Background

I’ve not regularly cycled since I left London 4 years ago. There I would commute circa 10 miles a day on my cheapy Raleigh hybrid. Since moving to our current house I tried my new commute once on the aforementioned cheapy Raleigh and it was horrendous. The (big) hill home nearly killed me and I had to stop (collapse) 4 times; I had no intention of doing that journey unassisted again (though I fully admit that over time I probably would build up the strength to handle it OK).

I’d already tried an electric moped – an Elecscoot 1 bought for a bargain second hand – but it didn’t do the steep hills and just ground to a halt pretty quickly. To be fair it’s a tough test for it and if I lived in a city I’m sure it’d be great, but it’s just not cut out for big Welsh hills.

So, I knew I wanted an electric assist and because I’ve a requirement to take it on trains for commuting around London (see test 2) I opted for a Brompton because I’d heard good things about it and as a bonus it is British made.

The Kit

The bike is a Brompton M6R – the M (original style), 6 speed with a Rack – with a ‘factory fit’ conversion by The Electric Wheel company which adds a 25W front wheel motor, a custom twist grip accelerator, lots of (neat) extra wires, a modified front bag carrier and a modified C type (courier) bag which contains the (10Ah) battery.

Test 1: my daily commute

I live in a rural location in Wales on top of a big hill and it’s about 2 miles one-way with a rise (or drop) of ~ 800ft over one of those miles.
To work is easy, it’s mostly downhill. It does feel nice and stable which was initially a concern because I’m easily getting up to 25 MPH on the way down.

It comes into its own on the way home, though. On the flat the motor is only useful when going walking pace and as soon as you’re going a decent clip it makes no difference. Hit a hill however and a twist of the handle means you get an immediate boost. When the going gets really tough it makes the difference – for me at least – between stopping completely and keeping going, albeit with me working very hard.

Therein lies the beauty of the pedal assist in my opinion. I didn’t want a bike that could get me around without peddling. I *want* to pedal for the exercise etc, but it does take the edge off which on a long or hard journey is very welcome.
I’ve been doing the commute for 3 or 4 weeks now and at the end of the first week (combined with a London trip, below) I was feeling more tired than usual but no aches or sore bum.

Test 2: London

I’m helping a renewable energy company with a spin-off start-up of theirs in the metering and billing space. This means I need to be in London a couple of days a week – boo – and even though the tube system is great I like being independent when traveling around.
So, I drive to my local station which is 8 miles away. I’d cycle this too but it’s a single carriageway A road and I’m not comfortable being so close to cars and lorries doing 60+.
Folded up the bike is no bigger than a small suitcase and with the C bag rammed with stuff and my trusty Crumpler messenger bag I’m (just) able to carry everything I need for two evenings away (assuming I have access to an iron at the other end). It’s dead easy to fit the bike on the train in the usual luggage spaces and the two bags stow away up above no problems.

My first trip I was staying near Southgate which allowing for getting a bit lost (thank you Google maps and iPhone GPS) it took me just over an hour to do 9 miles. Mostly up hill (Highgate Hill anyone). I arrived a bit out of puff as I’d pushed it hard but I was certainly not a tired mess.

What is striking when using it in London is how on the lights – especially hill starts – I’m able to pull away faster than everyone, even cars and the hard-core bike courier types. This is really big confidence booster when at the head of a line of traffic you know motorists are urgent to dart in front of you; I’m able to get away safely before they do.
It’s worth pointing out here is that when I started using this bike I decided to do away with my usual lycra gear. It’s more to carry and it’s a big faff to get changed before each journey. So I’m cycling around London in smart-casual – shudder – business attire: smart shoes, smart shirt etc.

The next morning in said attire I did the 12 miles to SE1. I went *really* gently and did the journey in 1hr 15 arriving about as sweaty as if I’d run for the bus. It was a really nice way to start a day (though I’m not convinced I’d want to do it every day).

