Britain's best-known environmentalist excused himself for his strong language in condemning the planned extension of park and ride at Bar End, Winchester.

Noting that land off the old bypass had been traded for land nearby so the motorway could be built, he declared: "We don't need another bloody car park!"

Prof Bellamy was speaking to the Hampshire Chronicle in the Guildhall on Sunday, after taking part in the end of the city's millennium celebrations. Asked to comment on the flooding and whether he thought it was down to global warming, he pointed that that if the temperature rose, more water evaporated. But he added that it was time to look at the whole ecology. Floods, he said, were due to catchment mismanagement.

Pointing to the "massive" road running past Winchester, the M3, he said: "How much more of Winchester is going under concrete? Why don't we have rational use of rivers, with their wetlands? Why does the Government give enormous grants for these roads when it should be giving enormous grants for car- sharing?"

Referring to the fact that European countries wanted the USA, the world's biggest polluter, to have dearer petrol, he went on: "Why castigate the US when Britain and Japan are also selling cars to China? Let's have car-sharing, instead of car building!"

Prof Bellamy called for "the countryside to be put back in good heart" with a better deal for farmers. There should be permanent setaside and watermeadows should again be used as wetlands.

The Bellamy humour was not far away: "In King Alfred's time, it didn't matter if you were flooded," he said, adding: "I live in an old mill. We don't keep anything important on the bottom floor."

He also enthused: "I've just driven a fuel cell car. The only thing it puts in the atmosphere is water."

David Bellamy first hit the news in 1967 when he was consulted after the Torrey Canyon tanker ran aground off Land's End with 120,000 tons of crude oil aboard.

He is renowned worldwide as an environment campaigner and his main spheres of interest are evolution of ecosystems, conservation and sustainable development. He was a speaker in the Winchester millennium debates in February.