Protected landscapes are addressing climate change, nature recovery, social inclusion and working to achieve sustainability at the local level. Their ability to do this in future depends on nurturing the next generation of people working in them.

I decided I wanted to bike from St Malo to Nice in 2025, as my longest ever bike ride and to get to know bits of France that are new to me. I work in the Shropshire Hills National Landscape Team and this interest in protected landscapes has led me to develop the trip into a route through 15 French Parcs Naturels Régionaux and meeting some people working in them.

I’ve been inspired by the brilliant EUROPARC scholarship scheme for young professionals to make study visits to protected landscapes in another country, and three former participants of this from both France and England are supporting my journey and fund-raising in different ways. As the longstanding EUROPARC scholarship scheme has been scaled back due to loss of funding, I’ve decided to try to raise £1,000 from the 1,000 miles to award a bursary for a young professional working in a British or French protected landscape to make a study visit to a protected landscape (or several) in the other country in 2026. EUROPARC Atlantic Isles is a registered charity and will collect and award the money. As the funds will be raised by sustainable travel in the form of cycling, a condition of the study visit funded will be that it does not involve flying.

I like the idea of creating a ripple from my own journey to give a transformative opportunity for a young person, and to promote further international collaboration and learning on protected landscapes, so these teams can go on doing great work to address the big challenges of our time.

Any donations are very gratefully received.

I’m travelling in the first two weeks of September 2025, and we hope to open applications for the bursary in the autumn, for the study visits to be made during 2026.

(In the hopefully unlikely event that enough money isn’t raised to make a worthwhile scholarship, or it isn’t possible to make an award, the money donated would be passed to the EUROPARC Federation to support other projects on youth involvement in protected areas).

Thank you!

En septembre je prévois de faire du vélo de Saint-Malo à Nice. Ce sera le plus long voyage à vélo que j'ai jamais fait. Comme je travaille dans un << National Landscape >> britannique dans les Shropshire Hills et que je suis actif dans la fédération EUROPARC, les Parcs Naturels Régionaux français sont très intéressants pour moi. Il s'avère que je pourrais parcourir un nouveau PNR chaque jour pendant 14 jours, ce qui me donne une bonne base pour mon itinéraire, un objectif pour mon voyage et une façon de découvrir ces régions. (Et puis au retour après les trains, un Parc plus en Normandie en route de Rouen au Havre pour le bateau !)

Maintenant je projette aussi de collecter des fonds à travers ce trajet, pour offrir au réseau EUROPARC Atlantic Isles une petite bourse pour un.e jeune professionnel.le d’un parc britannique ou français, afin de visiter un/des parc.s dans l’autre pays.

Merci, pour leur soutien, à la Fédération des Parcs Naturels Régionaux et aux équipes des Parcs en route. Merci également pour tous les dons !