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Cycling4SEEd

Inverness to Ripon

Leaving Inverness we travelled north again to Lairg – the crossroads of Sutherland – a remote village by the intersection of four roads that all converge in the centre. It also has the largest single-day sheep sale in Europe. All of this we did not know as Marika cycled in from her 50 mile ride and I stepped off the train at Lairg station. Don’t be fooled though – Lairg train station is not in Lairg but rather 2 miles outside. My first bit of walking with a rucksack was really nice! It was great to be back on the road and my knees did not give up on me!

We spent the night in a hotel and awoke early so I could get another new form of transport – the Post Bus. My image of a large red box vehicle, complete with black and white cat, disappeared as Catherine, the driver, kindly informed me that we’d be on the road in 20 minutes.

These important transport links are being shut down so traveling in the remoter parts of Scotland is getting much more difficult. I had my rather large rucksack (bargain at £4 from a charity shop in Perth) and a long journey through some beautiful landscapes from Lairg to Tongue. From here I walked the 13 miles to Bettyhill. It was good weather with the right amout of sun but mainly cloudy.

Marika had a altogether different experience. As I had gone straight up to the coast and then headed along the edge of the UK, Marika had gone a different and more direct route but found her cycling into a headwind for much of the journey. To say it was tough would be an understatement. Marika also had the tent so when I arrived up the hill (Betty-hill) I had no choice but to keep on going and visit the Strathnaver Museum, home to the Farr Stone, one of the earliest examples of Celtic Art thought to be from the 10th Century.

I went in search of somewhere to loiter after the museum had been exhausted and remembered the words of Catherine the Post Lady. The North Coast Leisure Centre was in Bettyhill complete with swimming pool but most importantly warm shower room (compared to the cold shower/toilet block at the campsite) and sauna! This I told to Marika and I think she cycled just that bit faster. Patrick who runs it very kindly offered us all the services for free as a donation to Cycling4SEEd. Once we pitched our tent and made our way back to the leisure Centre we disappeared for a while to get clean and relax!

Interestingly the NCLC Bettyhill has the first swimming pool heated by a bio mass boiler. This worked very well and is a great way to use the local landscape to make people warm!

From an early start from Bettyhill we both set out to find our ways to Thurso – I by bus and Marika cycling across the barren landscape. We joined up at the library where I had been working to plan the next stages and find our host for the evening. The place we were staying was a little out of Thurso and so we left our bike at the Hostel in town and hitched a lift with Ham(ish) who worked there and happened to live in Halkirk too. That evening we climbed the most intact Viking castle in Scotland which happened to back onto our host’s front garden! It was an amazing structure, deserted except for a murder of crows which gave the whole building an eerie feel!

The next morning we managed to get a lift back into Thurso with one of the local Rotary Club members who was about to leave for Zambia where his engineering company had installed a water well for a village in the south west of the country. They had strong links with the local school as fundraising had made it possible to install the pump.

We were very nearly at the end of the UK with Thurso being the last large town in this part of the country. We bought some bubbly and set off for the end of the land.

I arrived earlier than Marika by bus and stopped at the Seaview Hotel to check in. We had intended to camp but the wind was incredible and well, we had both managed to travel across the country so it was time to celebrate! The bed and breakfast is an all new eco-build and our room had a great view of the final stretch before hitting John o’ Groats.

Marika arrived and we set off to run out of terra firma. We’d been warned not to expect very much from JoG so were pleasently surprised to see it was not just a piece of rock jutting into the sea! Hungry, we stopped to have some food and celebrated with some chips and hotdogs. Huddling by the sea break we ate and then moved to the sign post to pop the bubbly. At this point the skies opened for a moment revealing a blue sky and to finish it all off a double rainbow. What a lovely way to end this part of our trip!

The Monday came with a 2 mile walk to Canisbay Primary School to run a whole school assembly and film making session. All 47 students at the school enjoyed playing our sustainability quiz and we set off to start our session with ideas about their pirate themed bus shelter and solar panels and solar oven (below)!

It was a really great session even when we tried to film outdoors, hiding in the Captain’s Cabin until the snow/hail/rain stopped for a few moments. It didn’t. So we ran inside for a photo instead! Thankfully we did as we made it into the local newspaper!

