Sustainable Bungay's Car Free Day - Sunday 22 Sept - FREE Bus Service between Beccles and Diss!

What would Bungay look like with fewer cars on the roads? On September 22nd every year communities across Europe take back their streets for a day. This year Bungay is joining in and we’re asking everyone to leave their cars at home for the day.

There are some great events planned and local traders are offering special discounts and services - see below. And if you live between Beccles and Diss, why not take advantage of the FREE BUS SERVICE Sustainable Bungay has organised with Anglian Bus and visit us:

FREE BUS
Working with Anglian Bus Sustainable Bungay have arranged a free bus between Beccles and Diss. There's currently no Sunday service on this route so the 'Waveney Special' presents a unique opportunity to hop on the bus and visit some of the valley's other towns and villages - perhaps for a walk and pub lunch, to visit friends or just for a bit of sightseeing.

Buses leave Beccles at 9:50pm and 1:50pm and Diss bus station at 11:15am and 3:15pm. You can view the full time table here: Car Free Day Bus Timetable 

Of course if you don't live in Bungay the bus is a great way of getting to one our Car Free day events or taking advantage of the offers from local businesses:

Car Free Day Events

9am: Town Mayor Judy Cloake and Town Reeve Richard Cundy will see the Godric Cycling Club off on their regular club run (which is for faster riders). The Club are always keen to see new faces, so do feel free to join them.

10am: As part of Sustainable Bungay’s on-going series of walks around the town there will be a Wellbeing Walk across the Outney Common. Join Tony and others for a gentle walk and conversation.

10:30: Margaret Sheppard will lead a group through the lanes for coffee in Beccles. A more leisurely cycle ride than the Godric Cycling club run!

1:30pm: Josiah Meldrum will lead a group along the back roads to join the Bungay Community Beekeepers for their open day at Aldeby. Those who’ve cycled to Beccles with the 10:30am group are welcome to join at Aldeby.

2:30pm: Picturing the Past – the hidden gems of Bungay: A walk of approx 1.5 miles around the town centre and riverside to view the 16 Bungay broadsheets created by artist Alan Irvine, and the embroidered wall-hangings in the church and library created by Mary Walker (above). The artists will talk about their work and Chris Reeve will cover local history, finishing in St Mary’s church with tea and cakes. Organised for and by Waveney and Blyth Arts. To book (essential) phone Chris Reeve on 01986 893155 or email kitkat46@btinternet.com Waveney and Blyth Arts members £3/£4 non-members (children under 12 free); Tea and cakes (optional) £2.50

Car Free Day Specials

Buttercross Cafe - a free drink for anyone using the cafe on Sunday 22nd
Earsham Street Cafe - 10% discount for those involved in Car Free Day; bring a bus ticket
Tutti Frutti - Tim will be opening his green grocers shop on Sunday morning.

More About Car Free Day

Like almost every other town, city and village in the UK, Bungay was not designed to accommodate cars - instead the town evolved around the needs of pedestrians, who shared the roads and paths with draught animals and those on horseback. Over the last 100 years the car has come to dominate the roads; walkers have been pushed onto pavements and cyclists squeezed between the two.

Motor vehicles have brought huge benefits, but there are obvious disadvantages. Aside from segregated and potentially dangerous roads, we suffer air and noise pollution, damage to historic buildings, the loss of open spaces to road building, and health problems linked to a lack of exercise. As the arguments about Bungay’s new one-way system rumble on there’s one simple action we could take to reduce pressure on the town: leave our cars at home.

Car Free Day, which emerged from separate campaigns in big cities like New York, Berlin and Amsterdam, can trace its roots back to the 1950s. The current annual event is 15 years old and aims to encourage people, for just one day, to reduce their car use. In a rural area like ours where public transport is often limited, cutting back on car use can seem difficult, but Department for Transport research shows that a fifth of all journeys are less than a mile and two thirds are less than five miles. We’re asking people to think about those trips on the 22nd – is walking an option, could you hop on your bike, a bus or even car-share?

In many towns and cities Car Free Days have eventually led to huge changes in the way transport is organised – in Germany and the Netherlands many towns now have car free centres and improved public transport, pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. Here in Bungay our immediate aims are more modest, but we have persuaded Anglian Bus to run 2 FREE services between Beccles and Diss where currently there is no Sunday service. If this one day trial proves a success we hope Anglian Bus will consider making a permanent timetable change. So if you’re not a cyclist or a walker why not take a trip to one of the other beautiful towns in our valley - or invite your friends to Bungay.

