A few updates...

I know it's all been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently - I've been a bit lacking in time as work's been very busy, and I've been trying to juggle a lot of stuff outside that.

However, many things have happened/are happening...

• I'm in the middle of moving my money from Natwest to The Cooperative. So far, so good.
• I got very excited about a table. My friends gave it to me when they moved out of their house, and it's in the kitchen of my new house. To look at, it's nothing exciting. However, the exciting thing is that the table is designed to be taken apart and put back together - the legs are held on with bolts and butterfly nuts, meaning it can be moved between places, instead of battling with the Ikea style furniture that doesn't like being taken apart and reassembled. 
• I'm reading two awesome books - "Waste" by Tristram Stuart, which is all about waste food, and "Cradle to Cradle", which is about rethinking the way we view things and sustainable product design. Both are awesome.
• I went on a bike maintenance course last weekend at the Bristol Bike Project, which was a birthday present from my sister. My bike needed a bit of work, and I was keen to learn how to fix some basic things myself instead of just taking it to a bike project. The course was great, and a great insight into the wider project as a whole (hopefully more on that soon...). If you're looking for a bike maintenance course, I highly recommend it, as it helps support a lot of their other awesome work.
• I've made some progress with booking my holiday in Spain. I'm travelling to Barcelona with 4 friends, and we're hiring a car (just as sustainable as getting the train if you have a full car!) and getting the ferry from Portsmouth to Le Havre, then stopping off at a few places in France along the way (including a WWOOFing site of a friend of a friend I believe). Then after the festival we're helping out at, I'm staying on in Barcelona for 3 days, before getting the train across to Bilbao for 3 days. Someone has already offered me a couchsurfing spot in Bilbao, but I'm on the hunt for somewhere to stay in Barcelona still. I've also booked my tickets back - the sleeper train from Hendaye to Paris, the Eurostar across to London and then the coach back to Bristol. All in all, I'm pretty darn excited, both about the holiday, and doing it in a different way. The idea of getting the train back is especially exciting as I love trains, and I'm really looking forward to couch surfing and meeting some people while I'm there...
• I found an awesome butchers - Sheepdrove Farm up in Redland - they have amazing welfare and environmental standards. They also have really minimal packaging, including wrapping the items in waxed paper that can be recycled

Holiday planning

It's been a while since I've had a proper holiday. At my old job, I was on a pretty tight budget and this didn't really stretch to exciting holidays abroad. So for the last couple of years, I've stuck to UK based adventures (and some fun adventures I have had). But now I have a better paid job and a bit more job security, the desire to adventure a bit further has been reawakened.

And so, the question of how to do this sustainably has come up.

The destination of my trip was pretty much picked for me, as a couple of friends and I were asked to run some activities at a small event in Spain, near Barcelona. So Spain was selected as the destination for my journey.

How to get there was an obvious question. I made the decision a few years ago not to fly if I can get there feasibly by another method. And this seemed like a good test for that idea. Thank God for Seat61, which is an awesome resource for anyone trying to get anywhere in Europe by train.

The current plan is to road trip it down to Barcelona with some friends, as there'll be 5 of us, and this is actually more environmentally friendly than us all getting the train. It also means we can make a couple of stop offs on the way to see some friends of one of the people on the trip, including a WWOOFing site. We're hoping to leave on the Tuesday, arrive in Barcelona on the Friday then go to the festival until Sunday. The other guys are leaving then to come straight back, but I'm going to hang around for another week or so. The current plan is to spend a couple of days in Barcelona, probably couchsurfing, then head over to Bilbao and the Basque country for a few days, before getting the sleeper train back to Paris, and then the Eurostar to London (then the train to Bristol). I'm pretty excited about the train part of the journey, as I love trains and it seems like the most sustainable way to travel.

I'm excited by the idea of Couchsurfing too, as I've never done it before, and it seems like a good way to see a place properly, especially given that I'll be travelling on my own, as well as an opportunity to meet some interesting people along the way.

Better get booking that train ticket now...

Weekly update #2

Yes, the weekly update is back. A bit quiet this week, but still there.

