Journal

Rocking horse   Capably done

A while back, I bumped into Alastair Sawday when I spoke at an event organised by Tomorrow’s Company, and tahnked him for his extraordinary guides – which Elaine has used for years.  Yesterday, we arrived at Frampton House, which was another Sawday treasure, landscaped by no less than Capability Brown.  Wonderfully sunny when we arrived yesterday afternoon, en route to Musbury, but pouring down at times as we got ready to leave this morning – after a wonderful breakfast. 

Brindled   Chien gentil   Indian balsam

Finally realised a childhood dream of making my way up Maiden Castle.  We walked around the ramparts in a haze, but the experience was spellbinding.  Several times we bumped into a delightful couple, once by the pit that held a series of much-the-worse-for-wear skeletons that Sir Mortimer Wheeler dubbed long-ago war victims.  Whatever the truth, there was a sense of generations of lives lived out here, through thick and thin, and the spearpoint found in one spine was graphic evidence of the distress caused by the Romans turning up in the neighbourhood.  In the distance, Poundbury shimmered through the haze, like something out of that old TV series, The Prisoner.

    Elaine on ramparts   Elaine on path down

  Janet and Elaine walking down to Trill Farm

Drove down to Frampton, Dorset, to drop our bags at a rather grand B&B, before heading further west to Trill Farm, near Musbury, Devon, for a celebration of the launch of the Trill Farm Trust,  This has been set up by Romy Fraser, who founded Neal’s Yard Remedies – and recently sold a majority holding to Peter Kindersley.  Wonderful dancing to ceilidh band as the sun set. 

Apart from Romy and Amrit Ahluwalia, who used to work with SustainAbility many, many moons ago and then worked with Romy, we bumped into people like Ed Posey of the Gaia Foundation, Richard St George (who used to work at the Centre of Alternative Technology) and Schumacher, Jude Smith Rachele of Abundant Sun, nd Sue Clifford and Angela King, who run one of my very favourite NGOs, Common Ground.

Driving back to Frampton very late, we found all the petrol stations closed and ourselves almost running on vapours – but found a station just about to close after some 25 minutes of heightening anxiety.

Reflection   Dancing   Sue, Angela and Elaine Stilts 1 Stilts 2   Old man puppet chases a bottle of gin   Vine

A video of the panel session I took part in as part of the launch of the launch of the ITT watermark initiative in Stockholm (see 24 August blog entry) can be found at http://www.ittwatermark.com/. 

Andrea and Barry Coleman   Pamela and Charmian

Day started with a brainstorm session at SustainAbility on the future of our accountability, reporting and stakeholder engagement work – a timely and vibrant discussion.  Then, after drafting an article or two, walked across to Volans for a session with Andrea and Barry Coleman of Riders for Health.  They updated our team on some of the stuff they are now doing and on their plans for the future.  I really love what they do – and it was interesting that at last night’s dinner someone from a major mainstream organisation waxed lyrical about them, without initially knowing that we knew them.