Author Archives: Chris Booth

Jobs with PEDAL

PEDAL — Portobello Transition Town is recruit­ing two work­ers to help deliv­er our car­bon reduc­tion initiative.

  1. Low Carbon Living Co-ordin­at­or (£28152 pa, 35 hours per week)
  2. Office Manager (£23,000 pa pro rata, part-time, 21 hours per week)

Both posts are sub­ject to con­firm­a­tion of fund­ing by the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund and will be time lim­ited until end March 2012.  If our fund­ing bid is suc­cess­ful, the pro­ject will start as soon as pos­sible after April 1st.

If you would like to apply for either job, please down­load the doc­u­ments below:

Please return your com­pleted applic­a­tion form by the clos­ing date of 5pm Monday 14th March by email to tom@pedal-porty.org.uk or by post to PEDAL, Unit 1A The Stables, 38 Baileyfield Road, Edinburgh EH15 1NA

Please note that we will only be able to con­tact applic­ants whom we short­l­ist for inter­view. Interviews will be held dur­ing the week begin­ning 21st March.

For an inform­al chat about either of these posts please con­tact Tom Black on 0131 258 4483 or or Jane Lewis on 0131 669 5591.

Order your low-cost fruit trees now!

The Fruitful Porty scheme lets you order apple, pear, plum and cherry trees at sub­sid­ised prices through PEDAL. Download the fruit tree list and order now (or order online).

Fire Under the Stars: Environmental songs, stories and humour with Eric Maddern


We became human sit­ting round a fire under the stars. We are now burn­ing up the plan­et. We are a mir­acle in the Universe yet we are under­min­ing our sur­viv­al and the sur­viv­al of the Garden of Eden that is our lovely, lonely, liv­ing Planet Earth.

This show is a bold, inspir­ing, hope­ful and heart-warm­ing take on the big pic­ture and the step up we must make.

Eric Maddern is an Australian born storyteller, sing­er-song­writer and author

St. James’ Church hall, Rosefield Place

Sunday June 20th 7.30pm. Suggested dona­tion: £5. Suitable for all aged 10 upwards.

After the show there will be a chance to find out how you can get involved in PEDAL’s latest food and energy projects.

Eric is a great per­former and I’m sure it will be a great event!

Download the poster

Donkey Field Community Orchard Midsummer Celebration

Poster for Orchard Midsummer CelebrationSaturday 19 June from 6 pm.

Everyone is wel­come to come to the party; please just bring yourselves, food to share and some­thing to drink, wash­able cup, plate etc, plus a music­al instru­ment if you play.  Feel free to bring a bar­be­cue if you like but not dis­pos­able ones please.

Brunstane Road South/Gilberstoun, just oppos­ite Brunstane Station.

Download the Poster

The bees need you…

Foxglove and bee

photo: Jane Lewis

The bees need you and we need the bees! Bees are import­ant pol­lin­at­ors and honey pro­du­cers; their num­bers are declin­ing. As part of the orch­ard pro­ject PEDAL are con­sid­er­ing keep­ing bee hives in the orch­ard. It would need a com­mit­ted group with,or to train to get, the skills to set up and look after the hives through the year.It could be a fas­cin­at­ing and reward­ing way to spend some time.
If you are inter­ested in this idea con­tact Tom Ballantine — ballantinehome@tiscali.co.uk or phone 0131 669 0582

Food group meeting

The next food group meet­ing will be on Wednesday 21 April, 7:30pm at the Dalriada. Hope you can make it!

Brief cartoon Video explaining Cap and Trade

The Story of Cap and Trade

Although they sound sim­i­lar, Cap and Trade and Cap and Share are entirely dif­fer­ent approaches to cli­mate change:

CAP and SHARE (www.capandshare.org) is a sys­tem which can be used to CAP (to lim­it and dra­mat­i­cally reduce the car­bon com­ing into the coun­try in line with the sci­ence), and to SHARE (to dis­trib­ute the rev­enue raised to ensure peo­ple have the money to cope with the increased price in all goods and ser­vices which have car­bon content).

In con­trast, CAP and TRADE (the EU response to cli­mate change, and the approach being pro­posed at Copen­hagen) sim­ply enables busi­ness as usu­al (soar­ing emis­sions, soar­ing fuel prices and soar­ing prof­its for the heavy emit­ters) to con­tinue. See this superb 20 minute car­toon expla­na­tion of how Cap and Trade works: The Story of Cap and Trade

Dingle the donkey

Duncan and DingleAt last, here we have it! A genu­ine photo of Dingle, the don­key who used to live in the field which is now the com­munity orch­ard. This must have been taken around 1968. Also in the photo is my broth­er Duncan (the one in the fore­ground, ha, ha).

Sorry Dingle isn’t actu­ally facing the cam­era — he cer­tainly was­n’t shy. He would chase any wee boys fool­ish enough to go into the field, and he once took a bite out of my cous­in’s best jacket!

–Chris

Porty Community Growing Space

Porty Community Garden Poster (click to download larger version for printing)

Porty Community Garden Poster (click to down­load lar­ger ver­sion for printing)

Edinburgh Community Gardening Activists & PEDAL have teamed up to turn a large neg­lected garden area at the back of Porty Town Hall into a com­munity grow­ing space — Food ‘n’ Flowers! If you would like the oppor­tun­ity to have a bash at grow­ing a few veg­gies, or even just help out, please get in touch for more details!

If you have any old/unused garden­ing tools you’d like to donate, please let us know!

Work days are held most week­ends (usu­ally a Sunday)—details are on our blog­s­ite but the next few are:

  • Sun 30th August, 2 – 5pm
  • Sat 5th Sept, 2 – 5pm
  • Sun 13th Sept, 2 – 5pm
  • Sat 19th Sept, 2 – 5pm

You’ll need to wear sens­ible old cloth­ing and garden­ing gloves. Bring any tools (spades, forks, lop­pers etc) if you have them!

Become a Rebel Tomato for some garden­ing fun and a bit of hard work!

Contact: Lucy on (0131) 669 7201 or E‑mail: Edinburghguerrillagardeners@live.co.uk

By train to Greece

The hol­i­day sea­son is approach­ing! If you need some inspir­a­tion about low-impact travel, have a read of My Hovercraft is Full of Eels, a new blog by PEDAL mem­bers Jane, Chris and Callum, about the train jour­ney across Europe they are plan­ning this summer.