Saturday 25th April 09 Kirkbymoorside Transition Town Springboarding Day

Not too speedy a start as didn't need to be at the station until 11.15, but I dropped in to City Screen with some spare Age of Stupid leaflets, as a group are meeting at lunchtime to give out leaflets. I waited at the station for 10 minutes before Bryony turned up, got her Student Railcard and bought both our tickets to Malton, and got the 11.38, bikes in tow. I had left my trailer locked up at the station, as I needed it later after the trip to Kirkbymoorside.

Reached Malton at midday and cycled up out of the town to the West to Amotherby, and then North to Kirkbymoorside. We did have a short break at Normanby, just to rest our 'fizzy legs' and reached Kirkby at 1.15. 13 miles in an hour and 10 minutes... just about my average of 10mph!

The Springboarding, or launch of their Transition Town project was taking place in the Memorial Hall... with stalls on the ground floor and more upstairs, plus various talks and a couple of singing groups performing, and then in the basement, the 'dugout', there were more talks. It was pretty vibrant and busy.

I needed to get some lunch so went to Thomas the Baker for a pastie and then walked round looking at all the stalls. There was someone selling rabbit, locally caught, skinned, eviscerated and frozen, and giving out samples of different ways of preparing it, and at a different table, cookies and cakes, presumably not made with rabbit. Ryedale LETS was there, and several energy saving stalls, such as North Energy, the Energy Savings Trust, with leaflets from recoVAIR Valliant ventilation and heat recovery systems, Windhager wood gassification boilers including one called the LogWIN which uses logs not wood pellets. solar and renewables UK, ecoenergi, Homebuilding and Renovating and more. I was pleased to meet John Brown from Ryedale District Council, a well respected Recycling Officer, running a stall with recognisable stuff on from Luna's 'Love Food Hate Waste' campaign and composting stuff from North Yorkshire Rotters. There was a stall selling fair trade goods, https://www.fairgrounds.org.uk/ and a lady from the Bat Conservation Trust with a Common Pipistrelle, a Brown Long-Eared and a Noctule... all absolutely lovely, and brought back memories of when I was a youngster and kept a bat for a while. I was also very interested in the information from the Esk Valley Community Energy Group, and a Yorwoods project to sustainably harvest hardwood from Bishop Hagg Wood near Spaunton. On one table, a group of women were busy with their sewing machines and every few minutes, a handbell was rung and a cheer went up... the Kirby Baggers had completed yet another morsbag, designed to use waste fabric and replace plastic bag use. These were just a few of the projects, the ones I brought home info about or remember!
I had a chat to Nelly, who's part of Lazy Dog Tools used for hand weeding docks and thistles without chemicals. A about 3pm the heavens opened and there was a terrific thunderstorm, hailstones and heavy rain... but it soon cleared up and at 3.30 I gave my talk in the dugout on low carbon living. Bryony followed me with her take on green living, and some info on York in Transition. This was followed by Andrew Price, author of Slow Tech, a book about resilience and robustness... an interesting take on the issues. He gave me a copy of his book to read and review.

After this a small group of us went for a half pint, and then Bryony and I cycled back to Malton, arriving with just 5 minutes to spare before our 7.10 train came in. When we arrived into York, I picked up my trailer and collected more ivy from Pauline and came home. Simon had rung up asking me if I could babysit for an hour whilst he went out to collect the piano his daughter has been using at a concert she's performed in, so at 11.15 I cycled off to Heslington and spent an hour reading a fascinating report from Corporate Watch on Technofixes to the climate problem... what will work, what is pie in the sky, etc. I picked up a log on the way home and got in at 1.15 am.
An amazing day, most enjoyable!