That evening we met in Wick and stayed with a couch surfer in town overlooking the harbour. After dinner we went out to visit a remote part of Scotland on the coast with deserted castle to watch the sun set. It was a really nice way to spend our last night and thank Dave in Wick, a maths teacher, for a splendid goodbye.

 

Next morning we took an early train from Wick to Thirsk. Twelve hours later and some terrible food we were picked up by Marika’s cousin to spend a few restorative days in Ripon. Here we managed to get a school interested in a film making sesion and so Friday saw us visiting Skelton Newby Primary School. With a total number of 27 students this may have been the smallest school we have visited – even smaller than the end of the earth (John o’ Groats). But what a lovely school in the grounds of Newby Hall, with a strong ethos of letting children be children and play outdoors. The headteacher was surprised that we had chosen his school as he didn;t really see what they were doing as part of sustainability but the feeling of care in the school was very strong and the children were really creative with their stories on camera. Some great footage was captured by them and we had a really great day sharing with them.

Braemar to Inverness

Most days we have been in Scotland we have either had hail, rain, wind or all of the above but on the two hardest days, the wind died down, the sky cleared and the sun shone bright and brilliantly. So much so that I have found myself with a beautiful though rather unusual Scottish cycle glove tan.

My cycling guide warned that these two days are the hardest because on the first you pass over the highest road in the UK and the second day there are seven big climbs; three of them monsters. The last one started 33 miles into the ride and popped out of nowhere. I cycled across a bridge, around a corner and there it was. A mammoth mountain starting with a 20% incline. For those of you that need help imagining what this looks like; it’s straight up.

I have to say that as I approached that hill, my vocabulary will never be repeated and then all I could do was laugh. The climb was just ridiculous. You know when you feel like everything has been against you and someone tries to cheer you up and kindly says ‘well the only way from here is up?’ Well that doesn’t have the same connotation for a cyclist who has just ridden over six mountain passes and is at the bottom of her seventh. But that was the truth, the only way forward was up so I gritted my teeth, turned around and went home… No, I put my bike in the easiest/balance-challenging gear and climbed it at a snail’s pace.

The feeling of reaching the top of these Cairngorm mountains and the highest climbs on such a magnificent day was incredulous! Scotland has been so kind! Surrounded by an eerily quite and deserted ski resort I celebrated my successful summit with two Jelly Babies before shooting back down the hill at an ear popping 40 mph.

The best thing about these cycle rides is that I sleep so deeply so when I reached Michael at Grantown-on-Spey that exactly what I did.

Grantown Grammer School invited us in to capture their learning about peak oil, the Janeemo and work on their John Muir Awards. With a shorter session then usual we flew through introductions, storyboarding and rules for filming before sending the students out to capture their stories between freezing hail showers.

With the Cairngorms behind us it was on to Inverness, just north of Loch Ness, to visit Crown Primary School’s eco committee.  What a friendly, welcoming school it was. At Crown we learnt about their eco-garden complete with a gigantic xylophone, storytelling chair and garden beds healthy with growing herbs. They are on their way to achieving their eco-school green flag and so we wish them the best of luck.

It just so happens that one of graduates from my sustainable development class at St Andrews University went there when she was wee and now she works for community energy Scotland in Dingwall. It fills me with hope to see education turning out students like my friend Jenny who care about the future and pursue careers that will help make it more sustainable. Shouldn’t that be the purpose of education worldwide?

David Orr starts his book ‘Earth in Mind’ by writing “If one listens carefully, it may even be possible to hear the Earth groan at every graduation ceremony when another batch of smart, degree-holding but ecologically illiterate, Homo sapiens who are eager to succeed are launched into the biosphere.”

But  after our time with Crown Primary school we have great hope that many more students will be following in Jenny’s footsteps, graduating with ecological literacy and an ambition to take care of the planet.

Edinburgh to Inverness

Leaving Edinburgh in the pouring rain with no sign of the scooter, we set off across the Forth Road Bridge to visit Buckhaven Primary School and neighboring organization, Clear Fife.

