Slow Travellers - Day in Amsterdam and Journey to Berlin

After a good night's sleep, with less gentle rocking than our outward journey, we arrived in Amsterdam ferry port at a much more socialable time than our arrival in Hull - 9.40am local time. After a small breakfast we disembarked and jumped on the pre-booked coach to Amsterdam Centraal. Our train to Berlin would leave the following day, so we had a room booked at a hotel in the Amsteldorp area of Amsterdam, as recommended by a friend who is a local, and who we would catch up later in the afternoon. 

As expected the centre was very busy, so after dropping off our bags at the station we headed through the crowds and towards some quieter canals and then onto the recently(ish) renovated Rijksmuseum where we had a slot booked for 12.30pm (kids go free). To take in everything would have been quite an effort but we took a small journey through the history of Dutch art and saw some works by Dutch masters such as Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Vermeer. Exiting via the gardens in the sunshine was a nice contrast to the busy halls. We then grabbed some local fries before heading to pick up our bags and to our hotel. 

We recharged in the hotel courtyard bar with our friend before taking a final evening stroll along the Amstel and some of its adjoinjng canals. Marla was fascinated by all the locals out on boats enjoying the evening sun and wondered why we we're on one too. Perhaps next time...

With our train leaving at 1pm and our check out at 11am we had a slow morning and enjoyed some pancakes in the hotel for breakfast. Our train to Berlin is direct this time, and we were happy to have reserved seats given how busy it was. With only a slight delay in our train we arrived safely in Berlin after a 7 hour train journey. 

Our return leg felt less exhausting - a combination of our expectations from the outward journey and the shorter trips to Newcastle and Amsterdam helped. In terms of what we have seen and done this journey beats any flight hands-down. In terms of duration we could have shorted it by not stopping in Newcastle or Amsterdam overnight but it broke up the journey nicely and allowed Marla to appreciate how far we travel to visit relatives. After some initial trepidation about travelling by boat and train, Marla says she likes both and I definitely agree. It won't always be possible to make the journey with train or boat, but it's definitely a viable alternative (also financially viable if you take out the hotel stays...). We already have our next trip to Scotland booked with the ferry, this time with the four of us and by car rather than train!

Slow Travellers - Edinburgh to Newcastle

After a week and a half visiting friends and family in and around Edinburgh we say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa and begin our return journey to Berlin. Our first stop is in Newcastle Upon Tyne, about 1 1/2 hours on the train from Edinburgh Waverley. The train journey is one of my favourites - hugging the east coast you get a wonderful view of the North Sea coastline and several picturesque towns such as Berwick Upon Tweed. 

With Newcastle's Metro network it's possible to get close to the ferry terminal (with an additional 20min walk) but we are visiting and staying overnight with some friends in nearby Whitley Bay. But first we wander around the city centre for the afternoon, leaving our bags at a cafe next to the central station using the Stasher App - which helps you locate nearby insured premises to stations which provide luggage storage at an affordable rate. 

We take in some of Newcastle's Georgian streets and the bridges across the Tyne river (including the Tyne Bridge, designed by the same team of engineers as the Sydney Harbour Bridge) before getting the Metro out to the coast to stay with our friends (and their giant dog, much to Marla's excitement) and enjoy some local fish and chips together. The following morning we take a stroll along the beach and prominade and enjoy and ice cream and paddle before heading to the nearby ferry port, kindly dropped off by our hosts.

Boarding goes very smoothly, the DFDS ferry feels marginally smaller than the P&O ferry and not as busy. Our room is still very comfortable with bunk beds rather than single beds, and it's own en-suite. Having stocked up on food beforehand we snack on the deck whilst watching the ship pass North Shields pier and lighthouse. The on-board entertainment seems a little lower key than on our previous ship so we decide to watch a film on one of the two screens in the on-board cinema before heading to bed.

Slow Travellers - Berlin to Rotterdam

The first step in our journey was a 6hr 50min train journey on IC train to Rotterdam Centraal with one transfer in Amerfoort. We would spend an evening and day in Rotterdam before travelling on the ferry to Hull the following evening.

After a short 15min tram journey to Berlin Hauptbahnhof, everything looked to be going smoothly until we were informed that the journey would take approx 40mins longer than planned due to some works on the line. However this was tempered by bumping into a BBS classmate on the platform. They were traveling to Amsterdam and happened to have booked the seats directly behind us - and a 7 hour playdate ensued! This also took the edge of further delays and staff shortages, both of which are unfortunately more common on Deutsche Bahn at the moment, particularly in peak seasons.

Rotterdam Centraal has an impressive main hall for arriving in, and after a short metro journey we walked for about 15 minutes along the harbour in the Kop van Zuid area of Rotterdam to get to our hotel. From our walk we already got a glimpse of the city skyline, the harbour and the Erasmus bridge. 

