A birthday weekend in Scotland put the Ethical Experiment to the test. Could we manage a weekend away without breaking the rules?

I’d acquired some cheap train tickets to get us to Edinburgh (£5 each way), but at the time of booking had failed to realise that this was also the weekend of a Scotland v Wales rugby match. The 12:00 from Kings Cross to Edinburgh was therefore full of rather loud people who had consumed significant quantities of alcohol. This was no time to check on their local credentials.

For the journey north, we’d been able to pack a picnic – using local items we’d already got in. Sausage rolls from Wokingham, home-made bread, local eggs, Hampshire apple juice. Easy peasy, and very nice too.

Some prior planning ensured that we were able to enjoy a birthday dinner in Howies, an Edinburgh restaurant which sources its ingredients locally. I had a very tasty cream of parsnip soup, followed by salmon, herbed potatoes and creamy kale. All very nice, and encouraging to see the menu being reasonably specific about where the ingredients had come from. For dessert, I opted for the coconut creme brulee, which was also extremely pleasant. In hindsight, it seems likely that the coconut was not locally grown. Ooops.

Our B&B was in Inverkeithing, just north of the Forth rail bridge – and just a stone’s throw from the railway station. The room was very comfortable, with Fairtrade tea, coffee and sugar in the hospitality tray.

Breakfast the following morning was a triumph! As well as the full Scottish fry-up of bacon, sausage, egg, mushroom, hash brown, tomato and Stornoway black pudding, there was home made soda bread. This was accompanied by home made marmalade. There was also raspberry jam and whisky marmelade from Loch Leven on offer, definitely within a forty-mile radius of Inverkeithing.

We then went our separate ways for the majority of Sunday. I enjoyed an anorakky day out on a railtour (the Forth McFreighter to be precise), visiting some obscure non-passenger branch lines. Sarah had a more conventional day, visiting nearby Falkirk and its Farmers’ Market. To keep myself fuelled, I took the remnants of Saturday’s picnic with me, with a banana from the B&B’s fruit bowl.

Reconvening at Inverkeithing on Sunday evening, we sauntered into town. The usual takeaway options were present, and we decided that fish and chips was probably the least-bad option. And so we spent a romantic half-hour eating haddock and chips as it started to snow…

The journey home on Monday passed without incident, despite snow, ice and heavy rain. Sarah had acquired some provisions from the Farmers’ Market for our midday meal – a quiche, some local cheese, slices of black bun and an apple and cinnamon cake.

I have added an OAQs page (see tab above) - let us know if you have further questions about what we’re up to by clicking here and leaving a comment. Thanks. : )

I am not the sort of person who has a squillion pairs of shoes and gets very excited about them. I don’t often wear shoes with major heels. I tend to live in a single pair of comfortable shoes until they fall apart. Thus:

Old shoes, new shoes

The old shoes might look reasonably intact in this picture but there are holes in the toes and the fabric is nearly worn through at the heel. Still good enough to be gardening or decorating shoes, but starting to look decidely unbusinesslike for appearing in public.  Even I, not renowned for elegance of apparel, feel a bit shonky in them.

Enter the new shoes.  You’ll notice that they are not tremendously different. The manufacturers have changed the rubber toe part a bit, and the laces are thicker, but otherwise they are pretty much identical. I love them, and fully expect these to be my only shoe purchase of the year, unless I happen to get an blue pair. (They used to do red ones, but I didn’t buy them at the time and can no longer find them. Woe.) The new ones are my third pair. Or is it fourth?

So. The ethical credentials of my new footwear? The rubber is FSC-approved. The cotton is organic and fair trade. And the manufacturing of the shoes is guaranteed fair trade (proper wages, regulated working hours and union representation, etc.). Oh yes. I challenge anyone to find a finer shoe.

If green isn’t your colour (it most certainly is mine), then how about blue?

Or white?

 

Or black?

  

Or pink?

All of these are available from Fair Deal Trading, who also sell fetching ‘Cut the Carbon’ shoelaces (note, as I failed to do, that these are sold singly, not in pairs), along with fair trade flip-flops, footballs, volleyballs, and other sporty items.

PS The high-top trainers (like my green ones) are also very good for supporting malfunctioning feet.

Dave went to Winchester farmers’ market on his own today, as I am bedridden with a sprained and bruised foot, sustained yesterday afternoon in a thinking-I-was-at-the-bottom-of-the-stairs-when-I-wasn’t accident. Ow. However, he did an excellent job, returning with vegetables, cheese, Solent cod, milk, eggs and muntjac.