Clear was started by two St Andrew’s graduates who recently moved back to Fife and have decided to brighten up the small town and bring the community together. They work hard with the surrounding schools and volunteers to plant fruit trees, bushes and flowers, clear paths, rebuild hedges and litter pick.

Clear works closely with Buckhaven Primary School and comes in to run sessions with their Nurture Groups every Friday afternoon. These groups are where students from all years of the school mix so that the older students get a chance to help and care for the younger ones. These sessions are extremely popular and it doesn’t take long for us to figure that out as we talked with the class about their work.

We were spending the day with primary three and Ms. Lynn who has been leading the school with its two Eco-School green flag. In a matter of minutes the students had their geography books out and showing us where we had started and where we were going along with the distance of the country. They were then fully engaged in drawing pictures of animals, wind turbines, trees, veg and fruit, rainbows and modes of transport . Choosing one of the objects from their poster each we had them all stand in a circle, reach forward and find a friend’s hand to hold on to while keeping their chosen sustainability object in mind. What a tangle we created! With the challenge of not letting go of each other’s hand they had to be patient, kind to each other and communicate clearly to untangle. This game is one that most older groups have trouble with but these 7 and 8 year olds had it figured out in no time and were bouncing around saying ‘can we do it again? Can we do it again?’ We were extremely impressed!

The children had so much knowledge about the benefit of trees that we decided to capture their school sustainability story using their secret garden which they have been working on with Clear. They showed us the birdhouse, bug city, raspberry bushes and a whole variety of fruit trees. They were eager to explain that they had planted these trees and bushes with their nurture groups and that trees were important for us and animals alike and that when summer time comes around the secret garden they will be able to collect fruit and berries to make pies. We’ll have to cycle back there to have a taste. Thank you Buckhaven PS for such a delightful day and for your donation towards the project – it will really help us in the coming weeks and was such a nice gesture too!

Off to St Andrews and did it pour; not just pour it hailed hard to the point where cycling was painfully prickly. Oh and the wind! I had to do everything in my power to stop myself from thinking I should start pedaling backwards as that would have been so much easier. All the forces were against me returning to my old university stomping grounds but once there it was a delightful pleasure to Walk familiar streets, see friends, professors, visit old pubs, show Michael around and my sister, Thalia was in the area for a catch up too.

In less the 24 hours we had visited everything on my list of favourite memories and gathered students to cycle with us in support of Sustainability in Education.

We organized two routes; one a 12 mile loop and the other to the Pillars of Hercules, an organic café in Falkland. On the ride we had a students from many different disciplines, one with a broken arm and two on a tandem bike. Mike borrowed a bike from the cycle club and within a few miles had broken it (snapped the derailleur in two) and was riding the tandem for the rest of the route. Some people have suggested he doesn’t ride anything with two wheels from now on.

At the Pillars of Hercules we met with Marika’s university professor, Rehema White, who helped start the sustainable development degree at St Andrews University. She and her two boys on their bikes had just explored the magnificent Falkland Estate, now looked after by the Centre for Stewardship.

The Centre for Stewardship also took care of us over the weekend and provided a warm place to stay and tour of the 1500 acres of land used for education and recreation by the surrounding community and schools. If you are in the area I highly recommend a visit as they run innovative, creative workshops, events and festivals and the surrounding area is one of the most stunning and peaceful I have come across so far.

Monday morning saw us on our way to Little Dunkeld where the headquarters of WWF Scotland are to meet their senior policy officers, Betsy King and Morag Watson and get an insight to sustainability in Scotland. A very impressive 98% of Scottish primary schools signed up to Eco-Schools and 33% of these have achieved their green flag award. They have also brought sustainability into the new curriculum for excellence and the government will soon be ensuring that every school become a One Planet school. At WWF Scotland they are working to make sure that sustainability is a strong part of teacher training, CPD, assessment and throughout the curriculum.

In Perth we visited Goodlyburn Primary to see how they have been using sustainability in their school. It was a beautiful sunny day as we approached the building and saw the giant mural painted on the side of the school showing a large penny-farthing bicycle with the earth as it’s back wheel. We felt right at home immediately!

