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In a recent email from Friends of the Earth I discovered Seat61
This is the most exciting website I have found in years all about travelling by train and ship.

I love travelling and holidays and this website is a wealth of information on train travel all around the world - it’s amazing at a first glance.

We’ll definitely be using it to plan a family holiday to Switzerland

Our order including the made to order and measure mattress only took one week to arrive.
The mattress is brilliant and really cosy with Cotton over pad - it has even exceeded our expectations!

The millet husk pillows are great too - we both needed to take out some millet husks but we think this was because our pillow cases are quite small.  They can be easily moulded to head and neck position whether sleeping on your back or side and I made my’n extra cosy with a thin cotton pillow as I like a soft pillow.

See the last Dojo Eco Shop post for more information.

Yesterday we went to the Dojo Eco shop in Manchester, to see and order an organic and natural double mattress and accessories.  Our friend’s have one of the mattresses already and they are great.

We travelled by public transport as usual - train, free city shuttle bus and then a short walk - it’s out of the centre in a more industrial area.

The shop was amazing; lots of wonderful eco products - even more than they have on the website it seemed.

We ordered the Firm/Springy double mattress (£495 - cheapest organic one we’ve found), a cotton mattress pad (£100 - I love my comfort) and two millet husk pillows (£27 each) - all of which we were able to try out first at the shop.

The mattresses are made of organic British wool, organic cotton, natural latex and coconut fibre.  They are made to order in Manchester (ours is even been made to measure at no extra cost) and are delivered in approximately two weeks which is great.

We left a deposit and the balance is due when they ring to organise delivery, which is very fair.

We also bought a selection of FSC wooden brushes with plant fibresbristles (£1.25 to £6.50) , an organic cotton duck soft a toy for our friend’s new baby, an Onya Back Bag (£10 - alternative to plastic backpack),  a ball of natural jute twine (£3.75) and a wooden juicer (£3.50) …..and we could have bought so much more.

There was lots of great eco toys, organic fabrics, organic and eco household furnishings and eco garden products - the list goes on and on………

We also visited the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, which is free except for special exhibitions and was enjoyed by all the family.

In preparation for our straw-bale self-build, from the 11th to the 13th of July 2008 Grandma (my Mum) and I (Sarah) went on a straw-bale building course organised by the Low Impact Living Initiative, run by Chug Tugby (strawbale-building.co.uk) and hosted at Unstone Grange.

There was a very good balance of theory, research based information, and practical.
Even though the building we did was only for demonstration / for us to have a go - we all had chance to learn about and try our hand at most parts of straw-bale building - both weight bearing and infill.

Chug’s knowledge of straw-bale building is astounding, he has gather so much knowledge and her is great to listen too - a very good story-teller whilst imparting his wealth of knowledge too.  See the course details for more information.

The only improvement really would have been working on a real straw-bale building, but the one that was lined up fell through unfortunately.

The staff at Unstone Grange made us all very welcome, the food was great and the rooms were comfortable, but the Grange needs lots of work on it - so it was good to be able to support it financially.  The Unstone Grange gardens are also Soil Association certificated and we were give a great talk on the gardens and the wine they brew (with a tasting) too!
They are having an Organic Gardens Open Day on Sunday 12th August.

A wonderful weekend - its given me lots of confidence for project managing our building, answered my questions and given me vision for the home we can create.

We have also been on Amazon Nails Straw-bale building courses which are great too.

Photo’s coming soo

The Sword and Chalice - The Essence of Energy Medicine

This is a brilliant workshop from William Bloom, no matter how long you’ve been interested in or studied energy - an amazingly refreshing, simple and effective approach to a subject that is so often over complicated.

I thoroughly enjoyed this course in Glastonbury and highly recommend it.

I have two of his books and they are great too - Psychic Protection and Working with Angels, Fairies and Nature Spirits.

Go to William’s website for more information and future dates of course and venues etc.

www.williambloom.com

Last night I got back from a long week end in Glastonbury - totally exhausted due to the heat and climbing up the Tor so many times!

The Tor is beautiful,

so are the views from the Tor,

and the wooded areas around the base and all the wild life - the bird song was nearly deafening as I watched the sun set on Saturday night.

Glastonbury it’s self was a massive surprise and takes a lot of getting used to.
I had this (strange maybe) expectation that it would be quite sacred, a play of pilgrimage, including for us Goddess minded - well it was and it’s wasn’t.

There’s such a mish-mash of architecture, spiritual traditions and peculiar energies (some good, others not) and - in a traditional market town! and it changes from day to day depending on the persuasion of the incoming visitors and what’s on it seems.
People were friendly and there seemed to be a strong sense of community between local people too. From an estate agents window people there definitely had a sense of humour too - for example photo’s of people pulling funny faces between photo’s of the front of houses and kitchens etc!

I personally found the strong Christian vibe, with little lip serve to the ancient traditions/association in the attractions a bit difficult at first and still disappointing - maybe I missed some of them?

