France, and loads of things happening...

the bike i built in london is going on without major problems :D...all parts from skips

After visiting a bit of wales the biggest and most interesting stop was in bristol, we stayed in The Factory, a recently squatted social center, where the people living there are making amazing construction work to make it liveable and usable... I also visited other projects in the city, an anarchist library, a free shop, a bicycle festival, an infoshop...it's another of those cities where everything is happening :D

Kebele Social Center Welcome boarddouble bicycle car pushing a pedal-powered sound-system trailer

after bristol, the last days in england were nice, we visited a organic farm and then head to Portsmouth to cross by ferry to Le Havre, France.
I was more than 10 days in the Camp Action Climate and too many things happened to be able to describe them here, i will try to do a summary.

We arrived by bike to the site of the camp about 4 hours after being squatted, it was a huge field and in less than two days 4 kitchens, 3 sets of compost toilets, water, showers, 2 circus tents for big events, indymedia tent, legal team tent, medical team tent, a free shop, a welcome tent, an organic local beer bar, a kids hut and some more small-infrastructures.
After the first days of setting up the camp i already knew loads of people and was easy to adapt to the life in camp (teams for cooking, cleaning, organizing, etc...) and joined the medical team workshop (for me as a simultaneous french learning workshop as well :D)

Reclaim the street and blockading MacShit

During the week some action and loads of things happened, i meet amazing people and gained a lot of knowledge on direct action... Velorution (Critical mass) is an amazing way of distracting the police and making action colourful and coherent (oil boycott)... we did it several times, the mac donalds was blocked for some hours with an amazing organic vegan dinner being distribucted in front of it, while reclaiming a part of the main street of Le Havre for clowning, playing and relaxing, Clown Army was a big presence everywhere, there was a blockade of the total (that turned to a blockade - with the help of the police - of the whole Le Havre Port), a supermarket expropriation (self-reduction action) where more than 2000 euros of first-need products were then distribucted in the streets of a poor neighbourhood, and a blockade with lock-ons of a Agro-fuel refinery and a banner drop inside the factory...

blockade of Total refinery

now the biketour is getting bigger, we are 20 cyclists, but probably this will be the last post i write, as i will leave the biketour next monday or tuesday, to go to amsterdam or nantes...

resistance is fertile and everywhere

Lately i'm not able to get time to internet and to post some news about the amazing places i've been visiting...

Towards carfree cities conference

The ecotopia biketour continues, and there are new twitters every day in the blog, after the conference in York we cycled to Stapleton to visit the Brotherhood Church community, an amazing space that started with pacifist dissidents from the first world war!! more than 90 years ago!

we passed 3 coal power plants in one day :-/

Brotherhood Church community

After we were hosted for 2 nights in a radical housing co-operative Cornerstone Housing Coop in Leeds, the cooperative is running already for 18 years and already has 2 houses, they repair and maintain, have a garden, workshop, bikeworkshop, co-op printing workshop (where i spend an afternoon printing flyers for the No To NATO No To War campaign) and more, this way of co-operative housing is quite popular between the radical movement and it was a completely new concept for me, quite interesting to explore...

printing workshop in CornerstonePeak District

Across the Peak District we cycled, up up up up, down, down, down, to Telford where we stayed in this amazing resistance place - Huntington Lane Camp - where a group of locals and activists squatted a part of the forest where UK Coal plan to dig 2 open air coal mines, in order to resist and give the most economical damage possible to this dirty company tree-houses, tunels, nets and other forms of active resistance are being built and people will stop the destruction of another forest with their own lifes and freedom...

Huntington Lane Camp fortField where UK Coal wants to open one HUGE hole to dig out bad-quality coal
Beautiful old tree with a tree bunker on top where we climbed rappelled down :Dresistance net to sit on top of Highest trees when the eviction team comes

3 days climbing trees and digging tunnels and we left to visit (very short, sadly) EarthWorm Housing Co-operative a radical Post-peak-oil-permaculture-vegan-anarchist-DIY-motor-free community, started 30 years ago by animal-rights activists, bicycles and experiments everywhere, ultra-organized and inspiring place - truly utopian...

EarthWorm entrance, they planted trees in the entrance road to avoid cars to ever enter :D

Yesterday we came to Canon Frome Court, another Co-op, more mainstream, where they have 40 acres of land, produce most of their food for 30 adults and 20 children :D in ecological way.

After this blog entry i'll head to an organic farm in Wales, this is the last day in england ;)

London and first days in Ecotopia Biketour

Mare st social centre

WE moved to RatStar Camberwell Social Centre, a recently squatted place... amazing what they have been doing in such short time...

Seb's tandem with Sound system trailer!!!action against BP financing Tate museum - Art not Oil Campaing

in 5 days we built 2 bikes out of pieces we found in DIY bike workshops... Recovered from the garbage...amazing how organized people in projects are...

RatStar

we visited loads of projects and actions, specially 56a, an infoshop and DIT (Do-it-Together) Workshop.. Met Valentina and seb several times...

56a's Bike working day and infoshop

so much to tell and i just have 20 minutes of laptop battery...critical mass in london was pretty incredible... the rocket stove melted yesterday :-/... skipping in london is crazy... squatting is pretty established...

Capitalism isn't working... another world is possible...
plans to build a rocketstove

now i'm in York, for the Toward Carfree Cities Conference, after visiting Clow Beck Eco Centre in Darlington and a community for mental disabled people in Botton.

Critical Mass in London
Biketour first rideEcocentre in Darlingtonfirst biketour dinner with our hosts

Porto -> London

Ok, we are such an extreme lucky bastards...

After less than a day and a half and only 4 different cars we arrived in London... thanks for the drivers who picked us up ;)... Marcio took us from viseu to after paris... almost non-stop!!!

Arriving in London we meet mark, laura and koala in mark's house and tomorrow we are going to look for bikes, meet friends and some autonomous spaces...

back on the adventure

is kind of fun that i never really posted the last day of my trip... in a way i just didn't want to close it...so that official "return to Porto" post will now never be published...

but that's not really what i wanted to write now, with this post i'm now starting a new chapter of this way of "traveliving"... many things happened since I return to Porto, some little travels in the middle, loads of projects... still escaping work... trying to postpone voluntary slavery...

from saturday on we will be travelling again! our fuzzy plan is to hitchhike to London, find a bike there and join Ecotopia Biketour 2010...

this time i doubt i will be making a daily blog, but will try to write something from time to time... this biketour is going to be really intensive, loads of projects to visit, climate action camps, workshops and conferences... you can see the planed route in: http://www.ecotopiabiketour.net/route

resistance is fertile ;)

in PORTO

OK.... i'm back "home", althought right now i feell my tent and my bike more a home than this one.... will try to update last days in some days and give more news...

(i forgot my scellphone in a coffee in Pocinho so don't try to contact me... but i want to meet my friends around here now!!!!!)

Lagoaça -> Pocinho -> Marco de Canaveses

In order to still get my grandmother in Porto, visiting my mother, we decided to catch a train, so we could short the trip in one or two days.

We looked for the first train station in the beautiful Douro landscape, and in Pocinho we caught a train to marco de canaveses, where we arrived already late and found a beautiful house where to cook the last dinner, drink the last wine and sleep the last night of this long trip :)...

it was also the last day of the spoon that i used to cook during all my trip (and even some smaller trips before)... amazing how it stand till the last cooked meal!