The school is very proud of their cycling scheme to develop proficiency in their students. They have initiated many new ideas and have achieved a Cycle Friendly School status. The woodland area is also a place of pride with the students excitedly showing us how the path winds around in a figure of 8 (or infinity symbol!) to the outdoor log circle where we played the interconnected game. It was great to show how their ideas that we had captured on the board earlier were connected together in the real world (even though two groups created 3 rings!). There was also an eco-garden complete with red squirrel statue – a much loved local species of fauna.

At the end of some great filming we were presented with a donation by the school for our project and had our photo taken together. It was such a lovely way to finish a wonderful sunny and fun day and we look forward to seeing the finished film!

Next we travel onwards to Braemar to climb the highest road in the UK up the devils elbow and through the valley of peace (Glenshee) and then on to Grantown-on-Spey for what is the most difficult part of the country’s cycling with hills that seem to reach vertically 2,000 feet into the sky.

Have a look at some of the beautiful Scottish landscape we passed through in the last few days.

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Visit to Edinburgh Schools 

Royal High Primary School was our first visit to an Edinburgh school and what a great place it was. As we walked towards it we saw the green Eco-Schools flag flying and then into this wonderful old building a colourfully decorated tiger welcomed us as well as eco displays on every wall including healthy eating, recycling, waste and pictures of the students having fun outside. The whole school had just finished a week of outdoor education in which they had had all their lessons outside bringing the real world into their curriculum and learning for maths, literature and much more.

With two teachers eager to work with us we got half the students from each of their classes. This was great as they were able to share more ideas and we started with our introduction and ideas about sustainability. We quickly found out about the outdoor education and also an interesting idea about Bike Breakfast whereby students got a free breakfast if they cycled in. The students had also designed the ‘quad,’ the outdoor space in the middle of the school with the help of RBS funding. This was a really beautiful space divided into a play area and seating and has proved popular for recreation and learning. Both staff and students could use the space to enjoy and there was also a quiet corner for composting and this is where the breakfast for the bikers was served!

The exploration of the school took us to their Wildlife Garden where the students (and staff!) learned about all the different local animals. It proved to be a wild and interesting space and the students obviously enjoyed being there.

We look forward to finding out more about their work when we receive their videos.

The next school for Cycling4SEEd was Leith Primary, a huge old Victorian building. We learnt about all the wonderful work they were doing with recycling, the outdoor area for the younger students, their involvement in a Scottish opera production and solar panels. Unfortunately we were unable to capture their work on camera but enjoyed a really good exploration of their ideas as we developed what they would be filming on storyboards for filming later.

The final school we visited was in Newhaven, a small but tall building called Victoria Primary School. Once we had made it up the many flights of stairs (!) we met with the class who had only been told about our visit the previous day! Undeterred they showed us what they had prepared for us and it was amazing! We spoke to them about our work and explained the distance we had travelled and they then told us about their work in each of the areas on our poster including the trickiest ones to grasp, inclusion and well-being. The school is the oldest school still in its original building dating back to 1844 and celebrates this with the ‘Wee Museum.’ We finished the day with the Eco-Code being sung by the class and greatly look forward to their video, which will be all about their next sustainability steps.

Edinburgh has been exciting in so many ways. We have been in the newspaper, on the radio, had a photo shoot with the Scotsman, interviewed by Hanna Plant from Change Agents, met others people cycling the country, climbed Arthurs Seat and visited the police station in the early hours of the morning.  Have a look at the our youtube channel and join us on twitter and facebook to stay in the loop and be a part of these adventures.

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One Month in….

It’s been an amazing month so far on our journey up the country, successfully running our filmmaking and staff workshops in schools from Land’s End all the way up to Blackpool. We currently find ourselves at the end of the Easter holidays in the wonderful market town of Hebden Bridge in Bronte country; also birthplace of our recycled cycling machines! Another big thank you to Cycle:Recycle at the Alternative Technology Centre

We have had such an amazing response to our visits in primary, secondary and sixth forms including students who came back in their holidays (and from university) to join us and tell us their story of sustainability. Local newspapers have met with us to capture our story too and we shall link those in as soon as they get published!

