Low carbon love

Es Tresidder was a runner up in our Green Stories competition.

Over to you Es:

I must have first set eyes on my girlfriend at the age of about three as we grew up in the same Midlands town and attended the same nursery.

Neither of us remember much about this historic first meeting.

In fact platonic only turned to romantic about a quarter of a century later by which time we were living in different countries - me in Scotland and her in Belgium.

The irony of dating a girl I grew up half a mile from but who now lived half a continent away was not lost on me.

End of the line?

I spend my working life at a demonstration eco house teaching people about low-carbon living. My new girlfriend shared my overdeveloped sense of environmental responsibility.

So as card-carrying greenies we met with a bit of a dilemma:

follow the course of true love and blow our green credentials with frivolous weekend trips across the continent, or
turn our backs on the blossoming romance and pray that we both found a new girl/boy-next-door.

Or perhaps there was another way...

Almost a year on I'm pleased to say that we're still going strong and Ryanair isn't a penny richer for our many long-distance rendezvous.

With some creative juggling of days off and continental transport schedules we've managed not to sell our souls to Micheal O'Leary.

Which isn't to say we haven't had our fair share of travel disasters. But I can sleep a little easier with the thought that our relationship has made a lot less of a contribution to carbon dioxide emissions.