I have been back to Wales a few times since my last entry on this page - most recently for a couple of weeks tree planting on a friend's land. Because I had no mobile reception I missed out on an invitation to go to a meeting of Lammas, a low impact settlement project in South West Wales. It looks like an exciting and ambitious project and I wish them the best of luck. You never know, if I can drag myself away from London I might get involved:-)
I have been busy with other stuff and not made any notes here for a while. I was involved in a project to set up a housing co-op called Draig Enfys and we were planning to purchase a 10 Acre smallholding in Pembrokeshire. In the end I pulled out for a number of reasons.
Currently I am putting all my time into the G8 Bike Ride and I will be setting off to cycle to Scotland in 3 days! On the way we will be staying at a number of housing co-ops and I will be staying in Scotland till 2005-07-10.
While I am away the General Assembly of members of GEN-Europe 2005 will be taking place at Galafarm in Hungary starting on 2005-07-02, the same day as the much hyped Make Poverty History event in Edinburgh.
There will be a GEN Europe session at ESF 2004.
Last weekend I visited Tinker's Bubble for the first time and ended up spending a couple of days there. I left on Monday, and on Tuesday it was mentioned in Guardian special report titled An answer in Somerset by George Monbiot.
In the summer of 1999 while visiting my friend Ana in the Basque Country we took train to Leon and hiked up to an ecovillage in the mountains called Matavenero. The community had been going for some 10 years and there were about 100 residents including quite a few "native" children. We stayed for nearly week and I had a great time, relaxing, going for walks, helping to chop wood or cook etc and sleeping in a tipi, a yurt and a lovely wooden house. They grew most of their own food (all organic of course) and had a flock of goats, chickens etc - I have never eaten so well! The absence of roads, cars, television etc was wonderful.
Since that trip I have been thinking a lot about ecovillages and I hope to get time to add some more content to this page. For now I leave you with a definition taken from the website of the Global Ecovillage Network:
Ecovillages are urban or rural communities of people, who strive to integrate a supportive social environment with a low-impact way of life. To achieve this, they integrate various aspects of ecological design, permaculture, ecological building, green production, alternative energy, community building practices, and much more.
www.zenatode.org.uk Ian Gregory 2010