that I found for £5 in a Sevenoaks charity shop and the signed first edition of Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard, which I found on Oxfam’s brilliant online bookshop – which was more expensive.”

Favourite walking route 
“I live near Wanstead Flats which is the southernmost part of Epping Forest, and I walk around the fields almost every day.”  

Most beautiful cycle journey
“A late-night bike ride around the backstreets and canals of Amsterdam, incorporating a ferry ride over to the north side of the city, preferably with a friend wobbling along beside you, and another perched dangerously on the rear pannier.” 

Plant-based dish of dreams
“Mindful Chef’s Tofu Pad Thai.” 

Song that lights you up and the story behind it
“‘Que Será, Será (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)’, sung by Doris Day in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, which my grandmother used to sing to my mother, and which my mother sang to me to get me to sleep as a child.” 

The independent coffee shop that makes you happy
“Rosslyn in the City of London. They pay their staff fairly and the coffee is delicious.” 

Indie record store tip
“This is hardly a tip but I was glad to know that Rough Trade, a London stalwart, is committed to becoming carbon negative.” 

Second-hand store or market worth a mooch
“The Oxfam on Drury Lane is always worth a look.” 

Causes you give to every month
“I started donating to the RNLI because Nigel Farage attacked its work in 2021. I’m a member of the London Cycling Campaign and the National Union of Journalists, and I spend way too much on independently written Substacks. Support writers and reporting.” 

Low-impact living podcast you’d recommend
“New Scientist’s weekly podcast The world, the universe and us is always good for a no-nonsense explanation of how humans can stop damaging the planet.”

What’s your most joyful weekend moment
“Using my binoculars to look at the moon’s craters from the garden on a clear evening.” 

Any other podcasts that lift you up
“The BBC’s In Our Time, particularly when Melvyn Bragg asks an academic to hurry up. He’s leaving, but there’s still probably 800 episodes for me to listen to, so I’ll be ok for a while.” 

Fave book that inspired you to make a change…
“JG Ballard’s The Drowned World.” 

and film and/or TV series
Simon Amstell’s vegan sci-fi film Carnage and the 2021 film Cow.

Person who inspires you and why
“Amy Odell who writes Back Row, because she writes one of the best newsletters around.” 

Who is your planet-positive hero
“I’m really enjoying Oliver Franklin-Wallis’s book Wasteland, who visited landfills and dumps and waste processing facilities around the world to try and understand why we throw so much away, where it goes and the pretty appalling consequences for the people who live in those places. He’s a hero for doing that kind of reporting.”

What gets you every time
“I play the trombone so I love a good solo, like Frank Rosolino in Stan Kenton's ‘Prologue (This Is An Orchestra!)’, or JJ Johnson’s riff on the melody on Blue Trombone or Andy Cato’s melancholy blues lick in Groove Armada’s ‘At the River’.” 

Quote to live by and who said it
“The ending of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a quote I hope we won’t ever have to live by, but we should all remember it:

‘Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.’” 

What is love
“When things feel easy and right.” 

Which issue do you care most about changing?
“Reducing wealth inequality.”

Do you have a message you’d love to share with the collective?
“Live long and prosper. 🖖” 

Conrad is the co-founder and a reporter on Dark Luxury, as well as the author of Britannica's Encyclopedia Infographica

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