But by grounding myself very deeply - thank you William Bloom (see my next post for William’s Sword and Chalice course I attended over the weekend) and been very selective with the energies I allowed myself to experience/connect to, I came away having really enjoyed the place and wanting to go back soon - especially for the Tor, beautiful trees and countryside and the specialist book and Goddess type shops.

It’s a place that opens up to you on many levels, as you search deeper and really open you eyes and heart.

The journey was quite long: Steeton and Silsden to Leeds and Leeds to Bristol by train (aprrox 4.5hrs), then Bristol to Glastonbury by bus (1.25hrs), but with advance tickets the train was only £16 for a single and the bus was £5.20 for a single ticket.

I stayed at a B&B called Hillside - wonderful hosts, an amazing breakfast (fresh fruit salad to start!), great garden and views, lovely rooms and just a couple if minutes walk from the tour (approx 20min walk to Glastonbury centre although I never timed it).

The first place I visited was Chalice Well Peace Gardens and maybe it’s because I’d just arrived, but I couldn’t settle there. The gardens were lovely and quite naturally planted which I like, with lots of birds singing and flying around and the shop was quite good too. Maybe it needs another visit?

And the shops - were quite something else - the usual market town shops, Woolworths, Morrisons, some spiritual/ethnic type shops, amazing crystal shops, (the Glastonbury Experience is good), pagan/witchcraft/Goddess shops (including The Goddess and The Greenman which I love), lots of very good alternative bookshops, a couple of eco/organic shops, a nice toy shop……….unfortunately quite a lot of the stuff was overprices though (even people who live in the south of England said so too).

I went to two very nice vegetarian cafés/Restaurants - Galatea and The Rainbows End Café and they seemed quite family friendly too.
Finally I visited the Abbey
It’s seemed very strange to me that Glastonbury Abbey and it’s grounds takes up an enormous chunk of the centre of Glastonbury that can not be freely used - £5 for an adult!
I didn’t really look at the exhibition - far too Christian for me and just looked at the ruins a little - where King Arthur and his Queen Guinevere were buried - and mainly enjoyed the beautiful park, trees and small lakes as it was very hot and sunny.

I also didn’t get to the Rural Life Museum (which is free) due to been too busy, but locals recommended it.

So a very interesting an enjoyable weekend!

And more photo’s coming soon on future posts.

Nature has always been very important to me, even as a child, and for years now I’ve been intuitively drawn to explore the energy of the Goddess.
As a family we have begun to privately celebrate the Earth based festivals too, because this feels right for us and we all enjoy it - about it’s reclaiming of our ancient British culture and connecting with the Earth and her changing energies.

For a while though I have felt the push to explore the Goddess more deeply and discovered Goddess Within over a year ago or more. I knew I was disconnected from the power of my feminine energy for many reasons and felt the workshop below was my next step of personal healing -

So on the 12th and 13th of April I did Goddess Within’s Journey to the Goddess Workshop - it was wonderful and I can highly recommend it!

Everything I expected and so so much more.

It was wonderful to learn about and explore the British Goddesses and their energies in the wheel of the year - I was able to relate to them in a totally new way and understand myself more deeply through them.

Not surprisingly really, the Goddess I related to most was the Goddess of Water, Domnu, direction - South, festival - Summer solstice. I love beaches and the sea, streams, rivers and the Lake District. And since the workshop I’ve enjoyed exploring her energies further through arts and crafts.

I was very apprehensive about the evening ceremony - I definitely have past life issues related to the burning times and I’m am very self conscious of been different. We were instructed to bring our Goddess clothes and a mask of our choice and told no more and not much more on the day. I shouldn’t have feared anything though, it was an amazing experience - nothing weird, no removal of clothing - just our masks, lots of individual space, wonderful energy - especially that created by the rhythmic drumming and singing and lots of fun dancing.

Sunday went deeper, talking about our experiences of the ceremony and was quite emotional and cleansing for most of us. Then we went on a silent vision quest in nature - not surprisingly my was very water based and all about the “flow” of life. In the afternoon we talked about our vision quest and made clay Goddess figures - I was very draw to creating a shell?!

And all of this was encapsulated in ceremony to create a very special and protected space and led by four wonderful Priestesses.

There was so much space and calm and peace, the weekend felt wonderful and like forever…………..

If you’d like to explore the wheel of the year and the Goddess, here are some books I recommend:

Sacred Celebrations by Glennie Kindred

The Ancient British Goddess by Kathy Jones

Circle Round by Starhawk, Diane Baker and Anne Hill

And to our friends who may not have known about all of the above:- we are still the same, please talk to us about this if you want to - we’ll never force our view and beliefs on others.
Spirituality should be based on freedom and joy!

This morning I discovered the Eco Duvet from Eco Sleep available from the Ethical Superstore and here’s a link.

Recycled Fibre Duvets etc. from £19.95

Okay it could be covered with organic cotton, but the filling is 100% regenerated hollow polyester - so less land fill and it’s vegetarian too.