We have seen many examples of good practice on our journey from schools generating their own energy, growing their own food to teachers who diversify their teaching practice making lessons inclusive for all types of learners, parents who have really taken the lead in driving sustainability into the school and grounds. Back on the 12th of March we started with a whole school assembly to St Just Primary School in Cornwall on climate change. We got underway with a film then a climate quiz. Forty-five minutes later we had the whole school up on their feet, all knotted together, demonstrating the interconnectedness of sustainability and it’s importance by playing the ‘touch and stick’ game.

After this energetic start we then saw what the school was doing to help the earth with their withy classroom for teaching outdoors and close links to Bosavern Community Farm. Classes regularly visited the farm and learnt about the vegetables growing in the poly-tunnel and the chickens and pigs. The latter (who fell over when you scratched them ‘just right’) obviously enjoyed visits from the children and came bounding over to us when we arrived.

Watch the good times we had on the farm by clicking the photo above.

The school uses the farm to teach about locally produced food as one of the starting points to explore and develop their sustainability ethos. They also have vertical learning where students from different year groups explore together adding a new dimension to their learning.

We were next at Falmouth Primary School after a very long cycle from St Just and arrived to a chorus of ‘They’re here!’ and a super excited Year 6 group with excellent outdoor areas. They filmed an interview explaining the importance of their pond complete with talking frog and students showing off their nature area and after school group called ‘Little Nature Club’ where younger students are taught about nature from the older years.

After cycling through St Austell we passed the Eden Project which we unfortunately didn’t have time to visit but highly recommend you do! And after having some issues with Mike’s bike (slight problem with the pedal dropping off) we found ourselves at Upton Cross Primary School where sustainability has been central to their practice for over 20 years. They have made full use of their windy location up on the Bodmin Moors by having a school turbine and solar panels. We were welcomed with a locally sourced low-carbon meal of Thai Green Chicken, salad and jacket potatoes all cooked by the children that day as part of their schoolwork on food miles and sustainability. It was great to see a poster on the wall explaining different learning styles with pictures of the children next to their preferred styles.

That night we slept on airbeds under the interactive whiteboard dreaming of filmmaking.

The next day the students filmed their turbine, the potato competition and vegetable growing area, the Forest School, interviewed the school chickens and shot a fight between a recycling and landfill bin. We are looking forward to seeing what has been captured on film!  We also had a staff workshop over lunch and explored further their work. We ran a mapping exercise to help them reflect on their sustainability journey and big picture of their amazing achievements over the years.

We headed out from Upton Cross to Jacobstow where we stayed on an amazing organic eco-farm with Celia and Paul before moving onto Braunton, Taunton and then Chepstow to stay with Sarah and her family while we worked with two schools in the area. St Briavels Primary School was a fountain of enthusiasm and did a great job in capturing their work. At the beginning of the session, when asked what sustainability is, a student raised his hand and said, ‘It’s about caring for the environment,’ which proved to be a great place to start our day! They filmed their school playground where the story of the butterfly, leopard and the spider was played out on camera and their vegetable garden too. All watched over by the highly interested mooing-cow next door! The next school we visited was Wyedean Secondary School to meet with the Eco-Club, which has students from all different year groups. After a brainstorm about what sustainability is with the students contributing their ideas and Michael hurriedly writing them up on the board we then asked them to link their words. After a thousand lines were drawn and the students stood back from the board the final statement was ‘It’s a mess!’ It is an idea Marika had to help students see the big picture and understand that sustainability is complicated because it is so interconnected and it has been great to see that light bulb moment when students get it and understand that it will take us all working together in every sector of society to make difference needed. From this start we chose parts of the school to explore on foot including their two ponds, newly planted Jubilee celebration trees and bird boxes. It was great for the students as they had all been a part of what had been done but hadn’t been updated on what had been achieved. It really brought them together and developed a sense of and celebration for the work they had done for the school together as a group. We also had a staff workshop here with 14 teachers (10% of total staff) joining up and mapping their schools’ sustainability work in curriculum and in action.

They identified areas where they could improve using the eight doorways (see poster link) and decided on a project to highlight and drive the importance of sustainability in their school through their canteen. It was a really great workshop and we felt really energised from it. We look forward to hearing the latest developments from Wyedean!