We stayed at the Hotel New York, itself a tourist attraction. The building was previously home to the office of the Holland America Line (Nederlandsch Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij). It was used as temporary accommodation for European emigres in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to America. Reminders of this were scattered around the building and surrounding area, and the main cruise line terminal was next door - unfortunately this was not where our ferry was to depart from!

The hotel was very welcoming and even had a small gift waiting for Marla on arrival in our room. Both tired we had some food in the hotel restaurant and had an early night to save our energy for the next day exploring Rotterdam. Marla was particularly taken by the robots helping the waiting staff with their dishes.

Slow Travellers - Hull to Edinburgh

Our ferry was due to arrive in Hull at 7.30am local time so I had set our alarm for about 6.30am to give us time to quicky wash and pack - however I need not have bothered as we were awoken by a ship wide announcement at 6am that the breakfast buffet was now open. Looking out of the window we were surprised to see we were making our way along the Humber estuary, so we quickly got dressed and went to deck to watch the ship arriving. Disembarking too a lot longer than planned due to passport control mainly, but we were greeted by my Uncle who lives in nearby Beverley. Marla had excitedly spotted him arriving at the port car part from the deck. We would stay with him for a night before travelling onwards to Edinburgh.

After some breakfast we spent the morning recovering from the days travel before heading to the beach at Hornsea and a gentle wander through the town of Beverley for an evening meal.

The next day we drove to York - we had initially planned this trip with train with a stopover in York, but my uncle decided to join us and offered to drive us there which made life a bit easier with luggage too. As expected York was very busy with tourists. We had a slot booked at the Jorvik Viking centre ( York has a strong viking past) however their main attraction - a ride through a reconstructed viking settlement had broken down so we opted for a refund. Instead we wandered through the (very busy) Shambles - a network of narrow medieval shopping streets and took in views of the city walls before taking a tour of impressive York Minister.

Marla was starting to show some signs of fatigue and with the heat and busyness of the city we decided to take an earlier train to Edinburgh as we had an open ticket. The train was very busy but we were very lucky to get seats. The train journey from York to Edinburgh is very picturesque, cutting through Durham, Newcastle Upon Tyne and Berwick Upon Tweed and hugging the North sea and Firth of Forth coastlines before arriving in Edinburgh, where Grandma and Grandpa were there to greet us.

It's been a long and at times exhausting journey, and we were fortunate enough to stop off in a couple of lovely places, but it's a vastly different experience to jumping on a plane. It has also gone relatively smoothly considering all the different stopovers we have made. Rotterdam has a lot to offer and is very easy to move around in - it's somewhere we would both like to revisit. We are curious now on how our return journey will go in two weeks and what surprises lie in store!

Slow Travellers - Day in Rotterdam + Ferry to Hull

After a slow morning, Marla and I checked our and were able to leave our luggage at the hotel allowing us a day to Explore Rotterdam. Highlights included: walking across the Erasmus Bridge (as shown above)

 Open Air Maritime Museum - where you can wander through a number of boats sitting on the canal.

Markthalle - with an incredible amount of places to eat to choose from.

Some interesting architecture in the Museum Park (and recharging in the adjoining parks) 

The highlight for Marla was taking a Water Taxi back to our hotel - very easy to book with the local app and very affordable.

Our journey to the ferry was not as smooth, as surprisingly there is no public transport directly to the port. The ferry provider puts on a coach (for an additional fee) but there was some confusion with the timing of the departure. It did eventually arrive and we made it to the ferry with enough time for passport control and to check into our Cabin, explore the decks and grab some food before setting sail in the sunset. Marla was very excited but slightly anxious about getting sea sick. Thankfully there is lots of board to distract us, including a cinema and some live performances from a rock band and a theatrical show. After watching this (and checking out the deck one last time) we settled down for the night. Marla slept like a log, I was a bit more unsettled with the mild rocking but got there in the end!

Slow Travellers - A Journey from Berlin to Edinburgh

Since moving to Berlin over 10 years ago, we have made numerous trips home to visit friends and family in Scotland. Until now the most convenient (and previously most affordable) way to travel was via budget airlines from Berlin directly to Edinburgh. However since our daughter Marla started school last year we are now restricted to travelling in the school holidays, impacting in the choice and price of flights. The environmental impact of flying is well reported and we have long considered alternative means of transport with a lower carbon footprint. With the prolonged summer school break, my daughter and I decided to take the long way home and document our experience for potentially sharing with her classmates in the next school year. Marla attends Berlin Bilingual School, which is home to a vibrant international community (many of whom fly regularly to visit family) and I volunteer support to our schools Climate Action group - so this seemed like an ideal opportunity to share the benefits and (hopefully minimal!) drawbacks to slow travel,

Together with Marla we sketch our planned route as shown below - we first travel to Rotterdam with train, before taking a ferry across to Hull overnight and then taking a train up to Edinburgh. For our return trip we will take a train to Newcastle Upon Tyne in the north of England, before ferrying to Amsterdam overnight and taking a train back to Berlin. As this is a ‘slow travel’ journey we will also make a number of overnight stops to visit some placets along the way and to cátch up with friends and family in the journey.