I think a bike like this is made for the city and it’s a real pleasure to use. The manufacturers recommend that you don’t use it as a ‘twist and go’ but it’s hard not to sometimes especially when at the lights (and yes I do stop).

Some observations after using it for a while

The build quality of both the bike and the after-market electrics is superb. It is all well-made and sturdy.

The folding of a Brompton is as easy as they say. I still fumble it a bit but it’s really no big deal.

The range is reported to be 60 miles. In my first week I did 3 home commutes and a trip to London which in total came to 41 miles though to be fair there was a lot of bill hill cycling and some cheeky twist and go when in London so I think that’s pretty good on one charge. I purposely didn’t charge the battery on the first week and on the last trip home I was still showing two out of the three power indicator lights on the twist grip. Unfortunately the battery gave out on me (luckily at the top of the hill!) on that last day when still showing 2 out of 3 lights. Checking the same set of lights on the battery it was down to one, so definitely low. I now charge the bike more regularly but it’s a bit of a shame that the twist grip indicators are a bit over confident.

I fancy that there is a slight bit of drag from the motor when peddling unassisted. Now this could just be in my head but when going uphill for a long stretch, starting to feel a bit lardy and that I really should be doing a bit more work, taking the assist off really does feel like I’m peddling against something other than just gravity. For the record it’s not noticeable on the flat or downhill.

Weight. It’s fine to carry for a short distance but I have struggled a few times when running between platforms to change trains. I’m going to invest in the ‘B bag’ that costs around a hundred quid. It has a shoulder strap and wheels on the bottom

Don’t expect blistering 0-60 performance the motor is only useful on hills or when stationary. Unless you’re really slow you’ll be peddling faster than the motor pretty quickly

Summary

This is an excellent bike that is perfect for my needs. It is easy to take on transport, the assist on hills is fantastic and it’s great to have an edge when at the lights. It’s a very good city commuting bike and fine on the country lanes. It’s a shame about the rather binary charge indicator and the weight is an issue if it needs to be carried any real distance, but this can be rectified with a proper bag for it.

Recommended.

I believe it was George Orwell that once said: “The best books are those that tell you what you know already” (or something along those lines).

Well I was certainly nodding along in agreement when I recently read the Post Carbon Institute’s latest blog post entitled Resilience: Personal Preperation where an essay of the same name by Chris Martenson (also author of the most excellent/terrifying* The Crash Course) is linked as a 13 page PDF.

I say this because in terms of concepts, nothing is new in there for me. My own family has been on a similar (if not with a bit more moving around the country) journey of discovery over the past 4 years and it seems that most if not all of the drivers for Chris’ downshift-come-reskill are identical to ours.

The timing of finding this essay is pretty good for us. After the roller coaster of the past 18 months we’ve spent the last few months here in our new homes settling and regrouping. One of things I think we’ve all felt is an urgent need to get on and dig/plant/build/mend/learn/meet/network but in equal measure we’ve also felt the need to chill and reassess.

Which why it’s heartening when reading Chris’ essay to be reminded of the  ’small steps’ approach as it’s hard sometimes to think over longer timescales especially if you’re urgent to get things done NOW (like I tend to be).

I’ll leave Chris to end, with the final paragraph from his essay:

Personal preparation is prudent, rational, liberating,and necessary. Remember the airplane emergency rule: Put on your oxygen mask first before assisting others. Start with small steps. Your community needs you.

* delete as applicable

Over the recent bank holiday weekend I was fortunate enough to attend the Dark Mountain Project‘s Uncivilisation festival in Llangollen, Wales.

I had a really great time and I met lots of interesting and friendly people who had all come together to discuss options for – as the website puts it – “a challenging and unpredictable future”.

The place was full of writers so there will undoubtedly be much more eloquent write-ups than I could muster; what follows are just my edited highlights.

