2nd March 07... Day out in Burnley

A really early start, up at 6 to be at the station at 7. Met Ivana, one of the St Nicks staff, on the way to the station and as I take longer locking my bike up (I take the panniers off and lock them to the bike) she bought both our tickets, as St Nicks had offered to reimburse the cost of travel, so it made sense to get one receipt not two. And Ivana is the person who deals with that anyway, so it made even more sense!

However, we sat down on platform 3... the train was due to leave from platform 1, and we were so engrossed in talking that we missed it. Oh dear, we both felt silly and both felt responsible. Ivana said she'd thought we were sitting in the wrong place but hadn't said anything, I felt responsible because I was doing most of the talking (as usual!) and was engrossed in the conversation instead of concentrating on the job in hand, ie catching the 7.07 direct to Burnley.

So we got the 7.24 to Leeds and changed there, hoping to catch the original train, which left Leeds at 7.51, but ours got in at 7.52 so we missed it. There's only one train an hour to Burnley Manchester Road, so we had nearly an hour to kill. So we went for a walk round some bits of Leeds that Ivana hadn't seen, and as she arrived from the Czech Republic only 4 years ago, she hasn't seen much. She was impressed by the Dark Arches with the River Aire flowing under the railway station, and then I suggested looking at the Corn Exchange. However as it was only 8.15 in the morning, it was shut, so we walked around it. Amazingly, and luckily, a fire-door was open, so we were able to pop inside and have a quick look. I think it is most impressive when there's no-one in it, and the roof is fantastic. She was so pleased to be able to look inside, but we didn't spend long in there because we weren't supposed to be there! Walked under the railway to the canal which was photogenic enough for Ivana to get her camera out, getting a curious shot of a pair of pink shoes strangely hanging in a tree.

We got back to the station in good time to get the 8.51, supposedly arriving in Burnley an hour later. However it was delayed and we arrived after 10, so we eventually hailed a taxi and that took us to the front of Towneley Hall, where the Community Composting Network was holding a workshop on food waste composting... and they'd only just started the first session. This was on the Animal By-Products Regulations, which have given many composting projects huge problems. However, they have to be abided by and this is why CCN was holding this workshop.

The next session was on Waste Management Licencing and planning permission, and then onto the various system options available to food waste composters, and how to manage this process, which included an old friend 'HACCP' (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) which I have fond memories from my Environmental Health training days.

The buffet lunch was a good opportunity to meet the other composters and hear about their projects. Then we were given a tour of the Permaculture project hosting today's workshop, called 'Offshoots'. This is in the walled garden next to Towneley Hall, and is a garden with several buildings, and a food waste collection and composting operation. They have 3 'Rocket' composters which are horizontal boxes which have a hopper at one end to put compostable materials into, and a motorised axle and blades in an Archimedes screw shape, so that when the axle rotates, the materials are pushed along. The machine is insulated and can be heated, has temperature loggers, and each one can take a tonne of materials each week, spitting it out after 14 days in a 'raw young compost' form, which needs maturation before use. I really like these contraptions and this was the first time I'd seen one close up and working. But what I was most impressed with was the system which used maturing compost to heat up hand-washing water. Basically a pile of compost was placed around a plastic barrel of water, and within this closed barrel was a heat exchanger, a long coil of tubing with one end connected to a supply of rainwater off the roof, under a bit of pressure, and the other leading to the tap and wash basin. The barrel within the compost pile heated up, heating the hand-washing water. The compost had to be replaced every few weeks, to keep the temperature up. Ingenious.

After a cuppa, we went back to the lecture theatre and learnt about different sorts of collections, on-site composting needing no collections, and how to monitor the project and evaluate for the funders and partners.

Ivana and I decided to walk back into Burnley and catch the 5.25 train, so we had lots of time to wander and admire trees and a pond, and visit a little corner shop for a fruit snack. The train was on time and took the allotted 2 hours. As Out Of This World is close to the station, I let myself into the back and collected my compost feedstock (!) and cycled back home, getting in at 8. A full and fun, fascinating and unforgettable day out.

22nd Feb 07

How nice to have a lie-in this morning. My wife Gill nearly always gets up early and breakfasts the children and cycles with them to school, and I do the collecting at the end of the school day. So I woke shortly before 9am, had my habitual branflakes and home-made muesli, and went back to bed for an hour. Luxury!

After I got up I cycled speedily to town via St Nicks, to see if York Rotters would pay my £10 fee for next weeks Community Composting Network event at Offshoots in Burnley, on Food Waste Composting. Keely, our project manager, said yes, so long as I make notes and give her and several other interested parties a talk about it the following week.

I collected one potato sack's worth of sad veg and unloved fruit from Out Of This World and cycled home for lunch. After sandwiches I processed some dried fruit I'd started last night. I'd taken some some previously dried pear slices, made on my Clearview Woodstoves on cake racks, and immersed them in lime juice and a second batch in orange juice. These were then re-dried, making a fantastic tasty snack. I've experimented with apple rings in blackberry juice and have used squishy raspberries this way too. It's a little fiddly but the results are just amazing, dried pear with citrus overload. And of course all the ingredients are more or less free, I give my favourite greengrocer Richard (from Martin's Country Fresh on Heslington Road) a penny per sack for unsalable fruit, cauliflower stalks, green potatoes etc etc, and compost most of it in my garden. However, some fruit is worth drying, and as I have woodstoves going much of the time, I dry apple rings, bananas, melon slices, pear halves, and make dried tomatoes which I then put in extra virgin olive oil, for 'woodstove-dried tomatoes' .

I spent a few minutes splitting logs for the drying pile, and my neighbour came out and complained that it was making his house shake. I suppose it is annoying, but I've never complained about having to inhale petrol fumes when their cars start-up from cold in the morning. I've never mentioned to him how this makes me feel, and I wonder which has the worst long-term health effects, breathing in Benzene or a bit of banging now and again? I'll try to stick to using my electric hydraulic logsplitter, although this increases my elecrticity bill and it takes time to get it set up and put away again.

As I was leaving for school my friend M phoned. She was stuck in traffic, and would I pick up P if her hubby hadn't made it into school by hometime, and bring him home. P is good friends with us, and although his behaviour has been difficult on some occasions, I have never found him to be particularly different to other children. However, problems at school and certain behavioural traits have led his parents to get a diagnosis, and he has Autistic Spectrum Disorder. When all the children came out, so did he, expecting to see Dad or Mum and to be taken home for his usual Friday after-school routine. I told him that his parents couldn't make it and Mum had asked me to take him home, where he would be collected. He ran back into the school screaming. He was obviously completely unconsolable and refused to come home with me. My boys had some extra time cycling round the playground, as I reasoned with P. Several staff members got involved, and were very understanding, and were gentle with him, explaining the situation. He still refused to budge. Several phone-calls were made and it was agreed to leave him at school to be picked up by whichever parent arrived first.

His recent diagnosis helped me understand this unusual behaviour, and seeing the behaviour helped me understand why he had recieved the diagnosis. I got a phone call minutes after getting home, mum thanking me and saying she'd arrived soon after I'd gone and P was allright now, and happily back in his expected routine. Poor old P, I'm very fond of him and now I feel I understand a little bit more about him.