I also wanted to document the difference in carbon emissions (as well as cost, distance and time taken) that our journey takes in comparison to our well trodden flight route. There were of course other options (such as taking the train via the eurotunnel and via London) but the route we chose was the most economical financially and also allowed us to stop off at new places and visit some friends/family. There are a number of websites which can help you calculate your carbon emissions for each journey (and many try to sell you carbon offsetting!) but i found the most useful to be https://www.goclimate.com/travel-calculator. The figures it produces match those from a number of other websites but i like how they compare each journey via the mode of transport. Below you can see an overview of our predicted CO2 emissions. For duration for flying i have allowed for an hour journey at either end plus 2 hours for checking in.

Elgin Ecohome

I thought I would share some sections and reflections of a recent group assignment to design an Eco-house for a site of our own choosing. As my partner was from the Elgin area we thought we would give ourselves a bit of an extra challenge by selecting a site that sits within the flood plain of the River Lossie, combined with other design criteria which take into account climate change, resource use, a renewable energy & water strategy and the encouragement of sustainable lifestyle for its occupants. There is some cross over with regard to site analysis with my Shrubhill project (density, transport, green spaces), however we did take into a larger area when considering access to local amenities and integrated SEPA’s flood risk maps into our proposal.

 

The project gave us an opportunity to create a couple of Nicol graphs for the site. Nicol graphs show how the ‘comfort temperature’ of occupants varies with the mean outdoor temperature, particularly useful for designing free running buildings, i.e. building that do not require mechanically heated or cooling. I’m not sure exactly how this fits in with Passive house design methodology – perhaps something for further research… In essence ‘comfort temperature’ represents the fact that someone growing up in hot climate such as Saudi Arabia would feel comfortable at higher temperature than someone use to a more temperate climate such as Scotland. This is calculated by taking meteorological data for each month for outdoor maximum, minimum and mean temperatures and applying them to the following equation known as the Humphreys formula:

T_c = 0.53 (T_mean) + 13.8

Using this we created the following graphs for today and for 2050 assuming a 3 degree temperature rise due to climate change. We also combined this with the monthly solar irradiation levels to give an indication of when passive heating or cooling is required. 

Next up was an analysis of occupants and energy loads within the property – although with the scale of the coursework this was only to include electricity use. We created an imaginary family for the property and listed their daily routines, and the number and location of energy consuming equipment for every proposed room in the dwelling, from light bulbs to flat-screen TV’s. After researching energy usage amongst these appliances, we then created graphs of typical daily energy consumption for a standard summer and winter day, and using standard and energy efficient equipment. This was interesting for me, to see how much energy appliances such as a kettle use, and particularly how this is affected by the duration that certain equipment is on for. For example, running a fridge/freezer 24 hours a day, even an A+ rated one, consumes a lot of energy (not to mention the hazardous refrigerants!). Refrigerators seem to be getting larger, even though some products don’t even require cooling.  The temperature required to keep vegetables fresh varies from that required for meat and dairy. Separate compartments or employing greater stratification techniques could perhaps reduce consumption levels or unit size.

When consider the internal room layout of the dwelling, I combined the sun path diagram with the predicted time and duration of use of each room, as well as the standard requirements for connections between rooms. My final diagram is be:

By taking this approach, it’s possible to layout the rooms to match the path of the sun thus managing and maximising the use of natural daylight where possible – in this case the family uses the kitchen together at breakfast (not always the case for evening meals) so it made sense to place this room on the east facing elevation to make use of the morning sun. The flexible office space will be south facing to maximise daylight, though some shading should be provided by trees or external/internal blinds to reduce overheating and glare. The living room will be west facing to make use of the evening light for as long as possible. We constructed the inner compartment of the building (containing the stairwell) of a material with high thermal mass and with maximum exposure to the solar gain. This could be constructed out of concrete, but due to the materials high embodied energy we decided to use rammed earth, as it would be above ground. This solid mass then provides cooling by sucking in the sun’s energy during the day, and releasing it gradually when ambient temperatures drop during the day. 

All of this was work we carried out before getting to the proper renewable and energy efficiency ‘techie’ bit, which involved a water to water source heat pump making use of the nearby River Lossie and high groundwater levels, and an array of solar collectors and PV panels. Obviously location and site surroundings have an impact on the amount of passive systems you can integrate with any home, particularly with retrofit, but I find it encouraging that so many simple, low cost techniques can be employed before spending any big bucks and attaching complex equipment that requires skilled maintenance to your home.

