I realised it would be an unusual Easter holiday when we were met at the jetty of St Martin’s, in the Isles of Scilly, by a 1965 Massey Ferguson tractor. Its tiny trailer transported me, my children and our luggage to our chalet.

Here was a rural idyll of the kind that vanished from mainland Britain in the last century: sparrows chirruping from every bush, roadside stalls with open money boxes selling free-range eggs and everyone saying hello.

But what really transformed our experience of roaming this beautiful Atlantic island (population: around 100) with my four-year-old twins and my two-year-old was being able to cast aside our fear of traffic. When the twins went careering down the hill, out of sight, I didn’t need to worry about safety or whether their lungs were clogged with diesel particulates.

There was freedom for them too – no parents barking instructions and no hand-holding, except for pleasure.

I had no idea small children could walk so far. We skipped three miles one day and two miles the next, albeit incentivised by fish and chips or ice creams. At night, the children fell asleep like well-exercised puppies.

Every parent and grandparent I met said the same thing: “This is how things ought to be.” And then – oh, the irony! – we drove home.

We have embraced this madness because these machines give us unprecedented freedom

On the long trek from Penzance, a freak hailstorm turned the M5 into an ice rink and we missed a nasty accident by a few seconds. I saw a motorcyclist slide off his bike and a car spin into the central reservation. People sat, stunned, airbags inflated, in crunched cars. Driving at 70mph in a noisy, delicate metal box suddenly looked crazy.

We have embraced this madness (even car-eschewing environmentalists depend on motorised transport for food and other pleasures) because these amazing machines give us unprecedented freedom. For this, we have traded the liberty of our children.

The miles of public space I enjoyed as a youngster are out of bounds to my children because of the increased volume of traffic. We must, somehow, rebalance the power on smaller roads to favour pedestrian over motorist. But I drive: I accept I’m part of the problem.

The land that crime forgot

When we caught the Scillonian ferry from St Mary’s, I spotted a familiar figure: Scilly’s police sergeant, Colin Taylor. I follow him on Twitter, where he wittily chronicles his daily duties keeping the peace on the land that crime forgot: “Like Heartbeat but less frenetic.” We had a selfie, naturally, and I discovered he is publishing his memoirs this summer. I’m looking forward to them although, if I was Sgt Taylor, I’d be worried his pen-pushing might attract a creative nickname: one officious previous incumbent on Scilly was known as Robocop, while another rather diminutive officer was called Laptop – he was a small PC.

Tigers burning bright

Cheering news for carnivores: the global tiger population is growing for the first time in conservation history, according to WWF. In 2010, governments agreed a target to double the 3,200 wild tigers by 2022. We now have 3,890, thanks to an intensive effort to stop habitat loss and illegal persecution.

England’s own version of the tiger is thriving too: pine martens have been filmed in the New Forest, where they’ve been extinct for 100 years. It has become a truism to argue that conserving charismatic carnivores is rather less important than saving the invertebrates on which life on Earth depends, but reviving tigers is not a wasted effort: success, and hope, are precious commodities in conservation.