Something caught my eye about the way the sun was shining this afternoon across Étampes station platform.
As I took this photo a group teenagers asked me for moustache-growing advice.
The beautiful station roof flies gracefully over the platforms while electricity gantries stomp grumpily across the foreground.
This clash makes me cross and prompts a post about misaligned systems.
Make hay while the wind blows. Riffing on yesterday’s theme of power, a few weeks ago as storm winds tore across the UK, I was kept awake by the sound of the plastic sheeting slapping against the scaffolding on the front of our house.
And I found myself wondering, what is the wind analogy to making hay while the sun shines? It’s an incantation to seize the moment and make the most of an opportunity while it lasts. And of course, we already harness wind power. I presume a lot more energy is generated on a stormy night.
But like any abundance in nature, the wind doesn’t distribute its power evenly. It comes in surges. It’s a fleeting opportunity.
Storm’s blowing, quick—boil a kettle! Pump some water uphill! These were my middle-of-the-night musings.
Eventually, my thoughts drifted to a memory from 2024: cycling along Loch Awe, near Oban. After a long day cycling in heavy winds, we reached a campsite in Dalavich that was attached to a well-equipped community centre. It had a restaurant and bar with a deck overlooking the lake, games rooms with pool and table tennis and excellent washing and cooking facilities.
But it wasn’t just for tourists—the local community was in there too, enjoying the space. Curious, I wanted to know more about how this facility had been paid for, and it turns out that it gets funds from the community owned wind turbine at the top of the hill.
Brilliant, I thought: community energy, harvesting a local abundant resource—the wind—and reinvesting the money into the community.
I suppose on gale-force nights, the drinks are on the house?
Hundreds of years ago, the inhabitants of the Île de Ré, just off France’s Atlantic coast, developed an ingenious way to catch fish. At low tide, they built large stone circles, say 20 metres or more in diameter, and formed by a rock wall about 50cm high. At high tide these stone circles are completely submerged. But as the tide falls, water remains trapped in them, and so do the fish swimming in that water. At low tide the water eventually drains out of the walls, leaving the fish lying on the beach, for the local fishers to just pick up.
These stone circles, or ‘écluses’ in French, were very effective in providing a local food supply. So much so that during the Napoleonic Wars, recruiting officers for the army tried to destroy the walls in an attempt to starve the local population and force them into joining the army. Later, the owners of commercial fishing fleets sought to have them shut down as they proved a risk to their own market domination.
Through a regenerative lens, in this example we see:
Community, ecology, supply and resilience. These are the sorts of stacked, multiple benefits that we are seeking to create through regenerative design.
Today, groups of volunteers are protecting and rebuilding the walls. Perhaps for posterity. And, or, perhaps they see a time in the future when harvesting in this way may return stacked, multiple benefits to their community and ecosystem.
This is a post for the cycling decision-makers among you. It may resonate even if you don’t cycle. Variations on the question of whether, if it starts raining when cycling, it is worth stopping to put on your waterproofs.
How late am I running? Have I got time to stop? How heavy is the rain? Will it carry on? How quickly could my clothes dry? Will I get wetter stopping to put them on?
If I do decide to carry on, is it wetter to go quicker or slower?
Do I have all the facts? Do I know all the unknowns? Is this a complicated or a complex problem? Am I able to make a good decision?
Is there an angle I can cycle at in which my rain shadow protects my lower half sufficiently?
Is how I’m framing the question limiting the result? What opportunities am I not considering? If I stop at a random location to put on my waterproofs, what might I notice that I might never have discovered had I ploughed on?
What happened last time? Was it the right decision? What are other people doing? What would my future self advise?
Am I even in the right frame of mind to make this decision? What could I be thinking about instead?
What happens if I get it wrong? How much does it matter to me if I get it right? Am I deluding myself that I’m in control?