On a final point, we attempted to overcome any flood risk by taking inspiration from some house designs constructed in New Orleans post-Katrina and elevating the building on solid structural members. This would probably have to be concrete but we have eliminated its usage throughout the building to negate its impact. Here is a quick look at the final design.

Eco-services Come to Town

Now that my assignments and exams for the semester are out of the way I can start contributing what I’ve learnt over the past few months to the blog. First off though some good news – my trip to London was not entirely in vain. ShrubhillWorks was awarded overall winner at the IHDC Awards! The Ecosystems Comes to Town conference was an interesting event to attend in general, but coming first was the icing on the cake. There were some really interesting projects on display and it’s reassuring to know there are a few courses encouraging designers to consider ecological and sustainable design principles in their work.

Green Roof Tour
The day began with a tour of some ‘living roofs’ on a couple of multi-storey office blocks in the Broadgate area of London. I use the term ‘living roofs’ rather than ‘green roofs’ as these were not your typical turf laid to provide high-flying occupants with a piece of grass for rooftop schmoozing or lunchtime sunbathing. As our host Dusty Gedge, the president of the Federation European of Green Roofs Association (slight contradiction in terms there), described, these were real approach to adapting for climate change whilst providing a habitat for birds and with a sub-structure deep and varied enough to provide support to various invertebrates whilst retaining storm water and rainwater run-off. The roofs looked more fragile and natural than their green counterparts, as visitors weight were deflected by spongy moss cultures, reed beds and shrubs. The wildlife present was not placed there to provide a typically aesthetically pleasing landscape (although I think it actually did this as well) but to provide support and encouragement for local ecosystems and biodiversity.

Next we headed to the heart of the city of London and to Evergreens offices where they have extended this concept further to include a rooftop vegetable plot with beekeeping facilities. Their living roof used a thinner layering of substructure, showing that additional structural support is not always necessary to provide a flourishing biodiversity rich rooftop. This was particularly reassuring for me to see considering such a rooftop garden was a key element of my Shrubhill Design. Conversely, the building across from Evergreens was fitted with a minimal green roof (i.e. lawn) as part of their BREEAM certification, showing that sometimes such endorsements do not reflect the true intent behind the project. We then headed to the Museum of London, where an ambitious project of ‘living roof’ retrofitting is underway. The even intend on converting areas of pooling on their flat roofs into rooftop ponds providing a larger variety of biodiversity.

Eco-services Conference
The organisers provided a wide variety of speakers with a balanced and perhaps sometimes too pragmatic approach to greening the built environment. Inspirational speeches were provided by Gary Grant (independent ecologist and IHDC judge) and Dr Bob Bloomfield (Head of Special Projects at the National History Museum) who talked about the ways in which biodiversity was already creeping into the built environment and its importance in relation to the United Nations Decade of Biodiversity. For me, the most interesting speech of the day came from an accountancy firm! PWC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers) have been compiling a report into how they can put a financial value on ecosystems and biodiversity as a tool for encouraging their clients to consider their companies actions on the environment. Whilst I don’t fully agree that everything should have a monetary value – I’m acutely aware that this is a viewpoint that is not shared by many decision makers and any tools to highlight the destruction carried out by certain activities has got to be a good thing. I was less impressed by talks given by representatives of Land Securities and Greater London authorities, whose entire focus seemed to be on how many trees they can plant in an area, regardless of their species, necessity or if their surroundings are capable of supporting rainwater run-off. Land Securities showed images of heavily hard-landscaped shopping centres with a scattering of trees which provide their inhabitants with pleasant surroundings in which to eat their lunch. Thankfully this was picked up by some conference goers in the following Q&A session.

Awards Ceremony + Follow-Up
I was really impressed by the work carried out by the other finalist, in particular the Hafod Copperworks scheme in Swansea. It was a very ambitious project, tackling the impact of area starved of long-term investment which many communities today are suffering from. I felt their submission really combined social-economic and environmental issues in a realistic and effective way. I was (along with my parents) spared a last minute announcement and given a heads-up by the organisers about my success in the afternoon. I hadn’t prepared a speech as I didn’t want to jinx my chances; however I had thought enough about winning the previous weeks to be able to conjure something up on the spot. I was a bit disappointed not to receive a comedy-sized cheque, but that perhaps is being a little too trivial. The follow-up so far has been encouraging, with my work being displaced in Architects Journal and Sustain Magazine as well as the through Heriot Watt and local newspapers. I also gave a presentation of my work to SEDA Show & Tell at the Glasgow School of Art. The local council and architects have also been in touch about the possibility of my giving a presentation in the New Year in the hope of persuading the client of the possibilities of integrating biodiversity within the site.