The not-marketed-as-such-but-plainly-was keynote was Saturday at 3pm when George Monbiot was interviewed by Dougald Hine as a fireside chat. George reiterated his robust objections to the project’s aims though did thank it for starting a healthy dialogue. I enjoyed the talk which Dougald directed through some pointed and calculated questions though George did seem to be very much on the defensive which was a shame. He also did confirm that, yes, ‘we’ all were the weirdos relative to the mainstream UK population and warned us to not underestimate the global economy’s resilience even when under extreme pressure as it is currently.

Paul Kingsnorth – the other organiser and, as we figured out during the weekend, he and his wife were also fellow attendees at the Low Impact Smallholding course that I went to a year or so back – asserted very eloquently that western society had reached ‘peak comfort’ and that the sustainability/green/environmental movement which has now gone mainstream has been subverted to such an extent that its main focus is now on maintaining our current levels of energy availability and comfort, which is of course unsustainable.

Vinay Gupta gave a no holds barred pitch to us that our lifestyles are such that collapse would leave us ‘living the same as the people that grow our coffee’. He also informed us that we ‘live on a militarised island of prosperity’ gained through years of blatant theft and exploitation.

Alistair McIntosh gave a powerful and deeply moving talk on spirituality. As a card carrying atheist I normally run a mile from anything like this but it was compelling to say the least.

Mark Boyle also known as the moneyless man has been published in may places recently talking about his year or so living without money. He was pimping his new book which he was very keen to stress he would not be receiving a penny for, instead the money would go towards setting up moneyless communities. He was straight-up and clearly passionate about his cause and we had an engaging conversation with him.

Tom Hodgkinson of idler fame, in amongst a literary history lesson, talked (and sang) to us about how we’re taught to love the new and the shiny in order that we feed capitalism with its need for constant growth. He also talked about work-based positive psychology, to quote him from a recent article in the Ecologist:

Positive psychology is the idea that forced cheerfulness can actually make you happy. Happiness is good because happy people make productive and uncomplaining workers. Positive psychology is about being cheerful, outgoing and cooperative in the office. It is not about negative acts such as joining a union or protesting about pay and conditions and exploitation. It is also about loading a gigantic burden onto the shoulders of the individual: be positive, be happy, be successful. Any failure is your fault.

Overall I think his was my favorite talk, I’ll certainly pay more interest to the idler publication in future which comes out each year.

Andy Hamilton author of The Selfsufficientish Bible and founder of SelfSufficientish.com took some of us on an interesting tour of the pavillion area for a some wild food foraging. I learned that daisies are edible so would be a great addition to a salad sprinkled on top, nettles with white flowers are ‘dead nettles’ so don’t sting but can be used for all same uses (wine, cordage, tea) as normal ones. Apparently dock leaves boiled up twice (once for 15 mins to get rid of the toxins) can be used like vine leaves and clover toasted can be used like seaweed in chinese cooking.

Deek Jackson of the FKN News (follow the link and see him stood behind Gordon Brown at the recent general election) gave us a talk about his newly formed political party The Landless Peasants. Deek’s presentation style was rather forthright and he explained to us how we were all economic units crammed into our Gerbil cages (houses) going to work (on the wheel) and having our cages emptied (the binmen). I really enjoyed the talk as his style was rather refreshing however, I still have one issue with his party. As a concept – buying up land for the use of its members – I think it’s cracking however mixing that with politics isn’t for me.

There were other interesting talks. For instance I sat in a small circle discussing practical vs. creative chaired by Viv (who it turns out designed Ben Law’s house) and I was really annoyed to miss Vinay’s discussion on Collapsonomics not mention the countless other breakout sessions or main-hall presentations that I missed because I was chatting with another complete stranger out on the grass.

Oh, not to forget the music! I forget most of the band names but there was the excellent Powerdown gig on Friday by Marmaduke Dando and BBC2′s Folk Singers of the Year 2010 Jon Boyden on the Saturday proved himself to me multi-talented on the guitar, fiddle and accordion as well as being an amazing singer (and evidently songwriter).