For the uninitiated, muntjac is a small deer-type creature. We’ve not had it before but it has been recommended to us by my parents. We will report back when it emerges from the freezer. Meanwhile, we are still working our way through that pile of pheasants we bought a few weeks ago. Still need to get the cooking time right – they’re quite a bit smaller than chicken and need less than an hour. I keep overcooking them.

I’ve added Andrew Simms & Joe Smith’s book Do Good Lives Have To Cost The Earth? to the resources page. It’s very readable, but each of the contributors’ chapters is quite short, so they don’t have much chance to develop their arguments. An interesting starting point for some of the topics, but not much more.

Did I mention that I was missing tinned tomatoes? I still am. Not much else yet, though we may shortly run out of paracetamol and will have to decide whether that is an allowable purchase. Dave, who abhors all medicines, says no. But he is not the one with the mangled foot. Ha.

The Friday morning train journey from Plymouth to Bristol was pleasant enough, but once again the train operator (in this case Arriva CrossCountry) failed to provide the advertised catering service. I acquired a Fairtrade cup of coffee and a Duchy Original biscuit, but there was nothing of a more substantial nature.

On arrival at Bristol Temple Meads, I had approximately half an hour before the onward journey to Pill (a village through which a freight-only railway line runs; locals are campaigning for its reopening – good for them). The usual station food purveyors were present – a Pumpkin Cafe and an Upper Crust. I didn’t even bother to check these out for local produce and instead headed for the exit.

As luck would have it, the first thing I set eyes on outside the station was a snack van. But this was no ordinary snack van. Daisy Catering (with its van and sole staff member decked out in cow-patterned branding) offers local farm-fresh goodies, largely sourced from farms just outside Bristol. Within minutes I was scoffing a delicious bacon and cheese sandwich, and a freshly made strawberry milkshake. Splendid!

Transport to and from Pill was provided by delegates on the course who would have been making the journey anyway. And so, another three-hour training course later, I was deposited at the Bristol Central Travelodge for the night. Although I quite enjoy doing it, leading these training sessions does tire me out so it was a Friday evening in for me.

The bar/cafe at the Travelodge offered nothing local at all. Nor anything Fairtrade. It would be churlish to suggest that some of the fodder may possibly have been recycled in a less-than-appetising manner.

In fact, the only concession to localness I encountered during my stay at the Bristol Travelodge was the appearance of the local fire brigade at around midnight. My early night was scuppered by alarms going off intermittently several times before a more prolonged burst. Adjacent buildings also appeared to be affected. It was a confused scene though – many guests being entirely unsure whether this was a ’real’ fire alarm, and no guidance forthcoming from the solitary member of staff on duty. Eventually, most of the clientele drifted out into the sub-zero car park in various states of undress, with some expressing views of the management which were variously of the four-letter variety.  The local fire brigade duly arrived, and after a cursory glance around decided that there was no inferno to quench. ‘Any ideas?’ asked one of the crew, which sparked much eye-rolling amongst the shivering masses.

It took a long time to get back to sleep after this unplanned excursion. As we’d enjoyed it so much the first time round, the fire alarms decided to perform a reprise at around 8am. This did not go down all that well either, and was roundly ignored by the displeased patrons. A coffee and muffin later, I was checking out as fast as my legs would carry me.

After one more training stint in Pill on Saturday morning – travelling by bus this time – it was back to Temple Meads and then home via Reading, North Camp and Alton where, through expert interpretation of the timetable, I successfully connected on to a bus back to the village. It was just as well the connection worked, as Sarah had managed to incapacitate herself during my absence.

Breakfast at the Innkeeper’s Lodge presented a number of options. Rather fewer were obviously local though.

A Yeo Valley organic yogurt made a promising (and very tasty) start. But the Yeo Valley is around 80 miles from Plymouth, so even this fell foul of the rules. Other than some packaged Double Gloucester cheese, it was not entirely clear where any of the other continental breakfast ingredients had been sourced from. Nor was there anyone around to ask. Hmmm.

A full day of training meant that there wasn’t time for any lunch. At least this meant that there were no ethical dilemmas to worry about.

An early dinner presented an opportunity to try out the menu of the Jack Rabbit pub adjoining the Innkeeper’s Lodge. Yet again, it proved difficult to identify the provenance of any given menu item. The only main course choice which specifically mentioned the locality of its primary ingredient: Hampshire sausages. D’oh!

In the event, I chose the geographically-ambiguous starter of mushroom soup, followed by a main of grilled chicken on mashed potato with ’seasonal greens’. I was somewhat taken-aback to discover that the allegedly seasonal vegetable du jour was, in fact, mange tout. Mange tout? How on earth is that ’seasonal’? Or, more precisely? Where on earth is mange tout seasonal? In the UK, late May would be about the right time of year for ‘in season’ mange tout.

