Devon
Back from a week away, with the last weekend spent at the Schumacher College in Devon, attending a big Feasta meeting. I felt thoroughly spoilt there, staying in a beautiful place with all kinds of wonderful old trees in the grounds, eating superb vegetarian food, making use of the excellent library and meditation room. It was the sort of place where there's always plenty of tea and coffee that you can help yourself to, and then you can sit on comfortable chairs in a big circle and chat with people from all over the world, while munching on chewy biscuits.

I took the train to Paris and then Brittany, then the boat overnight from Roscoff to Plymouth. This actually worked out as the least expensive option, which was handy. I'm trying to avoid short-haul flights and have managed not to take any for the past year and a half (after having taken rather a lot over the previous year, while I was studying in Sweden). The channel tunnel would have been another option in this case, but by the time I booked my train tickets, the cheap ones within the UK (from London to Totnes) had all been snapped up.

The boat crossing was a bit rough, though not enough to make me miserable. There were very few people on board and I was the only person sleeping in a berth in my whole corridor, which made the experience rather eerie, especially since there was piped bossa nova music playing much of the time.

Plymouth is a strange place because the outer edge, along the sea, is old - some of it quite old, with crooked streets with names like "Pin Alley" - but then, if you walk inland a short distance, suddenly you're in a dream world of 1950s-era planning, with everything laid out firmly in a grid and tons of concrete. This is because the whole centre of town was destroyed in the war. There's a big circular swimming pool, open air, along the coast, that people apparently flocked to during the war whenever they needed a break from clearing rubble.

The 50s buildings aren't very beautiful but people do seem to use the pedestrianised central shopping area and the trees that were planted back when the buildings were built have had time to mature, so the effect isn't as bad as you might think. One thing that seemed a bit odd to me though, considering that Plymouth is an old port that still has a fair amount going on, was the lack of ethnic diversity. Almost everyone there was white.

I had what I'm coming to realise is my usual reaction whenever I find myself back in an Anglophone country. There's a period of euphoria at actually being able to understand everything I hear, and a strong urge to find secondhand bookshops and cafes that sell lattes (which haven't caught on in France at all).

I had some luck with the secondhand books in Totnes, which has an Oxfam bookshop. As with Cluny, the main street of Totnes is very old and narrow and many people would like to see it pedestrianised, but the local businesses are resistant. Lots of retired people live there, which has priced the housing out of the younger people's range. It's got a local currency that seems to be doing quite well, and was the first town in the UK to start up a Transition Towns programme in order to try and prepare for a more energy-lean future. A very pretty place in mellow, rolling countryside. I enjoyed walking along the river from the town to Schumacher College, even if I did manage to get lost along the way.

Snowdrops were already out in Devon. Before I left on my trip I'd been keeping a close eye on the parts of the garden at Lys that had snowdrops last year to see if they were sprouting, but hadn't seen any sign of them. However, while I was at Lys today I noticed that not only have they sprouted there now, they're beginning to flower. That's a bit sneaky and devious if you ask me.