Rob Wagland, Assistant Head of Wyedean School and Sixth Form Centre

From Chepstow we visited schools in Sandwell and Dudley just West of Birmingham with Mollie MacPherson who has years of experience working with sustainability in schools and has created many regional and popular resources that can be found by visiting http://www.sustainableschoolsaward.co.uk/. Currently she is still advising schools on their sustainability work so we interviewed her to find out her key ingredients for sustainable schools and what she was doing with those in the area. She had groups going down to London to visit Parliament, talking to their local MPs about Rio +20 and building blueprints for sustainable communities.

St Philips Roman Catholic (RC) Primary School (PS) in Smethwick was the first of three schools we visited. Not only where we filmmaking and learning about their schools sustainability work we also got to plant a few trees, carrots and potatoes. St Joseph’s RC PS was next on the list. Here the students had already prepared their schools sustainability storyboards and had experience filming so with little instruction they were off and away. With a school disco following our visit we were impressed with their ability to contain their excitement and capture as much footage as they did. One student enjoyed learning about sustainability so much that he made a special point to come to the front of the class to tell us quietly that he ‘loved sustainability’ and had ‘always loved sustainability’.

The last school we visited in the area was St FranCIs Xavier RC, which is set within an industrial area surrounded by factories and a motorway roaring past but they have not let it deter them from working with sustainability. They have created their own wild garden and conservation area complete with insect hotels and plenty of flowers for the bees as they have been learning about their importance to us all! The eco committee and student council gave us a tour of the school and the awards they have won that are proudly displayed in the school entrance. They also showed us their teacher pledge wall.

The students requested that each of their teachers explain their commitment to sustainability so this wall shows teacher profiles and in adjacent speech bubbles, each teacher has written their what they are doing to make a more sustainable future. We thought this was particularly impressive as it had come from the students themselves and encouraged all teachers to support and work together on sustainability issues. We filmed an interview with the head teacher here, Mary Simmons, who attributed the schools rise from Ofsted special measures to outstanding down to the embedding of sustainability.

Then it was the Easter break already and we had one school appointment with the students at Blackpool Sixth Form College who wanted us to come and visit them so much that they volunteered to came in during their Easter holidays! We had a great time here with the students and enjoyed a special surprise and impressive presentation put together by one student just in time for our visit on all the work the school has done as they go for their EcoSchool Green flag. We were then taken on a tour of the school which included a the roof where the air source heat pumps are integrated into the design of the building along with rain water harvesting for the 2000 students and staff. We really enjoyed meeting the students here and were so impressed by all of their interests and knowledge. We are hoping a few of them might join us en route back to London.

So this brings us to Hebden Bridge where we are busy planning the next phase of school visits which will bring us to a total of 30 schools visits across the UK. We have had some interesting journeys so far and it looks set to continue. We will be returning on the 2nd of June into a festive London for the Queen’s Jubilee along with many other cyclists joining us for the final 100-mile leg from Oakham to Kensington Gardens for a celebratory evening picnic! We are inviting brave souls to come cycling with us on this journey so please let us know if you would like to be a part of this event!  Cycle with us and show your support for sustainability and environmental education and follow us online as we make it to the top of the country.

Adventures at Upton Cross Primary School

After an exhausting ride over the beautiful Bodmin moors, passing wild ponies, the old mining ruins and the highest pub in Cornwall we arrived at Upton Cross Primary School.

We’d been climbing for so long it seemed as through the school was on top of the world. The class we were visiting had transformed their classroom into a sweet little room where we could sleep. Not only that but they had cooked a low carbon feast earlier that day and saved some for our dinner. We had mulligatawny soup for starters, green curry chicken with baked potatoes for our main, then apple and sultana with clotted cream for desert. It was delicious for our starving tummies!

Next day the students took us on a whirlwind tour of their school showing us their wind turbine, solar panels, school garden, recycling bins (including a new clothes bin), into the forest school, introduced us to their chickens and explained latest project of building a cobb classroom.