Dessert was probably the highlight of the meal, and did at least include the only Devonshire item on the menu: Apple Eve’s Pudding, served with Devonshire toffee sauce and dairy custard. At last - something local. As long as one doesn’t ask too many questions about where the apples, milk, flour, eggs and almonds are from, presumably…

Well, to Plymouth anyway. Work involves me travelling around the country on occasion, delivering a series of website authoring workshops in different locations. Today I began a tour of duty in the South West. I strongly suspect that the ethical experiment may prove challenging over the next few days: it’s hard enough to squeeze enough out of my employer’s meal allowances as it is, without having to source local food in unfamiliar locations.

Fortunately, it’s public transport all the way – good for the conscience. After a morning in the office, it’ was a quick nip across London by tube for the 13:06 Paddington to Plymouth service. The First Great Western website assured me that its food is ‘made with the best ingredients from local producers’. Sure enough, the platform departure screens acknowledged that there was indeed a Travelling Chef on board, so I expected to be able to get some reasonably local lunch.

The train left on time, and snaked through West London before gathering pace. Having settled into my seat, I decided to investigate the Travelling Chef’s wares. The advertised ‘giant Yorkshire pudding with sausages’ looked like being just the ticket. Unfortunately, just as I set foot in the buffet carriage, there was an announcement on the public address system. No Travelling Chef ‘due to equipment problems’. Bother. Why could they not have alerted prospective passengers to this problem before leaving Paddington, so that suitable provisions could be acquired from the many food stalls on the station? Argh!

As it was, I managed to acquire a Berry FruitHit (Fairtrade ingredients; company based in Bristol), a packet of Burts Crisps (produced in Roborough, a stone’s throw from where I’m staying) and an almost-local bar of Honeybuns flapjack (whilst travelling, I was unsure whether Sherborne was within 40 miles of the Great Western mainline or not, but it has to be better than a Mars bar). The Aberdeen Angus burger was suspiciously devoid of information relating to its provenance, so I had to take FGW’s ‘local’ claim at face value. Still, it was far from being a disaster, and at least the train operator is making some attempt to source local produce. The FruitHit was so good that I returned for another as we whizzed along the ever-beautiful Dawlish sea wall. The weather, alas, is not good. Torrential rain and gusty winds are the order of the day.

From Plymouth, it was a very soggy walk to the right bus stop, and then a bus to the training venue in Whitleigh. Having done my research in advance, I was armed with a Plymouth PlusBus ticket – combining train travel and bus connections. It’s a brilliant idea, but the bus driver looked at the ticket as though I’d handed him a copy of the Magna Carta. After scratching his head in a doubtful manner, he relented and let me on. Twenty minutes later, I was battling through the still-heavy rain towards the Salvation Army hall which was hosting the evening’s web training session. I wasd distinctly underwhelmed when I arrive to find the hall was locked up. Fortunately, after a couple of minutes, two of the delegates arrived and offered me shelter in their car.

It was not until about 10pm that I arrived at the Innkeeper’s Lodge which work had booked me in to. Of course, this is just after the attached pub stopped serving food. There was nothing else in the vicinity apart from a couple of fast-food chains. Both KFC and Pizza Hut are owned by Yum Foods, and neither are renowned for their commitment to sourcing products locally. Fortunately, I’m not spending my own money, so it would not be breaking the rules to use either establishment. Dissertations could probably be written on the relative dis-merits of these companies, but I made a snap decision that chicken portions are probably less processed than salty pizzas with low-grade ingredients. A KFC meal it was.

Within seconds, I felt guilty. And the meal didn’t taste fantastic either. After a goodnight phone call home, I flicked through some TV channels before trying to doze off. On Channel 4, I discovered that comedian Dave Gorman is feeling guilty too. I tuned in part way through America Unchained, in which he tried to drive from the west coast to the east coast of the USA. The catch – he was trying to do it without making use of any hotel chains, restaurant chains or, even harder, gas station chains. He was attempting to use only independent vendors, and he almost managed it. But not quite. Part way across, after a series of things going wrong, he had to give his custom to a multi-national oil company after running out of fuel. Not happy, he had a blow-out on a chain-owned budget hotel and a McDonald’s.

Ooops. I know how he feels.

Bus driver Malcolm Loades had some interesting points to raise in connection with 5 January’s post (which still hasn’t elicited a response from Stagecoach, incidentally). And he’s right – there are other options to consider. So I have registered with a car-sharing website. And, unsurprisingly, there are other people making the same journey as I do each weekday morning from the village into Alton railway station.

However, I’ve not yet matched up with anyone. It’s a quandary that I haven’t yet worked out a solution to, but there seems to be a weakness with sharing private transport that doesn’t manifest itself in public transport.

