England's West Coast

So I had my class road trip to Cornwall (West coast of England). It was quite touristy, we stayed in a town call Newquay, and it was quite a surfing town. We saw Jack Johnson there, (no we didn't, but the people in the hotel told us Jack Johnson was here, and hung out one night at the Walkabout, an Australian bar). Anyway, I never knew how far you can drive one direction in the UK. I always thought the UK isle were small... but i think we did like 8 hours of driving.... (puke!)















So, we visited Woking on our way to Newquay, and it was quite interesting and encouraged to see a city coucil take on the role of providing electricity and heating for its community, the most notable differences between crowned Thames Water (subsidary of Woking city council) vs a company like British Petrolium would be the underlining mission, Thames is there to provide power and heating for the people, even when it is cutting into their profits such as providing monitors for consumption, having a cap on utility bills, and even matching private electricity prices. While BP would seek to maximise profit for their shareholders, forcing them to act even when it might seem gray such as shutting down a customer's power when they don't pay. Anyway, it was neat to see that this was going on.... But I must say however, after seeing such a corporately responsible and relatively sustainble practice, i wasn't enticed by it...



Out on the west coast, Cornwall, we visited the Eden Project. Very neat, they basically regenerated from an old pit, which was created by extracting china clay from the ground. Anyway, these old pit sites were an issue because they were just "there", and developers needed to work with them to regenerate these areas of Cornwall. Anyway, the Eden Project was a bio-dome project, to create basically the Garden of Eden without the animals... just one kind of homosapeians, and well, actually birds live there too now. Anyway, it's just a wonderful project that turned a large pit into several gardens, a mediterrian, tropical, and UK weather type gardens. It was a really neat project as they tried to be at one with nature, aiming to be waste neutral, and really reusing as much as they can, taking the cradle to cradle approach (Where products thrown away are taken apart, and completely reused) very literally. Anyway, the garden was Beautiful.




We did a few more things while our class was out in Cornwall. But to be honest, it was just a really good time to hang out with a group of friends that we've bonded so well over the past 6 months. We did a open-mic at the Walkabout, some people tried surfing, and we just walked barefoot on the beach, climb caves, did clockwheels, learned yoga and breakdancing. (umm... seems really unrelated, well, it makes sense in my head :D)



Oh, coming back, we hit TRAFFIC! seriously, when there's an accident here on the motorways, traffic doesn't move. And worst, the M25, main route from London going north- which we would need to get on to get back to Cambridge, was CLOSE! -eeeewk... i think it took us 10 or 11 hours to get back. I think i was getting motion sickness when i got home, sitting on my chair, in front of the computer, completely motionless. And the worst part is, i will be back on the bus in 5 hours, off to Stansted Airport for Geneva. I mean i look forward to it, but another hour bus ride, waiting at the airport, and then an hour 30 plane ride... oh boy....

Pictures from Cornwall
http://picasaweb.google.com/hkwong05/Cornwall#