Human Lifestyle

Well, the train journey yesterday went very smoothly... I cycled down to the station with everything I needed, and bought tickets for my son and me from Birmingham to Leamington Spa. Gill came down on the 4pm bus with the boys and got to the station just in time, with only just over a minute to spare... I quickly loaded my bike on and we waved goodbye and the doors closed!

The journey was very easy, and made more enjoyable by meeting a pair of American tourists, one, Colleen, was a keen photographer (and works as a portrait photographer) and I was able to warn her about the spire at Chesterfield which she got some pictures of, from the moving train. The change at Birmingham New Street was easy too, and we arrived in Leamington at 8pm, and were met by Ulrich and his two sons. We cycled back to their place; I gave my lad a lift on the crossbar which he tolerated. When we got back, there was Katarina with their new baby to greet us, and they'd done some tea for us, an interesting German meal of thinly sliced potato baked with a white sauce followed by blueberries and ice cream.

My son was very very pleased to see his friend whom he met in York before the family moved to be nearer Ulrich's workplace, Ryton Organic Gardens just a few miles North of Leamington.

A fairly non-eventful evening... I used Ulrich's tiny and ancient laptop to do my emails on Tiscali Webmail, and Facebook, but the machine wouldn't let me onto my blog.

SO, TUESDAY... Ulrich cycled off to Ryton at 8.30 and I had breakfast and got myself ready to cycle after him. I had contacted my friend Pippa and had arranged to meet her there at 11am, and Ulrich would have his mid-morning break then too, and give us a guided tour!

So I set off at about 10am up the A445 and was soon at Ryton Organic Gardens, and I showed my membership and therefore got in free, and had time to look round The Vegetable Kingdom which is an excellent exhibition with really huge models of vegetables and some good interactive stuff too, lots of good info.

11am came, Pippa arrived and Ulrich met us and introduced us to his colleague Francis, who is a researcher on soil fertility. After a cuppa, a guided tour with Ulrich and Frances, including a look into a couple of polytunnels where there were trials of rock-dust on tomatoes, to see if it increased production or improved taste. I was impressed with the size of the courgette plants too, they were enormous! We saw the trials field, and Francis' dustbin-sized anaerobic digester experiment, and the reedbeds which clean up the toilet water...

But then the two hosts had to get back to work, and after Pippa bought a birthday card for my sons (she never forgets!) she had to get off too. I decided to have lunch at Garden Organic as it was already past 1pm and I imagined that I wouldn't be in Leicester for at least a couple of hours, looking at the distance on the map. So I had a veg lasagne and a baguette.

After lunch which I finished at 2.30, I cycled off up the Fosse Way to Leicester, going through Bretford, over the Oxford Canal and under the West Coast Main Line and then over the M6 motorway. I was impressed by the number and size of mushrooms I saw on the verges. Some were the size of dinner plates, all ordinary field mushrooms, but all mature and therefore full of insect larvae. At the A5 I turned more Eastwards through Claybrooke Magna, Broughton Astley and Countesthorpe, Wigston and Oadby, which is near where I used to live. I cycled along roads I used to walk to school to, and up Knighton Church Road which is where I lived from 1975 to 1984. I visited my old best friend's mum, Yvonne, and another friend's parents, Irene and Don. I called at the house I used to live in, but there was no-one in... a pity as I'd have loved to see the garden. The trees in the front garden my parents planted are doing well, a Rowan and a Ginkgo. Amazingly, the bell-push on the front door still has our family name in the little plastic box under it! My folks left here a long time ago, and I would have thought that the new owners would want their name in this box! I cycled away, through Leicester and a rainstorm, past the first house we lived in there, and via a circuitous route to Scraptoft Lane where we had our second house, and from Scraptoft I went via Beeby, South Croxton, Barsby, Great Dalby and on to Melton Mowbray, arriving at 8pm. I asked a local chap if there was anywhere in Melton where I could get Bed and Breakfast, and he suggested the Noel's Arms.