My working hours are fairly standard 9-to-5, so I usually use the same trains to and from the capital. But not always. Sometimes I need to be in the office early. Sometimes I have to stay late. With a reasonably regular public transport timetable, that kind of flexibility is straightforward. There are trains every half hour between Alton and London Waterloo, so it’s not a huge problem if I miss any given train.

The buses, as explained before, are rather less regular – and don’t connect well at Alton station. Nevertheless, if I was able to use the bus service, there’d be another one along eventually if I happened to arrive on a different train than usual.

The real difficulty would occur if I was sharing my car with someone else. If I’m on time, everything’s fine. But if I’m late, I would also be delaying my car-sharing buddy. And that wouldn’t be nice. They’d be waiting around for at least half an hour with nothing to do. They might put up with it the first few times, but it’s likely they’d be disinclined to continue the car-sharing relationship if it happened more than that.

Similarly, what is the ethical thing to do in the event of the car-sharing buddy being delayed themselves? Should I wait? What if that means getting to the station late and missing my train, with a subsequently late arrival at work? These moral dilemmas simply don’t occur with public transport. The bus driver is paid to operate the service and, quite honestly, doesn’t really mind whether the bus is full or empty. S/he certainly won’t be offended if I’m late for the bus and instead catch a later service. And I won’t affect the bus driver’s social diary if I don’t turn up.

Public transport is essential. It is a much better concept than sharing of private vehicles. I’m not ruling out the car-sharing scheme completely, but I need to think it through some more.

I’ve added a review of Not on the Label to the resources page (see tab above). I liked it. We all have a basic understanding of food production and supermarket supply chains but this book was still an alarming eye-opener. I recommend it most highly. 

Meanwhile, I am missing tinned tomatoes. I have a jar and a half of passata from a tomato company on the Isle of Wight, but at £3.50 a jar it is coming in a bit more expensive than a tin of Sainsbury’s basics chopped tomatoes (33p), so I’m having to use it rather more sparingly. Still. With all the stuff we’re not buying, we’re not spending any more than usual.

Tomorrow we’re off to investigate Sunnyfields, a farm shop and farmers’ market near Southampton. We will report back shortly thereafter.

I’m currently reading Not on The Label and feeling relieved that we are buying most of our food from local producers. If we hadn’t already made the switch from supermarkets (more or less), then this book would probably have done it. I now know a bit about chicken production lines and poo and bacteria. I know about the huge numbers of poorly-treated immigrant workers who wash salad in the middle of the night to meet supermarkets’ fickle demands. I’ve learned about the convoluted supermarket distribution network and how curfew regulations and fixed routes mean they rack up more food miles than necessary. And I am currently learning about what goes in to supermarket bread and how the stuff from the in-store bakery isn’t necessarily any better than the plastic-wrapped ready-sliced stuff. I’m glad I make my own.

So far, the alternative really is working. Yes, it means that we can’t nip to the village Tesco if we run out of something. But we haven’t needed to. We’ve just bought meat and vegetables and milk and chilli jam (yes, in our house all of these are staple foods) and got on with it. Admittedly, things may get more interesting when our former non-ethical purchases run out, but oats are the only thing that concerns me in that regard.  

Alton farmers’ market was quiet on Saturday. I think that’s normal for early January – producers are recovering from the Christmas rush and are either short of stock or having a well-earned break. But we still managed to stock up with leeks and carrots, and avail ourselves of the five pheasants for £10 offer. And we nipped to Bowtell’s and bought all their skimmed milk, some Isle of Wight tomato sauce, and some half price burgers from their very own cows. One of the tings I love about Bowtell’s is parking in the yard and opening the car door to be greeted with a chorus of baas from the barn. There were lambs in there, too, because Bowtell’s keeps a breed of sheep that lambs in the autumn, as well as the usual spring-lambing type. All very lovely. 

Something that delighted us at the farmers’ market was the fish stall. When we drew up our 40-mile radius, we chose that distance for a number of reasons. First, because I knew I would then be able to get yeast from Dove’s Farm, which is just inside the boundary. Second, because several of the producers at the Hampshire farmers’ markets are from the Isle of Wight, and 40 miles just encompasses the island nicely. But something that didn’t really occur to me was how useful the Solent would be. To be honest, I thought of it as slightly wasted space within our zone. I was wrong. The sea is where fish live. This is a Good Thing. The fish at the market stall were caught in the Solent and around the Isle of Wight! Ladies and gentlemen, fish is back on the menu. Or at least it will be, when we buy some next time (no freezer space at the moment) and one of us takes on the task of the head-chopping-off and gutting. I nominate Dave.