News

New UK house: Puttenham Eco Barn

13th February, 2018

Big welcome to Puttenham Eco Camping Barn which has successfully joined the Friends of Nature Network.

Beautifully sited on the edge of picturesque Puttenham village, this eco conversion of an 18th Century barn is located some 35 miles (56km) to the south west of London in the Surrey Hills area of the North Downs.

The term 'Small is Beautiful' perhaps describes the accommodation offered: simple but cosy kitchen, sleeping and shower facilities and yes, small... only beds for 11 people!  Ideally suited to walkers, cyclists and those touring the area.  Being totally reliant on volunteers and with a very 'green' ethos, Puttenham will sit well in the FoN family.

Celebrating Friends of Nature!

16th November, 2017

Our house in Kirk Yetholm has been welcoming walkers, cyclists and outdoor lovers for 75 years and happily shares a birthday this year with the international organisation Oxfam.

To mark the anniversary, our house is to support the international work of NFI and IYNF to the tune of 1000 euros and 500 euros respectively, each year for the next 5 years.  We hope this will help both organisations to plan strategies and gain match funding in the years ahead.

More details:  www.nf-int.org and www.iynf.org

We can only continue to stand up for nature by working together globally in a spirit of solidarity...

ECOmaps: Your chance to share that favourite place...

1st August, 2017

The IYNF (young naturefriends) launched ECOmaps last year as an 'open source' mapping project to enable anyone to both share their favourite green place and to find such places when visiting a new area.

Whether it's your local health food store, bicycle hire shop, favourite Friends of Nature house, wildlife reserve or open green space... they can all be easily added by you to the ever growing map of green places.  Similarly a 'search' of any area can be made either by the categories selected or by just showing all that is on offer!

A Great initiative - but to succeed it needs people to both input places and to spread the word.  So have a play and see if there is anything you can add... hopefully the site will grow organically from the users in the months and years ahead.

Web link:  www.ecomaps.eu/en

Facebook:  www.facebook.com/green.ecomaps

P.S.  Anyone wanting to get more involved with the project contact:  henrique@iynf.org or via IYNF site www.iynf.org

Welcome to our new look website!

24th June, 2017

Friends of Nature UK has had the benefit of a website for many years courtesy of dedicated long time member Alan Gentle.  Alan's technical background and enthusiam undoubtedly helped to put us on the global map at an early stage, this with often juggling committee roles as House Rep, producing the International Houses printed guides, and more recently finishing with a 5 yr stint as National Treasurer!

Alan's Friends of Nature website was originally set-up some 18yrs ago, although it was then under the former Naturefriends title. Alan has mentioned that our UK group was very likely the first of all the FoN country groups to have a web site, indeed he even had to persuade NFI that this was the future!  We are all indebted to Alan for his superb work over the years in providing a site which has grown organically with time. Special thanks from the committee with all the help getting the houses and the group events up on web site over the past years and being so open and flexible in what we can do.  Thank You Alan!

So to the future...

Simon Neal, National Secretary