Travel inspirations: Bath & Bristol

The South-West of England has a recent tradition of being leaders in the sustainability field, with the Transition towns movement founded in Totnes and Bristol being named the UK's most sustainable city a couple of years ago. We were staying with friends in Bathford (Which had a well stocked and busy community run shop), a village on the outskirts of Bath and one of the most immediately striking features of Bath is that the vast majority of it is one colour, with most buildings resplendent in some degree of local yellow-ish Bath stone (Though probably more of a veneer these days and I wouldn't guarantee it's all genuine).

As with many other stops on our UK tour, we once again savoured a wide variety of local food and drink including:

• Scrumptious ales from the likes of Bath ales, Abbey ales, Butcombe ales and the Box steam brewery. Whilst Bath has many awesome watering holes, may I personally recommend the Bell Inn as one of the most fantastic pubs I've visited. If you like pies, then you also must visit the Raven for nice drinks and near-perfect pies to suit herbivores as well as carnivores.
• Soft drinks, hard drinks, curries, dairy, condiments, sweets, savouries and much more at the Bristol Organic food festival organised by the UK's Soil association. A large and varied event full of tastings, it was encouraging to see so many members of the public and companies willing to give organic, local and great tasting wares a go.

Whilst in the area we were invited to talk at a gathering of Sustainability professionals from the region, I spoke briefly for five minutes, in a vein attempt to tell everyone what we did and get people interested. We chatted with several interesting people and organisations, especially worth a brief mention is an 'ethical real estate agent', we hope to bring your more information on some of those in the near future.

Finally, a few links to organisations that you may find interesting:

• Bristol green capital, something of an umbrella organisation funded by council to aid and assist other sustainability organisations in the city.
• EcoJam, a busy and bustling notice board for green events, jobs, organisations and more.
• Sustainable Bristol, a group of projects run by several organisations to encourage more sustainable lifestyles in the area.
• Bristol energy coop, a community power organisation
• The Create centre, an eco centre where many of the organisations mentioned above are based.