I had a quick look at the room and it seemed OK to me, so I paid Jackie the Publican and dumped my stuff which I took off my bike and went to find somewhere nice to eat. I was recommended to go to Mamma Mia's and I had a delicious 3 course meal for £20, including the best Tiramasu I've ever had! Nice chats to the staff too.

I had a pint back at the pub, and went upstairs to plan my route for the following day. However I saw the weather forecast and as it was due to rain heavily and be squally and windy, I decided to get the train from Grantham up to York.

So I went to sleep in Noel's Arms, my first and probably only time.... !

I took our youngest to school (no cycle helmet hassles this morning!) and then cycled on to Fulford to deliver a confirmation letter to my agent, and on to town to pay a bill, get a cheque for rejoining Garden Organic, get some money for the TV licence, get a key cut for our eldest's school locker, and pick up compostable orange-halves and coffee grounds from Dylan at Millers Yard. Then onto St Nicks who were happy with a layer of oranges on their compost system, picked up the last of the sticks left over from the shredding weeks ago, and home....

A quiet afternoon, doing some kitchen stuff as Gill is taking it easy as she's still feeling rough after her tooth extraction.

I picked up our youngest, and much later on I did a blog post on Community Care for Blog Action Day, on a couple of local schemes which may help alleviate poverty.

Not a bad day... spent some of it in the garden... had meant to go to the lottie but the garden beckoned and I did more clearing up and some hedge removal, shredding etc.

After lunch went with boys to Heslington to first see Melody and Simon for an hour. Gill arrived with the Bakewell Tart she's just made and we then went to visit our German friends who are moving to Leamington Spa in a few days. Our boys are friends with theirs, and Katrina and Ulrich are both 'Green', he works for HDRA/Garden Organic and she's a researcher currently looking at invasive plants. Several other people came to the afternoon's soiree, it was very jolly.

Left at about 6pm and zoomed home to light the stove and do a bit of tea for the boyos.

A quiet evening, good film 'The Queen' which was good, then a film/documentary about Greenpeace on C4+1.

An early start, went for a walk before breakfast and found a lovely orchard with rows of unpicked apple trees. Nearby found loads of mistletoe in, I think, willow or poplar. My first close-up viewing of Mistletoe.

A good breakfast and was picked up at 9am by Catherine, and we drove towards Stourport to take part in the Master Composter Seminar organised by Garden Organic. It was held at the Bishops Wood Environment Centre, a lovely building demonstrating sustainable construction methods and materials, sited within an extensive patch of land which we had a short tour of at lunchtime.

The Master Composter model started in America, I recently found out, and was first demonstrated by Cambridgeshire County Council working with the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA), now rebranded as 'Garden Organic'. The basic idea is to train up a load of volunteers in the art of home composting and let them loose in their community, to promote home composting as a great way to reduce waste and create fertility in the garden.

I read about this project in the HDRA magazine and immediately thought, what a brilliant idea, and took the concept to St Nicholas Fields Environment Centre, and York Rotters was born. Our project got DEFRA funding for a year of employing a part-time worker, and then we got funding from City of York Council, and we're on the second year of that, and our second worker, Catherine.

So today's 10am til 4.30pm 'do' was to review the current situation of UK Master Composter Schemes, to provide new schemes with information and encouragement, to explore 'tools' to widen their impact and to find ways to measure that impact. There were over 30 people present, representing X Master Composter schemes.

The first presentation was a short one from WRAP chap Carl Nichols. WRAP is in it's 4th year of supporting Master Composter schemes, which are nearly all run by local councils, or are in partnership with them.

I only discovered it was 'blog action day' today several days later....

But I did do some practical sustainability action, I went to town and got my compostables from Out Of This World and piled them onto one of my heaps before being picked up by Catherine from York Rotters in her car, and we set off for Worcester, to attend a 'Garden Organic' event the following day, the Master Composter Seminar, which was being held at Bishops Wood Environment Centre near Stourport on Severn.

Catherine stayed with her Aunt and I stayed at Chirkenhill Farm at Leigh Sinton. What a lovely place, near Malvern. Had a pleasent evening, visited the Royal Oak in the village and had a Chinese take away... my second take away this year!