Luke Concannon (famous for the JCB Song) did an amazing set on the Friday night. He was practically shaking with enthusiasm almost like an excited little kid and for his first number he was running through the aisles barefoot and serenading some of  us individually. The highlight for me was him inviting his friend, the author Alistair McIntosh, up on stage for an incredibly powerful rendition of a poem they had only performed a few times; it made the hairs stand up on the back on my neck. (London Permaculture snapped a good picture of it here). Luke is so hugely talented and I really look forward to him releasing more material.

It was a really great event that I’m so glad I attended. When I got home Cathie asked me what I’d taken away from it and without a pause I said “we are not alone”.

Thanks to Paul and Dougald for organising it, I look forward to next year.

Related links

The Importance of Being Earnest (a Morning Star review of the Monbiot talk)

London Permaculture’s Flickr stream

I’ve been watching with a great deal of interest the build-up to the upcoming Dark Mountain Project festival Uncivilisation in Llangollen over the May bank holiday weekend.

When I first read it their project’s description it really made me sit up as I’ve not seen such a level of pragmatism, or do I mean realism, voiced in such a clear and focussed way about the subjects that have been troubling me for some time now. For example I’ve been particularly uneasy about this blog’s title and the implications of it. I’ve come to the conclusion that Self Sufficiency in itself is a myth and whilst I’ll continue to learn how to grow food, rear animals and build or mend things it’s still about a million miles away from some idealistic ideal of being able to provide for all of one’s own needs.

I found their manifesto to be particularly interesting although I’ll admit that it totally loses me in the third section when the power of writing and art is invoked. I’ve read about the power of stories in this context previously and I don’t really get it, but then I’m not an artist, writer or, musician.

I’m still not sure whether I can make it to the main event yet due to a huge clash on the same weekend. To make matters worse the week leading up to it I’m on my own at the office which is when the Dark Mountain Camp is planned to be on which sounds much more up my street with its practical focus. If the planets align and I can arrange for things to be relatively quiet at the office then the plan is to just shut up shop and head up the road with some tools and firewood to see what’s occurring.

Regardless, it’s extremely heartening to see a well organised and focussed group of people discussing things in a realistic manner rather than either denying there’s a problem, or alternatively, only talking about the future with an almost religious positivity.

Since deciding to leave our current home we’ve been under some pressure to find somewhere to live that is affordable, has land, possibly space for our neighbours (so we can share the load and not feel so isolated) and ideally a woodland nearby.

We’ve looked at a lot of properties, 100s online and then a fair bit of driving around Wales to physically view some which given our current location of Cornwall has meant some major miles. We’ve even got as far as nearly buying somewhere, spending money on surveys and lawyers but pulling out of the bidding – formal tender – process at the last minute.

Recently through a set of rather ‘small world’ interlinked happenings we found out about a community near Lanidloes, one of our target towns, called Old Chapel Farm. Initially we were dismissive as we didn’t want to live in another community but after speaking with someone who had been there it sounded right up our street as they were simply looking to rent out a holding around a mile away from the main site with 6 acres space for two families.

I went up to see it this week and was really taken with it all. Infrastructure-wise the main site is well established but in terms of a community it is early days. They have lots of plans and it’s clear the energy is there to implement them. Currently there are only a couple of full-time residents other than the family that owns the farm but they also have a constant stream of WWOOFers; they had 100 last year apparently.

The place we’ll be living is a mile or so  away over mainly flat ground and is actually the house they first lived in before buying the bigger place. We’ll be left to our own devices with no pressure, other than self-inflicted, to get the land yielding. We will also be welcome to help out wherever we want such as the infrastructure jobs like helping to manage their brand new 20 acre woodland recently purchased off a neighbouring farmer.

The smallholding itself has the following features:

• Very rustic oak beamed house that is apparently the oldest house in the local area. it has a super-modern wood pellet boiler, a Rabyurn for cooking and a wood burner in the lounge.
• Large converted barn, currently open-plan
• Standard barn
• Workshop with two benches
• Large duck pond
• Half size polytunnel
• Loads of established growing beds
• A willow coppice
• Lots of small fields, one a hay meadow, another fox proofed and containing chicken houses

We’ve agreed in principle to move in March/April so now have the task of once again getting school places, packing and moving (both home and business).

