Slow down!

2nd February 2012 by

I’ve never learnt to drive and so it’s rare these days I’ll ever get in a car – but back over the winter holiday period I had a couple of in-car experiences which made me reflect anew on our society’s need for speed.

Driving (well, being driven) along empty A-roads on New Year’s Eve was an unusual feeling. A few days previously I’d been travelling in a high-speed train and I hadn’t thought twice about the speed. But somehow driving within the speed limit now felt too fast.

I was secretly clutching the bottom of my seat, trying to avoid looking where we were going, and thinking about how much I reminded myself of my mother on childhood family holidays driving through mountains on twisty roads with sheer drops. Except in my New Year’s travels there were no sheer drops.

A few days later I found myself being transported by car through London as I had far too much luggage to ever hope to fit in my panniers. And suddenly 20mph zones seemed too slow. It seemed unnatural to be in a vehicle with so much power to travel at that speed. I knew the driver was finding the speed limit frustrating, so I explained why I thought low speed limits were a great thing!

I’ve always been for slow driving, and have high hopes for the 20mph campaign. My advocacy has always been centred around the simple fact that if a car travelling at 20mph hits a pedestrian, that person has a 97% chance of survival. If the car’s travelling at 35mph, the pedestrian’s chance of death increases to 50%.

But being in a slow-moving car, I realised another advantage of setting a default 20mph speed limit. Driving at that speed feels frustrating – so perhaps this in itself will coax more and more car travellers out of their stuffy, over-sized boxes and onto two (engineless) wheels, or their own two feet. Why travel at 20mph in an airless and lonely compartment, when you could feel the wind in your hair and smile and interact with the people you pass on your journey – and probably get to your destination just as speedily?

I remember being on a train a couple of years ago, reading a book about how high speed travel, from planes to trains to cars, means that now we conceptualise all our journeys in terms of time, not distance. Time’s precious, we only have so much of it, right? So when we think about it like this, a slow journey doesn’t sound too appealing.

If we think about distance, the spatial element of our journey regains meaning. When the ground we cover becomes important again, we can enjoy and appreciate the journey for what it is: something important for daily commutes, to longer adventures, and everything in between.

If we all slow down and enjoy our journeys, either staying in the car, on public transport, or switching to muscle power, we’ll have safer, cleaner, greener streets; healthier, happier people; and hopefully some of the intolerant drivers with their burning need for speed will learn to appreciate some different aspects of life.

This is one way of taking action in London – a campaign leading up to the mayoral elections. Have a look out for campaigns in your own areas too, and add links in the comments section if you want to share them.  If there’s nothing where you live, why not start something yourself?

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Go west, young man! So he did.

18th January 2012 by

Matt Wicks has been writing about his life-changing experience on our Wild West 2008 cycle tour for our friends at the splendid Do the Green Thing, who hit on the brilliant idea of telling the personal stories of people who have had incredible travel adventures without getting on an aeroplane. Here’s what Matt had to say.

Back in 2008 I saw an advert for the ‘Wild West’ cycle tour. I applied, raised sponsorship, and in August found myself in a field in Brigstock, where I met the 17 other participants. I was excited but nervous – I had never done anything like this before and was way outside my comfort zone.

My main interest was cycling. The previous summer I had cycled to Paris with friends and had a lot of fun. I also already had a keen passion for the environment, and was lucky to be able to take six weeks off from my job as an energy advisor. The tour turned out to be a great opportunity to meet new people and share experiences and knowledge.

For the next six weeks I worked, played, cooked, ate, and cycled with such a loving, interesting and fun group of people – everyone very different, but equally passionate about wanting to make positive change in the world. Friends for life.

Along the 700 mile journey we met so many inspiring and generous people, we camped in some wonderful locations, and ate so many fantastic meals. We performed and held workshops at schools, and at youth groups, communities and festivals through the Midlands and Wales. As a group we learnt about sustainable living through skill sharing, and through visiting permaculture farms, social enterprises and one Tracey Island style energy research centre. We also learnt about bike maintenance, cooking for large groups and consensus decision making.

