Camino to COP

Karuna Bhavan temple, Lesmahagow, Scotland
I've joined a group of pilgrims walking from London to Glasgow for the COP26 climate summit. Yesterday we had a short walk from Douglas to Lesmahagow. We stayed in the Karuna Bhavan temple. The devotees have kindly let us stay here on their little eco-farm, thanks to several members of our group visiting them yesterday to ask them nicely. Previously, we've stayed in churches, community halls, and even a Days Inn at a motorway service station.

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I first met the pilgrims on the 5th of September in a church in Kilburn, North London, on their first stop (I already knew two of them who were my coursemates Tom and Jelena, which is how I got involved with this). I played a show for them, accompanied by my last-minute band, Kerttu Sorumen (vocals), Michael Ekeghasi (vocals, cajon), Lewis Stagg (accordion) and Liam Lenohan (keys). It was a lovely show.

I next met them in Leek, Staffordshire, on September the 26th. My courseamtes and I, lead by Jelena, had arranged an event this weekend in Leek to coincide with the walkers passing through the town. I stayed with them for their rest day on the 27th, and played an evening show for them in the church where we were sleeping (I slept right up front near the altar). On Tuesday the 28th I walked with the pilgrims from Leek to Macclesfield. It was quite rainy. That evening I went to stay on Mathew & Kim's alpaca farm, and then I went back to my new houseshare in Machynlleth (I moved to Mach, I'll write about that in another post).

I rejoined the walk at Gretna on the 16th of October. I took the train up from London. I'm walking with them to Glasgow.

16/10/21  - Meeting the walkers in Gretna
17/10/21 -  Gretna - Ecclefechan

18/10/21 Ecclefechan - Lockerbie

19/10/21 Lockerbie - Johnstonebridge

20/10/21 rest day in Johnstonebridge

21/10/21 Johnstonebridge - Moffat

22/10/21 Moffat - halfway to Abington

(We couldn't find a place to stay for this leg, so we shuttled back to Moffat)

23/10/21 yesterday's pick up point - Crawford - Days Inn Abington

24/10/21 - Abington - Douglas (through a windfarm!)

(Epic photos day)

25/10/21 Douglas - Lesmahagow

We couldn't find a place to stay in Douglas, so most of us a were shuttled back to the Days Inn. A few lucky ones including me with less money (the youth group) got to stay with some other Caministas in their Air BnB. We traveled there in electric vehicles, and back to Douglas in the morning.

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25/10/21 Karuna Bhavan Temple
Last night, one of the devotees told us about their beliefs and what they think about climate change - in summary, he said that the Krishna Consciousness Society believe that the sustainable solution is to transform our inner selves and overcome greed (over consumption of resources), which he said is the root cause of the climate & biodiveristy crisis we are in. He says that we cannot find material solutions for material problems. My mother would agree; she would like us to live simpler lives, traval less, spend more time in nature, become regionally self-sufficient in food.

I can see many parallels in what he said with what we are learning at the Centre for Alternative Technology, where one of the areas of study is Behaviour Change. i.e. technological advancement alone cannot save humanity, we also need to reconnect with nature and evolve away from energy-intensive material consumerism - hence the slogan "system change not climate change". So many human-made systems on our planet, especially in the "developed countries", rely on energy-dense fossil fuels providing giga-joules of on-demmand chemical energy. Renewable electricity will provide less energy overall (as explained by David MacKay back in 2008), and will increase demmand for rare-earth minerals, much of which are currently extracted by low-paid workers in environmentally destructive ways. Nuclear power could enable us to maintain the high-energy lifestyles which some people are used to and others desire, but also comes with its own set of problems and challenges which have yet to be ironed out. Basically, in the future scenarios where we don't wipe ourselves out (along with many other species who were just minding their own business), we will have to reduce our consumption of energy & resources and share what we have more fairly. This does not mean "going back to the stone age", because we do have plenty of genius material/technological solutions out there which make our lives better!

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We are raising money to support environmental activists in the Global South. Visit caminotocop.com to donate.

Thanks for reading.