We’re very excited especially as we feel we’ll be getting the best of both worlds with some aspects of community life still available to us but also having some distance and being left to our devices.

We had a huge disappointment over the weekend.

32 acres of woodland came up in Pembrokeshire on Thursday afternoon. Friday 8:30am straight after the kids were on the school bus we drove up there (after calling the agent to check it was still on) by 2:30pm I was stomping around it thinking where I could put a green woodworking shelter (like this one on the cover of Mike’s excellent book), was noting where drainage and access needed improving and thinking where we could put some ponds. It was all very exciting.

Like a fool I decided to sleep on it which was a mistake because the next morning when I called to put an offer in I found it had been taken at 4pm the previous day!

We drove home crestfallen with a feeling that we’d never get the wood of our dreams. However after a night’s sleep we felt better and decided that we simply needed to get more agressive in our search.

Enter stage left woodlandwanted.co.uk. We figure that the majority of woods swap hands via specialist (offline) agents or by word of mouth so we’re launching this in the hope that we can get locals to keep an eye out and let us know when something comes up.

Hopefully Google will index it nice and quickly. If you have a blog and feel so inclined then a link to Woodland Wanted would be appreciated to help us get some of that Google love.

In March we’re also going to put adverts in some local papers like we did last year in Herefordshire.

KBO, etc.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia.

Hello and Happy New Year.

Firstly an apology is due. We have been rather quiet of late mostly because we’ve been doing rather than thinking which has made a refreshing change but as I sit here with the kids gaffer taped up in the corner after a 4th day off school because of the light snow dusting (there’s a whole post on the UK’s lack of resilience going begging there, but I don’t have the motivation) and with nothing else better to do, I felt it high time to put together an update.

I’ll come straight out with it: we’ve decided to leave this little intentional community.

Why?

Well, there’s a long answer to that question and we’re not sure it’s appropriate to be airing everything publicly as it would be other people lives that we’d be commenting on. However saying nothing is probably worse.

The biggest reason is that when we moved here we were wanting to live in a tight-knit community but not a community, the differences are subtle but have stared to add up. We like the economies of scale with shared resources, neighbours that look out for each other (as they do here) and a coming together for community work days and the odd communal meal is really (really) nice. However for a community such as this to thrive the communal side of things is designed for a reason to be more integrated and now that we’ve had experience of it we’ve realised that it’s totally not right for us.

The – mostly self-inflicted – pressure to get involved with the community means that we’re damned either way: on the one hand there can be a feeling of ‘having’ to do something where at that moment it might not feel appropriate and on the other hand guilt for not getting involved and spending ‘selfish’ time doing our own thing. Sure,as with most things there’s a balance to be had but whilst we can see that deeper community sharing is essential to long term survival of a community such as this, we feel sure that we’re not right to be a part of it.

Reading that back we sound like intensely private billy-no-mates lazy fecktards which is definitely not the case, but I can’t see how else to put it so it stays.

Another reason is our reliance on car travel. We’re 9 miles from the nearest town and whilst there’s an excellent shop 1/4 a mile away we still do need to head out relatively regularly. Ok there’s a (infrequent) bus and people do share car trips into town and yes there’s a library bus but even so we’re using the car far more than we expected and I really want to live somewhere that I can walk and cycle around.

That’s all I feel comfortable saying. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with this place, it’s just that we don’t feel we’re right for it. There are no large headline reasons, it is lots of small ones.

So, what next?

We’re falling back to plan B which is to get our own smallholding (here we go again). We had previously spent months (years!) looking at them so that market knowledge coupled with what we’ve learned during our extended stay here means that we’ve got a pretty good idea of what we want/need.

