This year I had arranged to do a five day cob course at Lammas Eco Village in deepest West Wales, followed by a one day basket-making day. In between I planned to visit The Centre For Alternative technology, further North, which I last visited two years in a row when the University Green Society used to visit and do voluntary work - a few years back now!
This was to be a real busman's holiday.
Initial online impressions of the EcoVillage were mixed. Information on the web made some of the community seem a bit hippy trippy. I don't mind alternative trains of thought, I am hardly traditional myself. But I do think that such establishments set themselves up as an example of sustainable living. They are a little like high fashion, not particularly for everyone, but a high end example on which more regular folk can hang their ideas.
The village certainly seems to contain some pretty amazing self-builds, though one straw bale house did tragically suffer a serious fire not so long ago.
Originally Sue and I planned to camp in the village and use the community hub for our cooking etc. In the end I decided to book a little cottage just down the road - we are a little old for roughing it now.
Initial impressions are important, so I was a little hesitant when my first email 'disappeared'. But not all types are as technological as others - though funny how the same people manage to have Facebook pages, twitter accounts and websites.
Anyway, I went ahead and booked everything up.
Fast forward a few months and last week, just a few days before the actual course, we received a long email with further information. The 'provided lunch' had turned into 'an informal rota for preparing lunches' and the hub kitchen which 'has everything you will need' now has no electricity or hot water and 'bring your own plate, cup, bowl and cutlery' to avoid issues with washing up'. There would be thirteen of us (seems like a lot to share a bucket cold shower, a compost toilet and a couple of gas rings for cooking and heating water for washing up).
All of a sudden alarm bells were ringing. The eco-community seemed to be suffering a crisis of eco and a crisis of community. Sure, we have had a drought and growing has been difficult, but an exemplar eco village should not have energy systems which crumble due to just one adverse weather condition. We have, after all, had sunshine by the bucketload and wind energy should come fairly easily in Wales.
There was also a special note about privacy - 'many of the people here are very private...'. Now obviously we don't intend to go traipsing through everybody's houses and gardens or to gawp over the fences at them like zoo animals, but this community is suddenly starting to seem a bit fragile.
Smallholders can be a pretty antisocial bunch. By nature we are independent, determined (aka stubborn) and happy with our own company. But most of us don't choose to live in a specific eco-community.
And so the big day came. We said goodbye to the dogs - the first time we have both been away from them since we got them. We loaded up the car. Being dedicated smallholders, we did a last minute veg plot and freezer raid and loaded the car up with provisions.
The drive was a fairly long one and traffic was slow on the Midlands motorways as we passed through some protracted bad weather. Eventually though we were winding along some very small country lanes, up and down hills and valleys, a novelty for fenlanders, and we pulled up at our self-catering studio cottage. It was delightful and very well appointed. We quickly set about making the place feel like home.
ed - lots of post-production edits at the moment as I am now back from what turned out to be a truly inspiring and re-invigorating holiday. First impressions were wrong.
All will be revealed in the next post.
