Everything evolves.

When I started this blog (91 posts ago!!!) the main topic was our foray into car-less living, all be it almost car-less living.
Well we have certainly learnt a lot in the last ten months!
The main thing being that no, we can't live without a car, not in a permanent capacity.

A lot of things have changed since August 2009.

For one thing Kim now has work. Having gone self-employed he finds himself having to ditch the bike more and more in favour of the car as his work takes him further afield. For example we have to take a clients horse to be x-rayed on Friday. The vets don't have a mobile x-ray and so he will have to box the mare ten miles down the road and back.
Another blow was that one of his clients is now very ill and he has taken over a lot more work that he was originally going to do and they insisted he have the use of one of their cars so he can be up to their yard quickly in all weathers and also take over jobs such as collecting feed from the feed merchants.

Winter 2009 also conspired against our eager plans. The worst winter in thirty years hit Aberdeenshire and for the best part of four months it was impossible to cycle anywhere, with sporadically gritted and ploughed roads and grocery deliveries often not arriving or refusing to come down our lane, we were forced to drive into town to collect our shopping.

Then, after getting ourselves geared up to do nearly all our shopping within cycling distance, the local veggie cabin closed, meaning it was no long financially viable to do more than a fraction of our shopping locally.

All in all, despite our best efforts we now acknowledge that our rural location makes it incredibly hard (because nothing is IMPOSSIBLE!) to be 100% car-less.
With bad weather, no reliable and regular public transport, young children and animals (who always seem to need the vet when you are least able to get them there!) the whole thing was getting more than a little stressful!

Are we giving up?

Hell no!

Just being realistic.

I can still cycle to the little town and Kim still cycles to work when he is able, we still try and get the kids on the bikes to visit local areas. 

After a recent trip to the city of Edinburgh (FANTASTIC by the way!) I suddenly realised just how infrastructure poor we are here.
In a large town or city the majority of things you need are THERE, within walking distance or at a push easily reached by bus or train.  
I've been using the Tuesday bus into town for a while, but the two hours you get before having to catch the bus back home are woefully inadequate, you can do your shopping OR you can do jobs in town, but not both, so you spend the best part of £6 travelling and the whole morning away from home and will probably have to go back into town in a car as well at some stage in the week.

I don't feel we have failed so much as I feel let down by a country that takes relish in closing small local shops and businesses, cutting public transport and making life so hard for those not in te city to live car-less that you end up with country people migrating to the towns and richer town people taking over the country and villages.

So we have a newer outlook.
A do-what-we-can outlook that tries not too feel too bad when a car is a necessary evil.
Go through the options first and use the car last, but don't beat yourself up for having to use it outlook.

I think we can live with it.

HOWEVER......

This puts us in somewhat of a quandary.
How can we continue to call this blog "The (Almost) Car-Less Family" when we are now more the "Definitely Car Owning Family"?

So I feel a re-jig coming on.

A new name to go with the evolution of the blog.
I'm thinking about it at the moment and when I have half a dozen options we'll put it on a poll!!!

Feel free to throw any suggestions in there!