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Fleur Britten

@fleurbritten

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✍ Journalist @guardian @thetimes @theststyle @telegraph @livingetc @britishvogue @elledeco @independent
👩‍💻 Author of 5 published books
🌍 Eco nag

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Our charity shops have featured in The Guardian✨

St Raphael's Cheam Village charity shop has been featured in The Guardian, exploring the growing challenges facing charity shops across the UK. Speaking with our Commercial Manager, Caroline Worley, and Cheam shop manager, Colin French, the article highlights the impact of unsuitable donations and the costs involved in disposing of items that cannot be sold.

We’re grateful to @fleurbritten and @guardian for featuring our team and helping highlight the value of quality donations and the important role charity shops play in supporting hospices like ours.

Every quality donation and every purchase in our shops helps raise vital funds for the specialist care and support we provide to local patients and their families.

Thank you to our wonderful community for supporting our shops and our Hospice.

Photography: Jill Mead/The Guardian

🔗 Read the full article via the link in our bio. by @fleurbritten

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?

Ok, the bad news is that our charity shops are in crisis (for more on that, please read the brilliant book Charity Shop World by @tansyhoskins who spent 16 months working in one for research).

The good news is that there's so much we can do to help them. For starters, there are lots of brilliant initiatives that do specialist recycling and rehoming for the many things that our charity shops can't. For eg, @teemillstore @thisisjogon - with an incredible 90% save rate on our unwanted sports shoes - @thecashmerecentre @smallsforall @lovebravissimo @londonsockco

Plus, armed with a bit more knowledge (and thought) about what charity shops are (and aren't) able to sell, we can help our favourite charities fund their very important, life-changing work.

Link in bio👆
Photos by @speediemeadie66 by @fleurbritten

Beyond Big Fashion's low-quality polyester crap, its silly, shortlived trends and influencer BS, there shines a small but bright light that is fearlessly swimmimg against the tide. I wrote about @community_clothing, founded by @patrickgrantism which this month celebrates its 10th anniversary. It's hardly surprising that its first customers are still wearing the clothes they bought 10 years ago, because that's exactly Community Clothing's USP - a serious commitment to quality and enduring style (not to mention minimising the use of plastic, and supporting the UK textile industry - 95% of the price stays within the UK 🙌). We too can dress like the French in timeless classics, says Patrick #communityclothing #patrickgrant

Thank you 🙏 @karendacre @stylelaura ❤️ by @fleurbritten

big day yesterday. it’s 70miles from folkestone to lewes. we’d done 10 late the night before. with @louis2good

but it was all big headwinds or big hills or if we were lucky, both!

southern skies on a nearly last leg of the @supernaturefilm bike-packing uk preview tour

leaving hastings

arriving lewes. knackered!

a welcome sign.

arrived at @lewes_depot - what a venue! such a warm welcome

sold out screening and vibrant q&a discussion

tasha hosted the q&a and i was joined by my friend @davidplummerimages - it’s funny - we may never have met if it wasn’t for this film. david is an inspiration. and funny with it

a much needed massive calorie nutrition boost. or as i believe non-cyclists call it: a very tasty decent meal!

the trip from lewes to brighton was a grind. but we made it. screening no2 of the evening was at @dukesatkomedia

david and i shared the q&a again hosted by @fleurbritten. i love doing q&a’s with key filmmaker contributors from the film because it adds dimension. i love hearing their telling of events. our own memories alone are limited so sharing stories is special

two tires bikes lay down after setting up tents that we crawled into at 1am. today is the big day. opening day. cinemas uk and ireland wide. catch one if you can. the BFI IMAX preview today is sold out. but there are at least 5 more BFI IMAX screenings in the coming days … https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/imax/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=super-nature-imax

lovely wing man @louis2good x by @fleurbritten

This first image has an amazing story behind it - it's a film still from a Super 8 (I know some of you will have spotted as much!), taken from a microlight aeroplane. The pilot (and photographer) is training a flock of orphaned geese their migration route - how amazing is that?

It's just one of many incredible stories - all shot on Super 8s by 40 film-makers around the world - that make up the beautiful and life-affirming new documentary film, @supernaturefilm directed by Ed Sayers. It launches nationwide this Friday 4th.

I am delighted to be hosting the Q&A in a special preview tomorrow (Thurs 3rd) at 8.30pm with the director @edinstacam and @davidplummerimages one of the film's contributors, at Duke's at Komedia in Brighton. Please come and join us! I'm definitely going to be asking Ed how his journey was - he has travelled around his UK tour entirely by bike and train 👏

🎬 In cinemas across the UK & Ireland from 4 September 2026.

🎟️ Book now: https://www.picturehouses.com/movie-details/000/HO00018397/green-screen-super-nature-director-q-a?filter=

#SuperNatureFilm #Documentary #WildlifeFilm #NatureDocumentary #Cinema #FilmLovers #UKCinema by @fleurbritten

This is the face of the shock of a toe in cold, fresh lake water, at Powdermills Lake in East Sussex, at the beautiful hotel and members club, Crafted at Powdermills, near Battle. Feel free to laugh at me.

@staycrafted_ thank you thank you @margaret_london

The much happier face of acclimatisation - it's incredible how quick the transition is from horror to bliss.