At the end of each day, as a group we shared our highs and lows. The concept of sharing emotions and experiences in this way was something I was not used to, and almost alien in society today, but it was something that became very valuable. There were so many highs of the tour, and of course a few lows, but even the lows, when you look back, really added to the experience, to the adventure.

Although the tours are run and organised by the Otesha team, you still have great room to influence and shape the way the groups lives, from the food you eat to the route you take. We cycled in groups of four or five carrying everything we needed in panniers and our three trailers named Bob, Not Bob and the Slug. What freedom!

Our first week of cycling was pretty intense. We travelled all the way from Brigstock in the East Midlands to Crickhowell in the Brecon Beacons, some 150 miles as the crow flies. I think we probably cycled almost double that as we weaved are way with visits to projects in Leicester, Coventry, Worcester en route.

We arrived in Crickhowell for the the Green Man Festival where we were due to perform our play only for the second time since training week. All went well (apart from the rain and mud!), we sang, danced, and had much merriment. From there we headed to St David’s in Pembrokeshire, then to Carmarthen, Swansea and finally Merthyr Tydfil.

For me the most daunting part was performing the ‘Morning Choices’ play. I was no theatrical type, in fact I was so worried about this side of the cycle tour that I blanked it from my mind – well, until training week anyway. I did it, and although I may not be found at the local dramatic society just yet, this was a great experience. The buzz of performing was something I had never felt before, at least not since my year 6 school assembly!

Since taking part in the Otesha tour I have joined the board of trustees. I have continued cycle touring, and I have been involved in a number of local projects. I will always look back with great fondness on the Wild West tour 2008.

If you would like to sign up for one of our extraordinary summer 2012 cycle tours, click here.

Matt’s article is also available here. If you’re after still more inspiring travel stories, you can also read about a bike ride to Morocco and a Pacific sailing adventure.

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Biofuels: the choice between petrol and beefburgers

13th January 2012 by

When I was little I used to know a man who ran a car on used vegetable oil. As a 10 year old this fascinated me- it was beyond my wildest imagination that you can make a car go on skanky old oil scrounged from the chippy.

As the monumental reality settled in that the world would one day run out of oil (cue childish fantasies of a post-apocalyptic society where we would all have to cook our pet cats over bonfires made from old furniture because we couldn’t drive to the shop) I began to think that making oil out of vegetables was the best idea since Lego. My brother and I spent many an evening poring over maps, plotting our route to Timbuktu via as many chip shops as possible, once we’d converted the family car to guzzle vegetables.

In hindsight, I now realise that it’s not possible to fuel the worlds estimated 800 million cars on old vegetable oil alone – NOBODY could eat that many chips. Luckily, some smart people in the energy industry came up with idea of growing plants such as corn or sugarcane, specially to turn into bioethanol fuel through fermentation.

On paper this seems like an excellent idea- we can avert an energy crisis (no more burning the antique coffee table out of desperation) using a sustainable fuel supply which is a lot less damaging to the climate than fossil fuels. Infact, it was such a good idea that over 2.7% of all road transport now uses biofuel to keep the world’s wheels going.

However, biofuels are marred by controversy, becoming an example used by the environmental movement of a misguided policy used by governments to greenwash ‘business as normal’.

The biggest problem biofuels present is that they compete for land usually used for growing food. In a world where human populations are hurtling towards 7 billion and with almost 1 billion are in constant hunger, we really need to critically examine which is more important- well fed people or well oiled motors?

There have been many vehement reports of the effects of biofuels on world hunger. Numerous articles state biofuel production as a major factor in the 07/08 global food crisis, in which increased competition for agricultural land pushed up prices way above the means of many resulting in global riots, political instability and starvation. One leaked World Bank report implies that the US and UK government targets on increasing biofuel use has pushed world food prices up by 75%, pushing 100m people below the poverty line.

So should we write biofuels off as a very bad idea? According to Zero Carbon Britain, a future energy strategy designed by the Centre for Alternative Technology, biofuels have their rightful place in a sustainable energy plan. In fact, they go so far to suggest that 1.67 million hectares (about 7% of UK’s total land area, including urban and mountainous areas) should be dedicated to transport biofuel.