- Money moving - I've been meaning to move my bank account to a more ethical bank for years (I've always been with Natwest), but still haven't done it. Occupy Bristol encouraged people to do it at the end of last year, and their campaign has now spread into Move Your Money month, which will take place in March. And so that's when I'm going to move my money. I need to do some more research to decide where I'm moving to, but at least I have a time frame now...

- Useful tool - This tool lets you look at your journey and work out whether it's better to go by train, car or coach. It surprised me that the coach was better than the train, as is a car with 5 passengers. I'm going to do a bit more research into the figures they use though.

- The car saga continues - Turns out my car isn't dead. So car sharing is off the agenda immediately, but I'm going to look into it again once I've moved house (since I'll be sorting things like insurance changes there anyway). What the whole thing has made me do is loosen my emotional attachment to my car - a few months ago I would have been very precious about anyone else driving it, and now it seems like a fairly easy step. I've also ridden my bike a lot more over the last couple of weeks when I didn't have access to my car, even doing a couple of journeys by bike that I would have previously driven. So I'm definitely going to try and consider cycling journeys like those rather than driving in the future...

- Milk follows chicken - A few years ago, my friend Em took me to an organic dairy to learn how to milk cows (it's a long story). The whole experience really stuck with me - the cows were so happy and well looked after that it made a real impression on me, and one that contradicts a lot of evidence I've seen about a lot of large scale dairy farming. Added to that, research has now shown it's better for you. I've recently discovered that a local corner shop sells organic milk, so I now have no excuse for not buying it. So only buying organic milk follows the free-range chicken commitment.

- Supermarketless life - I'm still managing ok (apart from the issue with feeding 30 people at the weekend). I've hit my first couple of problematic areas though, and one really surprised me - wine. Turns out most of the wine I buy comes from the supermarket - in fact, my favourite red wine is a Tesco Finest wine. There's so few decent off licenses around that I've been buying fairly average wine from my corner shop. I think this might call for some further investigating...

- Boxes of vegetables - I've ordered my first veg box, and it's arriving on Thursday. Exciting times!

Weekly update #1

I've decided to start doing weekly updates on my progress. I'm going to keep writing longer blog posts on specific things that I come across and research, but this seems like a good way of updating on the little things.


- Interesting discover - I found this seasonal food chart - It makes me realise how pretty much everything I eat is out of season. Something to aspire to...

- This week I have been mostly reading - Hungry City by Carolyn Steel - a book about how food and cities have developed, and the integral relationship between the two, including a lot of fascinating history. I'm only halfway through, but highly recommended so far.

- Behaviour change - Following reading the start of Not On The Label by Felicity Lawrence, and watching the first half of Food, Inc, I'm properly committing to no longer eating chicken that isn't free range (and preferably organic). I pretty much do this anyway, but I want to make this a concrete decision.

- Topical question of the week - Is it rude to ask the origins of meat in a restaurant? If I'm going to commit to only buying, for example, free range chicken at home (see above), surely I should apply the same standards to food I eat out. In which case, is it ok to enquire when I'm at a restaurant?


- Supermarketless life update - So far so good. It's definitely involving more planning and creativity already though - I never used to think much in advance about what I was eating, opting to let the supermarket provide me with whatever I happened to fancy. Now I find I have to think more in advance about what I'm going to eat that week and make sure I have anything I can't get after work at the weekend.

- Disclaimer to the above - there has been a slight concession to the supermarket boycott. I'm going away this weekend with 30 friends, and it's self catering. We're already tight on car space, and are staying quite a way from the nearest town (which isn't massive) - an online supermarket shop is the only way we could get enough food in given the time and money constraints. Not ideal, but I feel it's a valid exception and will definitely not be a regular occurrence!

- Positive purchase - I bought an album this week, as a digital download straight from the independent record label. And best of all, it actually cost less than it would have done from on Amazon mp3 (which is where I would have previously got it from).

- Wasn't on the agenda - My car may have died. I'm currently awaiting a second opinion, but it's definitely bringing the question of car sharing further up the agenda. I put a plea out on facebook and the freeconomy website for people interested in car shares, and have a bunch of possible people to follow it up with.