When I was a teenager, I had two back-up conversation plans: football and Neighbours. I did not really do very well at small talk, a slight barrier when trying to meet girls. So I knew that if I rambled on about the vegetarian fusspot Harold Bishop, star of the suburban, Australian soap, most people would know what I was talking about. It was a patch of common ground from where we would begin scaling conversational mountains (like Home & Away)…

Wind farm devastates Wimbledon landscape

When you are trying to nudge friends towards engaging with environmental problems, you need to find something, anything that can start moving them away from the energy-hungry, how-can-I-do-anything-about-climate-change attitude. It is obviously not an easy journey, and they won’t be volunteering to scale coal-fired power stations for Greenpeace the next weekend. First you need a little thing, an ‘in’, that shows them that the idea of a greenish life is not very far from where they are.

For efreak’s mother-in-law it is recycling, an obsession. Another popular way, as I wrote previously, is by growing stuff. Some people just like the feeling of being smug. For me, it is walking. In Hong Kong, where I used to live, I could not think of a better way of spending a Saturday than by hiking through the sultry landscape away from the hectic city centre. And once you have tramped round reservoirs, seen weird snakes and obscure fishing villages, you begin to think about how your surroundings matter and how fragile they are…

Since the start of the year, I (and whoever turns up) have been hiking once a month. We normally rely on the brilliant Time Out Guides to hiking outside London (almost idiot-proof instructions include where to catch the train and in which pub to have lunch). But a friend had mentioned all the good walking routes that are available inside the M25, so last Saturday morning we found ourselves at Wimbledon Park station for section six of the Capital Ring.

The Capital Ring is a 78-mile walking route around London (the walking equivalent of the North and South Circular). It goes from Woolwich, in east London, to, er, Woolwich. But in between it passes through lots of London greenery like Richmond Park and Highgate Wood. It was conceived of in 1990, but finally completed in 2005. The website has split the walk up into 15 different sections, all nicely mapped, with written directions (and well signposted).

Hands up if you remember you're a womble?

Hands up if you love wombles?

So apart from getting slightly damp and a sore back, what did I get out of the stroll and what green nudges could you give on such a walk? Well, firstly the importance of parks. Richmond Park is the biggest park in Europe, and its scale is incredible. You have deer roaming around and plenty of rare birds, ducks and grasses. It has very acid soil, which makes some its plants rather unusual. This stuff matters — if you do not look after the park, or built more houses on it, there would be less and less of the nature that you could go and enjoy, relax in and get fit in. People who say there is no intrinsic value to such things should have a look in estate agents’ windows near the park

The Ring also passes through Wimbledon Common, where you have a beautiful example of renewable energy — a windmill (Obviously, like all wind turbines, it has completely blighted the landscape and house prices have plummeted to around the two million pound mark). Wimbledon Common has another, perhaps more famous environmental legacy — those pointy-nosed foragers, the Wombles. What better example of recycling, invention and quiet environmentalism with which to convince friends of how easy it is to think green…

Underground, overground, wombling free,
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.
Making good use of the things that we find,
Things that the everyday folks leave behind.

Wombles are organised, work as a team.
Wombles are tidy and Wombles are clean.
Underground, overground, wombling free,
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we!

People don't notice us, they never see,
Under their noses a Womble may be.
We womble by night and we womble by day,
Looking for litter to trundle away.

We're so incredibly, utterly devious
Making the most of everything.
Even bottles and tins.
Pick up the pieces and make them into something new,
Is what we do!