I was awoken by violent coughing. Risking frostbite, I poked my head out of my
sleeping bag and leant over the bunk.
'Slept well, Ged?'
More coughing: Ged was a dedicated smoker.
'Call this a holiday,' he growled, 'knee deep in mud all day and
nothing but lentils for dinner.' Another
coughing fit prevented me from reminding him that it had been his idea.
Ged had suggested we visit a commune in Wales. In the 1970s, communes were synonymous with
free love in my dictionary so I didn't need much persuading.
'It's new,' Ged explained, 'so they need a bit of help getting
going.'
Communes fitted in with Ged's unorthodox view of the world; to
my consternation, he spent much of the journey there absorbed in his rear view
mirror, claiming that what went on behind the car was more interesting.
The commune was above an abandoned quarry and to reach it we had
to negotiate a steep uneven track, surrounded by dispirited trees defying the
detritus of discarded slates. A dusty vegetable patch had been coaxed
from the unyielding ground. A dozen dishevelled inhabitants, outcasts or
idealists, occupied a cluster of leaking tents and dilapidated stone buildings.
It was hard to imagine a more forlorn
place.
Ged's reference to 'a bit of help' was an understatement. A prerequisite to progress was moving building
materials around so the antiquated site railway was being adapted; our task was
to lug the sleepers.
When I asked why they'd picked such an awkward location, Mike
looked at me pityingly.
'Well, obviously this is the best place for wind.'
That was undeniable: sudden gusts had several times nearly
toppled me into the old workings, but it hardly seemed the obvious criterion
for a rural idyll.
'Come with me and I'll show you the turbines.'
At the top of the hill the wind was persistent. Mike pointed to a makeshift structure spinning
furiously.
'That's a wind turbine, it's powering the light in your room.' I
recalled the dim bulb, which would have embarrassed a glow-worm, and tried to
look impressed.
'Over there's a Savonius, the vertical axis means it can operate
at higher wind speed.' It was made from two halves of an oil drum and looked
like it would need a gale to budge it.
'Very interesting,' I conceded, 'but what's the point, is the
site too remote for mains electricity?' Mike laughed.
'No, but fossil fuels will run out one day, so we need to
develop alternatives now. That's why we're calling this the Centre for
Alternative Technology. All raw materials are finite so we're also recycling as
much as possible. Read The Limits to
Growth when you get home,' he advised, 'then you'll understand.'
That week I set a personal record for days without a shower,
which was not very conducive to free love, but the compensation was realising I
had played a small part in the genesis of the environmental movement.
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