Rooms and balconies in the Black Barn at @staycrafted_

And we got to sleep in custom beds crafted from locally felled wood, some from the estate's own 75-acre woodland, regeneratively designed by @sebastiancoxltd - so much beautiful woodwork in the rooms. Evocative bedspread by @by.sineadmurphy

Lushness

Some of us got to exercise, some of us got to relax. @staycrafted_ by @fleurbritten

Scientists are now starting to talk about "everywhere chemicals" - ie, chemicals that turn up in the products that we use every day, that are used in plastic packaging to soften or harden the container, or provide a waterproof lining, but that also migrate from the packaging to get, well, everywhere. You basically can't leave a supermarket without these chemicals somehow being in your shopping bags. The science around the effects of these pollutants - specifically endrocrine-disrupting chemicals - on the human body is far from complete, but they've been associated with enough disease to make the EU ban some of them from all food-contact packaging (they're obviously not banned in the UK - or the US).

But there are ways of reducing the extent to which migrate into the products you've brought, and into your body.

For @thetimes I spoke to the extraordinary @drshannahswan whose @netflix documentary The Plastic Detox saw a phenomenal result after putting participants on a plastic diet, as well as @munckejane, chief scientific officer at The Food Packaging Forum, to Prof John Sumpter at @brunellifesciences, who pioneered the science around endocrine-disrupting chemicals and how they can change the sex of fish, and @dr_nirusha.kumaran who specialises in functional longevity and hormone health. It is, I'm afraid, another burdensome thought - to have to think harder about how to shop for our health, but it's a lot better than the alternative.
Link in bio 👆

#plasticfreeliving #plasticdetox #plasticfree by @fleurbritten

I love the idea of staying at an inn as they would have in the olden days, a resting place to break up a long journey. We drove from Scotland to the Cotswolds yesterday (well, I say "we"...) and rested overnight at the breathtakingly beautiful @thewildduckewen - much of it dates back to 1563 but its gorgeous interiors seamlessly blends the old and new (naughtily did lots of Lens-ing to find out where I should be buying my fantasy wallpaper/rolltop bath/patinated brass tapware from). Our room also had separate bunk quarters, apparently also for adults, which only made the lucky kids feel even luckier.
Supper in the pub garden was surprisingly buzzy for a Monday night, and we realised that more than a place for long-distance travellers, it's really a much-loved local haunt, even on a Monday, and we lamented our long drive the next day.

Thanks for having us @thewildduckewen @frasercomms 🙏🙏 by @fleurbritten

I can't believe it's taken me half a lifetime to break out of the convention of indoor working. Or working in a concrete box, as some people have described it to me. Working al desko has been a complete revelation.

I was inspired to WFG (work from the garden) by @al_humphreys, whose new book Unwilded introduces low-bar ways to get back to nature - WFG can absolutely include a meeting in a pub garden. Yay. Frieda Gormley, the trailblazing tastemaker behind @houseofhackney has been WFG for yonks, and it shows so beautifully in her work and her philosophy (which she eloquently sets out in her new book In the Company of Nature). And there is tons of science to back up the sense that we all get that WFG is productive - thanks to @findingnature_ for distilling it all for me.
I also just came across @wild_working - an app for sharing the best outdoor working spots, which you should totally look up if you're inspired to leave the concrete box behind.
#wfg #wildworking #outdoorworking

Photography @cmcandrewphoto
Hair and makeup @nataliestokesmua by @fleurbritten

Let the summer road trips begin... First stop, the Forest of Dean, to the very pretty, 13th-century @tudorfarmhousehotel - this was going to be the first of our digital detoxes. It's a place where you want your senses switched on - the local and foraged food is exceptional, the hospitality warm and authentic, the pleasing interiors characterful yet calming, the native gardens abundant and nurturing.

I proudly drove across the country to the other end of the Severn Bridge without navigating by phone or getting lost, nostalgically recalling the olden days of counting down junctions (remember that?), actually paying attention to we were, and having a little list of instructions on my lap. My novice navigator was a bit perplexed by the task though, and, combined with a call from home, as my daughter - in London for the weekend - had lost her travelcard, and my own inadequate directions once it got a bit more fiddly, I had to bring back the phone (or did I welcome the excuse?). I also realise I need to buy a little camera if I really want to reduce my reliance on my phone (any recommendations?). That said, my intent remained, and I was at least motivated not to keep checking the socials in some crazed loop as usual. And more aware of how often my addicted brain thinks about doing that. by @fleurbritten

Anyone else facing the school holidays with a certain amount of dread? How on earth to get kids to have a fun, fulfilling time, when all they're really driven to do is hunt down the hidden devices and lose themselves to brain rot? This year, I'm trying to be on the front foot, thanks to excellent advice from @thehealthyselfiedr
@anitacleare_parenting @drdomthompson
@lenoreskenazy_freerange @letgroworg - all in @thetimes - link in bio👆

And! Lots of inspo from @smartphonefreechildhood @unioftheartslondon @csm_news @earnt_ @pot.gang @citydays.global @unplugged.rest @natsatclub @falmouthuni @unicreativearts @inspiredaub

It will fly by, honestly 😬

Photography by @michaelclementphotography
Hair and makeup by @nataliestokesmua 🙏🙏
#screenfreesummer #schoolholidayfun #IRLExplorers by @fleurbritten