When I first heard this I was couldn’t help thinking they were a tad misguided. But actually what the Zero Carbon Britain report advocates is the sensible use of land. UK agriculture currently takes up about 16 million hectares of land, of which 11 hectares is dedicated to livestock and another 5 million to livestock feed. Arable crops are notoriously more efficient at feeding humans than livestock, so by reducing the nation’s meat consumption and switching to a arable based diet, more land would be freed up for fuel production. Also, a new form of 2nd generation biofuels are being produced, which can grow on more degraded land that isn’t prime arable land.

'I'd rather be a vegetable'

I know that the idea that biofuels might have a place in our zero carbon future is slightly controversial – indeed I’ve received an interesting (!) reaction by suggesting it in our office. There are a litany of arguments that instead we should stop relying on energy for transport altogether. But the debate about land use is an interesting one and really needs to be thought about carefully if we want to really fairly share the resources that the planet can provide for a sustainable future. But faced with the choice what would you choose – petrol or meat?

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Balkan beats: adventures in slow travel

26th October 2011 by

Last month, I packed my bags and temporarily ran away from home. This post is a collection of a few favourite moments on the road. It’s also an ode to two-wheeled travel, local food and the art of hospitality.

Better than a free lunch

In Slovenia, we took a wrong turn out of Ljubljana and suddenly went off our map. Completely lost, we knocked on the door of a house that looked friendly enough. And before we knew it, we were sitting in the kitchen of our new friends, Darja and Frank, drinking coffee, practising our broken Slovenian, looking over maps and talking about their upcoming plans for a trip to Tibet. It turned out that we were on the wrong side of a pretty sizeable hill, so after feeding us lunch, Frank loaded our two-wheeled steeds into his horse trailer and drove us over the mountain, plonking us down in Grosuplje, where we were supposed to be, and pointing us in the right direction.

The next day, we were befriended by a retired couple, Nadja and Marjan, while resting at the side of the road a few kilometers away from the Croatian boarder. They wouldn’t hear of letting us carry on without feeding us some homemade cherry wine and coffee. This, of course, turned into a four hour lunch where we gorged ourselves on fresh walnuts, salad, stuffed peppers and potatoes, all from their garden, and drank delicious local wine. (And then had to cycle up a giant mountain in the fierce afternoon heat- ugh.)

The amazing hospitality of the people we met along the way will stay with me for a long time, as will the amazing food. Time and time again, we found ourselves in front of heaped plates of figs, cheese, vegetables and walnuts, being encouraged to eat as much as we could. As far as I’m concerned, the Balkans are filled with doting grandmothers who feed you till you burst and fun-loving uncles who break out the rakjia (a local kind of schnapps) at every possible occasion, including breakfast. More than once, I had to secretly tip my 8am shot glass into the bushes! Whenever we enthusiastically used our favourite Slovenian-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegran word, “dobro” (which means “good”), our hosts would invariably point at a tree or plant or cow and explain that the food came from their own land.

In Croatia, we cycled through the interior of the country for three days before hitting the coast. Far away from the tourist path, we passed through amazing desert mountain landscapes and pedalled through tiny villages where tiny old women shelling corn on their front porches would wave and smile, and groups of men sitting in front of cafes would yell hello and good luck, and ask where we were heading (at least we think that’s what they were asking….our Croatian was broken at best). For me, the best moments of the trip were those little interactions – the small moments that reminded me why I love bicycle travel so much. Cars and trains put barriers between you and the places you move through, but on a bike you can talk with everyone as you pedal by.