Lunchtime gave us the opportunity to meet a few more teachers and to share more stories of sustainability before we were whisked away again to plant potatoes and play with worms and roly-polies in the forest garden with the reception class. It was so sweet to see the little ones in their colourful play suites, polka dot wellies on the wrong feet, running around in the forest, turning over rocks and logs to inspect creepy crawlies with a magnifying glass.  I could have stayed there with them all day to play in this little piece of paradise.

Interviews with Mark Clutsom (Head Teacher) and Jackie Wray (school governor and sustainability co-ordinator) brought us to 4:30 pm. What a day it had been and a day full and rich with exciting stories of sustainability from the day Jackie Wray started work with the school 20 years ago. Since then Upton Cross has gone through many changes and won many awards for their dedication and continuous work to connect sustainability with the national curriculum and embed sustainability into the heart of their school.

Visit to Falmouth Primary School

It was a really adventure getting to Falmouth Primary School from St Just Primary School. Leaving at 7:00 AM we had to get there by 1:00 PM to start our filmmaking session with the students. We only had to cycle 36 miles so we thought we had left with plenty of time. Wrong.

It is amazing. Cornwall is full of hills but they only seem to go in one direction and thats up. We seemed to cycle up to St Just from Penance and then back  up to Penzance from St Just. Go figure… We ended up taking a back road once a big lorry had zoomed so close by us that it almost took off a layer of skin. I have to say that was not the holiest of moments for either one of us. It was too dangerous to be on a direct route in thick fog especially with Mike’s pedal coming off mid cycle.

As we neared Falmouth and 1:00 PM we were having to stop every mile to rest our shaking limbs. Sucking water from a water bottle required too much energy as did chewing gum. We could only just about open energy packets and hope they would get us to our destination in time.

We made it and were welcomed by excited students cheering us on and shouting ‘the cyclists are here, the cyclists are here.’ No energy bar in the world gives you the boost that comes from such a greeting. Thank you Falmouth Primary Students! We hope you enjoyed the filmmaking and learning about sustainability. We look forward to seeing your story in the near future. In the mean time have a quick peak at the photos below.

Falmouth Primary School Photos

St Just Primary School

Is it good to leave an audience in knots? Well, we managed it at St Just Primary School on finishing our 45 minute long assembly on climate change and Cycling4SEEd on the 12^th March to celebrate the start of Climate Week and our big adventure!

We had arrived the day before from Penzance on a grueling uphill slog in the gradual change from sunny climes to the gentle rolling fog of higher land! Welcomed by Diane O’Brien and our accommodation for two nights courtesy of the school (thank you so much!) we unloaded and locked our bikes in Marlene’s garage, just behind her husband’s homing pigeons, and explored St Just! Five minutes later we had finished exploring and found ourselves in a local establishment! Very nice.

As we set up, scores of students of all ages started snaking their way in to the hall ready for our presentation. We started with warm up as every good cyclist should and had them stretching to the skies and saying hello to their neighbours! They ranged from age 5 to age 11 and so we had to make sure we would keep them entertained. And we did! We spoke about and got them engaged in climate change and our work too. We finished with a game that had them imagine more people from outside the room being involved in their and the school’s work to be part of a clean, green sustainable future! This had them in loops as they, with their arms, legs and finally heads (!), demonstrated the connected nature of sustainability. It worked really well!

We then spent the day helping students film their sustainability stories in the school including the wind turbine and Withy (outdoor willow classroom). It went really well and even better when we cycled to meet them at the Bosaven Community Farm. Here the children showed us the pigs, chickens and poly tunnels that they use as part of their school. See the photos online and watch the pig race (no animals were harmed in the filming of this purely voluntary activity!).

Back at the school we were met by the local press to take our photo with the students giving a big horary for the day. It was indeed a day filled with celebration for the great sustainability work the students are doing. Look out for their school video and have a look at photos of the day by clicking the image below.

Leaving for Land’s End! Saturday 10th March

Awoke with a tap at the door approximately 7 minutes before we were due to leave the house fully laden at 7am. Apparently harp music is not capable of waking me.

So began the long trek from the sleepy village of Forest Row, Sussex to Land’s End for the 12 March 2012 start of Cycling4SEEd, our project to visit schools across the backbone of the UK and capture their sustainability work using student-led film making sessions.