Our dream property would include:

• a 3 bed, 2 reception, well insulated house with wood fuelled cooking/heating that doesn’t need a jot of work doing to it
• 1-2 acres of good south facing agricultural land that is well fenced and drained
• an orchard
• 4+ acres of broad leaf woodland
• a natural water supply, ideally with a decent height differential for possible micro-hydro
• a workshop
• a poly-tunnel
• a barn
• being within a (relatively flat) 2 mile radius of a small market town that has a train station and an active Transition group
• being cheap enough that we can afford it without a mortgage

Ok, so back in the real world where we’re not millionaires we’re going to have to compromise. In our favour is that we are lucky enough that we can probably just about afford a tiny stone cottage in Wales without the land and occasionaly one can even get the land and buildings if you’re willing to roll your sleeves up, which we are.

I really want that woodland both for fuel resilience and it’s a place I could possibly work in the longer-term. One idea that might allow us to get one without a mortgage is to transfer our meagre pension funds  into – and things start getting hazy now – a self invested pension (SIPP) that owns the wood as an investment and then rents it back to us. The benefit of this approach is that – apparently – the pension can even borrow against itself up to 50% of its original captial. As I say whilst we know it’s technically possible, there are likely to be lots of caveats and a lot of hassle putting something like this together and that’s before we even find the perfect – with whatever compromises based on our budget – house with the perfect wood nearby.

Anyway, it is heartening to know that our aspirations are not totally off the radar.

In terms of location we’ve been looking at Llandeilo and Machynlleth (up where CAT is based) as they tick most of our boxes, most importantly they both have good rail links though places like Lampeter seem to be the best value for money (no rail, though).

It is sure to be an interesting year. We both really hope we can make this our last move as we’re desperate to settle now after approaching 4 years of roving around. If nothing else we have to think of the kids.

I just got back from the first of my Renewable Energy MSc modules at The Centre for Alternative Technology and I’m feeling pretty blown away but utterly inspired in equal measure.

7 days straight studying, eating, sleeping and drinking with 79 really smart people that have a wide range of backgrounds covering a broad age spread. One thing is common, though. They all totally get the issues and challenges that we face surrounding fossil fuel usage and climate change and are there to find out more about the main (energy replacement) options open to us.

The facilities at CAT were excellent as was the quality of the lecturing with most of the topics being introductions to the various renewable energy technologies and their respective social and political contexts.

It was a pretty tough regime and this was just the intro module! I now have 2000 word essay and presentation to prepare before my next visit in 4 weeks. I think I’ve got a good essay subject it just needs some research to see if it’s got legs.

Thanks to Casey Cole for recommending me to the course, attending this week has certainly felt like a life changing event.

Info on the REBE MSc

I got one of my Raleigh Grifter’s ‘Supergrips’ made into a belt. Isn’t it great?

On our recent Permaculture course I could see that Ruth was wearing a belt made from an old bike tyre and I thought that was pretty cool. So when I got back I googled and found TyreBelt.

I had an emailed conversation with Duncan the guy that runs it to see if the tyre from my old 1983 Grifter was going to be suitable. There were some concerns about the rubber being cracked as it was so old but he was happy for me to send it up to him on the basis that he’d give me a refund and send me my rare old tyre back should it turn out to be not suitable.

Evidently there was nothing to be worried about as it’s turned out brilliant.

Kudos to Duncan for his excellent service. What a great way to turn an old tyre into something useful.

http://tyrebelt.co.uk

Mike Ellis wrote a blog post yesterday entitled Too Cheap which relates to western society’s mass consumption orgy that is largely driven by goods being produced at a cost that is much lower than their real cost, in terms both of exploitation of the human resources as well as earth’s diminishing resources.

It’s a view that we plainly agree with here so I felt compelled to comment upon the post.

Part of my comment has grown upon me so I decided to reproduce it, slightly edited for grammar, here:

The Elephant in the room is there. Look it in the eye. It’s going nowhere and the longer it’s left there alone the pile of shit it’s leaving is getting bigger.

Wake up people.