Our second night in Croatia, we were heading towards the amazingly beautiful (but very overcrowded) Plitvicka lakes. As the clock edged towards 6:30 and the shadows got longer, we started our daily search for somewhere to stay. We’d been advised not to wild camp because of land mines left over from the war in the 90s, so we started looking for signs for sobas, rooms that people rent in their houses. We stopped in a town that was mostly deserted, with trees growing up through abandoned houses and buildings with obvious bullet holes, the first time we’d seen real evidence of the war. We saw a sign for an organic farm and stopped to chat with the farmer. After buying his amazing secret superberry juice and sampling some delicious lavender cookies, we got to talking. It turns out he was a counter-terrorism pilot during the war. He thought that war was madness, but as he put it “when people come at you with guns, you either leave or you fight. I couldn’t leave, so I fought”.

Over the next month, as we travelled down into Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania and finally to Greece, we heard so many different stories of war. I came away convinced that there are as many perspectives as there are people living in the Balkans. This is certainly a complex part of the world, with many surprises and contradictions. One thing is sure – for people who value hospitality so deeply, it must have been excruciating to shut themselves off from so many of their neighbours, schoolmates and bordering countries for all those years during the war.

Their challenges now are different – whether to join the EU, how to fend off cheap agricultural imports, how to keep young people from leaving the country in search of jobs. Like many of us in the UK, the young people we met were uncertain about their future. Our last few days in Greece really brought this message home, with people telling us about 50% salary cuts and mass emigration to other EU countries.

As I packed up my bike and boarded the boat back to London, the thought stuck with me that we’re at an economic turning point and we really are all in this together. And then I came back to find occupied stock exchanges in cities all over the world, but that’s another story for another blog….

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Posted in food glorious food, travel & transport | 1 Comment »

Ode to the lollipops

16th September 2011 by

School crossing patrol officers didn’t feature heavily in my childhood, or I don’t remember them if they did.

But now I love them. These ladies and gentlemen of the lollipop are beacons of florescent hi-visibility and humanity. They command the traffic with an iron first, whilst stopping to chat to school children, parents and passersby. They provide the human touch in the midst of school-run jams. They put even the most aggressive engine revving, light jumping drivers in their place.

Wikipedia tells me that,
Under UK law it is an offence for a motorist not to stop if signalled to do so by a patroller. In the past patrollers only had the authority to stop the traffic for children. However, the Transport Act 2000 changed the law was so that a patroller had the authority to stop the traffic for any pedestrian.

I pass one crossing patrol officer on my way to work, she appears to know everyone. Regardless of rain, shine or snow, she dons a smile along with her hi-vis coat. One of my weekly commutes passes a zebra crossing in Tottenham where the lollipop man salutes me, the only cyclist, every time!

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Moving Planet – Sept 24th

2nd September 2011 by

All over the world people are taking to the streets. March, cycle or skate and join the call for the world to go beyond fossil fuels.

Hop on to www.moving-planet.org to find an event local to you or even register your own one. They’ve got a great website with loads of resources and support, from printable posters, stickers and t-shirt graphics, through to guides on how to organise an event and get a whole school involved.

During the day Moving Planet will be delivering a clear and strong set of demands:
- Science-based policies to get us back to 350ppm
- A rapid, just transition to zero carbon emissions
- A mobilization of funding for a fair transition to a 350ppm world
- Lifting the rights of people over the rights of polluters
More details on the demands here moving-planet.org/demands

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Look behind you!

25th August 2011 by

We like our cycle tour members to stay safe and sound on the road.  We would wrap them up in cotton wool and bubble wrap, but that’s probably not very sustainable and definitely would get a bit sweaty.  So instead, we make sure they’re seen and can see….behind them.  But mirrors are notoriously difficult – they’ve been known to snap and end up being more of a hazard, or they just won’t fit on the handlebars in a place that allows you to see behind you!  They’re certainly no replacement for safely being able to check behind you for traffic, but they help!

Here’s a little blog from TravellingTwo.com all about which bike mirror to choose for touring, and why you should get one anyway:

A rearview mirror is one of the best things you can do to improve your safety while bike touring.

Just like in a car, a rearview mirror lets you see at a glance what’s coming up behind you, and react accordingly if a car is going too quickly, or not giving enough space as it passes.

Which mirror should you choose? Our favourite is the Take A Look mirror, but no single mirror is perfect for everyone. Some prefer helmet-mounted mirrors, others like a mirror that goes on the bicycle and in each category there are many different designs.

