It's more comfortable, but you have to be willing to learn the layout or develop your own.
I have a bastardKB Charybdis Nano as my daily, and I'm developing my own low profile board too. My next iteration of both will be 34 key only, that's plenty for me.
It's the Guardian's raison d'etre to be critical of its country to the point of almost derogatory pessimism. I say this as a subscriber. Such analysis also fails to take into account the steps that are [necessarily] taken to mitigate the impact in protected areas and the fact that our land mass is pathetically small compared to other countries on that list.
I’d take any content from the guardian with a pinch of salt. I am certain that most countries ranked below the uk dont have as many protected areas, therefore dont have this issue. While damaging the environment is bad so is the misinformation the guardian loves to spread around.
What about china, canada and nigeria? These protect at most half of what the uk does. Coincidentally germany is EU’s largest co2 emitter and a source of highly polluting cars. While it doesnt extract coal or other resources from its own territory it has no issue in using such resources from other countries. So while in absolute numbers it may appear better, overall it’s worse.
I made around 11000 km with a belt on a cargo bike before selling it and the belt on the current one is at ~6000km. Belts are amazing, especially when it comes to maintenance.
But I would still avoid going with a belt on a tour anywhere that’s remote - not because the belt itself might break, but the hub (as for this guy), or a sprocket or anything that is uncommon, but required when riding a belt.