But this is only the beginning. And the journey is not purely geographical.

Our regular sessions will be with several video cameras and a whole class. We will explain to them what they can do, how best to get this on video, questions we would like them to explore and then set them free into the school to capture their sustainability work. Easy.

However, the very first thing we shall do is deliver a 45 minute presentation to 200 primary school students (all ages) on climate change! ‘How exciting,’ I hear you say. Yes, exciting is one word. Still, we are both putting the finishing touches to our presentation (it’s powerpoint but we promise it’s fun and engaging…) along with games and a structure that will link our cycling to sustainabiity and climate change in a fun way.

So as this is my inaugral blog and I am getting used to reflecting, projecting and directing my mind into word form (similar to herding cats) please keep posted to our work and what we will achieve day by day. There’s a lot to hear about; 30 schools, film-making, sustainability projects, community work, cycling 1500 miles, meeting new people and much more that wil be impossible to predict this side of the adventure!

Just a short catch up on today though. Apart from my waking up late, we were pleasently awoken properly by the short(ish) but punishing ride from Forest Row to East Grinstead train station in time for our carriage to London. On arrival to Victoria Station we hopped on our bikes and delicately wandered through the streets of London to Paddington. Scratch that, we crept along to and then through Hyde Park to realise on exiting that we had cycled through a no bicycle zone (sorry Royal Parks), then entered what seemed like ‘angry day’ on the roads up and along to Paddington. Paddington Bear wasn’t lost property, I imagine he was just too scared to leave the station. It was there that we were politley informed that we may have to remove our bikes from the bike compartment on the train we had reserved seats on to Penzance, but alas not bike parking. Never has charity branded sports wear been so important. We were allowed to stay and I write this standing at Plymouth Station. Lucky escape there and building the tension of our story already!

Plenty more to add but that’s to come. Keep an eye out for our tweets @cycling4SEEd, Facebook and our online blogs too. Splendid things are happening soon. And if not, then it’ll be all the more funnier to read about.

Gok Wan shows support for Cycling4SEEd  05.03.2012

So we were at the Vodafone induction day for the winners of the ‘World of Difference’ programme when our brightly coloured cycle shirts caught the attention of none other then Gok Wan! Eager to show his support he held one up for all to see.

We met many great people all donating their time to a charity of their choice to make a ‘world of difference’. It was a day filled with inspirational speakers (Simon Weston and Lisa Potts included), networking and sharing ideas for the future. See if you can spot us in the pictures below

I’ll tell you a secret… 18.02.2012

I haven’t started training yet! I have over 1400 miles ahead of me in the coming months and I haven’t prepared myself in any way whatsoever. I’ve been too busy glued to my computer, organizing the trip. The extra tires I am gaining are proof of that and they are NOT the ones I want to take with me on this adventure.
I mapped out a 10mile route as my first training cycle. I figured that 10 was a good number because our last ride will be 100 miles, Oakham – London (with front and rear fully packed panniers) on the 2nd of June. Doing a quick calculation – 10 is only one 0 away from 100 and 0 equals nothing so I’m almost there, right? (I have been told that my math is flawed)

I got myself ready and opened the front door. It was raining, hard. And windy! I should explain that my previous cycling experiences have been in California where the sun shines nearly all the time. I have been a fair weather rider and spoilt at that. This is a different kettle of fish but there’s no turning back now.
I’m going to have to get used to this!

I cycled down the country lane my father lives on and turn onto the main road. WRONG side of the road! WOOOOps! Cars were coming straight at me. Oh boy, not a good start. I’m going to have to get used to this too. ‘When in England, do as the English do’ my inner coach chirps up ‘cycle on the left side of the road, that’s not the right side of the road Marika, its not even the wrong side of the road either, it’s just the left side of the road. Got it?’ Wrong! Lesson not learnt. I did it again.

Exhausted but safely back home, I decide it would be a good idea to sign myself up to Forest Rows Cycle Club that meets outside Future Cycles every Sunday morning. The planned route is 4x that of today but hopefully they’ll be able to keep me on the right (left) side of the road. Wish me luck!