Click here to go straight to their blog and read about all the options…

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Bikes! Art! What else do you need?

24th August 2011 by

Inspired by the amazing ARTCRANK event last week, I wanted to share a few of my favourite bike art projects of the moment:

The Good Bike Project - I just learned about this project and I love it so much. In defiance of a mayor who has publicly said that its cyclists’ own fault it they get hit by a car, some residents of Toronto, Canada, started a street art project by painting abandoned bikes around the city in bright neon colours . Even though the first bike got ticketed, new ones kept springing up around the city to the point where mayor has begrudgingly given his support to the project.

Bike are colour coded depending on their significance. For example, green bikes mark sites of urban planning significance , like bike lanes that are getting removed, orange bikes point to emerging local artists, and blue bikes celebrate community-building locations.

Contrail – A colourful street art projects that turns bike tyres into (non-toxic eco-friendly) paintbrushes. The idea is that by leaving behind colourful trails, cyclists will be able to “talk” to each other, make highly-used cycling routes visible, and help improve safety on guided bike rides with beginners. (I could see this being super useful to for leading teams to mark paths on Otesha tours. No more head-scratching, map-holding confusion on unmarked country roads!)

Rides a Bike – a blog dedicated to photos of old Hollywood stars on their bikes. I challenge you have a scroll through this site and not feel cheerful. It makes me happy just thinking about it. For example, have a gander at Patty Duke and Frank Sinatra Jr on a bike (a tandem no less!):

More modern celebrities are also featured on the site. Check out Pee-wee Herman on his shiny red steed:

Happy!

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Up in the air!

1st July 2011 by

Eluned is travelling to India to volunteer with Performers without Borders. After a month of train travelling and many months of journey planning, Eluned finds herself aboard a plane for the final leg of her journey.

On the plane
As we sit on the runway at Tashkent airport, I look around at the other passengers settling into their seats. Most of them look bored and non-plussed. When we eventually set off, I strain and wriggle in my seat, trying to get a look out of the window from where I´m sitting in the centre aisle. I´m puzzled to see that everyone else is reading magazines, staring at the seat in front of them, or plugging in their headphones and falling asleep.

No one seems to be in the least bit amazed about the fact that we will soon be forging our way through the atmosphere, travelling thousands of feet above the Earth. In fact, the only person who seems remotely as excited as me is the toddler bouncing up and down on their seat in front! The plane tips into the air and my head and stomach fly away momentarily before I rise up to meet them.

It seems a strange place for our society to have reached, and it strikes me as quite sad, where something really quite miraculous is – at least for the richest fraction of the world – taken as commonplace and boring. Part of my problem with this type of transport is that people do it without thinking twice, either about how amazing it is, or about the big impact it will have. Not only that, but people seem to have forgotten the fascination with not just the destination, but the journey. For me, the train ride from London to Tashkent itself was every bit as exciting and as memorable an experience as each country I stepped out into. It was kind of like meeting new friends in a cosy cinema to watch a live documentary of the world going by.

What’s the problem with flying?
Air travel can be uniquely harmful, because it releases gases directly into the upper atmosphere. It is one of the most significant ways a single person can contribute to climate change.

There are three gases emitted by aircraft which contribute to global warming: water vapour, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The combined effect of the gases on global warming can be 2-5 times as bad as carbon dioxide alone. Because they are released high into the atmosphere, they do far more damage than they would on the ground.

To put it in context, on a return trip from the UK to New Zealand you would add approximately 12 tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, more than the average British person emits in a whole year. If you flew from London to Paris your emissions would be 244kg of CO2 – to go by train would produce 91% less!

In other words, in a single plane trip you could contribute more to global warming than the total of all your other activities in a whole year. Even if you do all you can to reduce your “carbon footprint” (the amount of carbon emissions you produce) in other areas of your lifestyle, and are careful about the way you choose to eat, power and heat your home, consume and dispose of goods, making a flight can quite easily counteract all of it – just like that.

The big C.C.
It can be hard to make the idea of climate change real, to think how what I am/ you are doing every day, now, relates to the climate of the whole world. But what it means is very real, and can be really quite scary.

For me, there are several reasons why I wanted to try travel to India and back overland. Firstly, because by flying I would contribute way more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than I am comfortable with. I try to do what I can to live in a way which doesn´t harm other people or the world around us. For me, flying to India would undermine a lot of the work I would be doing once I got there. It is all the more pertinent because I am travelling to a developing country. Whilst the richest 7% of the global population (which includes the British) create 50% of global carbon emissions – as well as making the majority of flights – it is the developing world which will be the most vulnerable to climate change. It has been estimated by the UK Department of International Development that climate change will cancel the benefits of western aid and debt relief.
Over all, flying to India and back would produce approximately 5 tonnes of CO2, more than it takes to heat a  UK house for an entire year. The same trip taken directly by train would produce just over 1 tonne of CO2.

Because of bureaucratic obstacles, a tight timetable and safety concerns, sadly I chose to fly part of the way on the outward trip. I therefore estimate my carbon output (including a return journey, hopefully all overland but the long way round) to be 1.7 tonnes of CO2. The carbon saving I will make by traveling this way is therefore in the region of 3.3. tonnes (I would really like to make a comparison between this and other activities to make it more real and show how much it really is, so if anyone has any suggestions of where I can find something like this, please get in touch!!).

I also want to travel overland because – wow, what an experience! Already, I have taken in so much more of the landscape, and made so many more real connections with people than I would by sitting in an air conditioned container making jet trails over their heads. For me travel is not just about a single place to go to and come back from, but about the journey getting there. I want to make the most of the opportunity to discover more about the world, but to do it without causing too much damage. (Also, as I discovered during this flight, although I may love being above the clouds and appreciate the miracle of flying, the whole package of aviation, from the arduous check in, the tedium of sterile airports to the hours without a view for those without window seats can be distinctly boring).

Another Way is Possible
Finally, I wanted to attempt this trip overland because I genuinely believe that lower-carbon travel is a much better way forward than sitting comfortably and watching business as usual mess up things for myself and for people that I love and care about. I really hope that in doing it, maybe someone else´s eyes will be opened to the possibilities, and that a few more minds will become aware of how much difference a flight can make.

If it seems like things are unlikely to change, just consider that only 50 years ago, there were no commercial airlines. Things do change. Internet and global communications make planning overland travel a whole lot more straightforward. Within Europe, efficient train connections make overland travel a very viable option, whilst outside of Europe train cheaper train prices can make long journeys less pricey than you might think. Websites like www.seat61.com make planning a lot more easy, whilst a new system to be released soon on www.loco2.co.uk aims to facilitate train booking for journeys in Europe – and to find the cheapest routes. It would make me so happy to know that my trip and this blog had inspired someone to take on the adventure of riding overland, instead of flying.

Before making your next flight, think about its impact. Ask yourself, “hang on, do I have to take this flight? Or does it just seem more convenient? What about doing things differently?”. It is your choice, and there are alternatives – alternatives that can be really amazing! I hope that reading this blog might inspire you to stop and reconsider. Above all, I have to say, there´s nothing quite like a good long train ride =:0).

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The Cycle Challenge

26th May 2011 by

This month Transport for London are launching the 2011 Cycle Challenge. We’re challenging you to cycle your commute, persuade friends, family and workmates to join and get competitive about your mileage.

You can sign up as a team of friends, a school, workplace, family or even a team of total strangers. There are prizes (and fame I presume) for the teams who clock the most miles. All journeys made by bike between 9am 18 June – 11.59pm 15 July count (including work and leisure, in and out of London).

The Transport for London online calculator tells you how may calories you’ve burnt and how much carbon you’ve saved. You can also watch your progress on real-time leaderboards.

We’ve got a team, surprisingly named ‘Otesha Project‘. If your team beats us we’ll send you a prize (email jo@otesha.org.uk with your team name and we’ll race you up and down the score boards).

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