Bungay Beehive Day - Sunday 24th July, 10.30am - 4pm on Castle Meadow

Bungay Beehive Day is a celebration of the honeybee and other pollinating insects along with the plants they love. It’s a first-of-its-kind event organised by Bungay Community Bees (BCB) as part of the Bungay Festival and aims to promote awareness and enjoyment of the key relationship between people, plants and bees.

Although we’ll be celebrating “all things bee” our theme will centre on the importance of insect pollination and how everyone can grow and protect flowers to support bees and other insects in our local environment. Come and find out what our group is doing and what each of us can do in response to the worldwide honeybee crisis and to help restore balance in our overstretched environment.

Central to the day and the marquee will be an observation hive provided by Waveney Beekeepers, so everyone can see how honey bees work within a hive. There wil also be a display of our recent venture into top bar hives. A wide diversity of stalls will be busy giving both information all about bees and bee-friendly plants and everything you need to know about becoming a beekeeper and also selling plants and seeds, bee-related crafts and of course honey! There will be an activities area for children from making a bee swarm to to a flower mural and on the stage there will be a lively series of workshops and talks running through the day.

So if you want to know how to make a bee hotel and beeswax candle, find out about natural beekeeping, bumblebees or how to plant a 'patch in a pot' of bees' favourite wildflowers, this is where you need to be!

We’ll have guest speakers from both the innovative River of Flowers project talking about creating urban meadows in green corridors, pollination and bio-diversity, and the Natural Beekeeping Trust on beekeeping on an earth-friendly scale. On the Bee and Flower walk we’ll visit a variety of ‘green spaces’ in Bungay (including the burgeoning Library Courtyard Community Garden), on the lookout for the wild (and not so wild) flowers that the bees are visiting. There will also be a talk on the healing power of honey. And throughout the day you’ll be able to talk to Bungay Community Beekeepers about all our activities and even join the group if you haven’t yet subscribed.

Oh, and calling all bakers. If you bake and bring along a honey cake and enter it into the competition, you could win a £15 gift voucher from BCB organiser and master cake maker from Three Willows Café, Gemma Parker.

Talks 11am Bee Guardians: Natural Beekeeping Trust 12 noon Bee and Flower Walk 1pm Bee corridors and biodiversity: River of Flowers 2pm Healing Power of Honey 3pm Bumblebees.

Workshops 11-12.30 Wildflowers for gardens and making bee Hotels. 2.30-4 Wildflowers for allotments and vegetable gardens and making bug hotels. Ongoing making beeswax candles and beeframes; children's activities: making puppets, mobiles, masks and bee and flower mural.

Honey cake competition: Bake and bring along a honey cake with the most delicious winning a £15 gift voucher. 3pm Judging

Everyone is welcome. Refreshments are available.

If you would like to help out on the day please let us know.

Contact Gemma: enquiries@humblecake.co.uk or Mark: markintransition@hotmail.co.uk or Tel. 01502 722419

Bungay, Suffolk

Market town: pop. 4500
Timeline: Started November ‘07, became official June ’08,
unleashed May 09.

Sustainable Bungay was formed at the end of a Climate Change conference organised by the local Emmanuel Church. At the beginning the group were primarily engaged in discussing local environmental issues and the way forward before they became an official Transition initiative. One of the original group had met Rob Hopkins at a Soil Association conference and was keen to use the Transition structure. The core group then shifted its focus and began to hold stalls at local events, talk with local groups in the town (Rotary Club, Royal British Legion, Horticultural society) and to neighbouring towns, giving advice on local food and starting up initiatives (Beccles, Diss, Halesworth, Framlingham and Woodbridge). They also held a series of Peak Oil films during the summer at the local Fisher Theatre.

Bungay’s most successful events have been their Growing Local Food conference, A Give and Take Day in the Community Hall and a Carfree Day, as part of World Carfree day (Sept 22) in which local schools participated. At their Unleashing in May they invited Shaun Chamberlin to talk about his recently released book, Transition Timeline, and invited everyone at the celebration to join in with creating the Bungay Timeline for the next 20 years. Recently they have held an Energy Day at the local library (where they have a shelf for books on low-carbon living, climate change and peak oil) and presented their Carbon Audit, using the ReapPetite carbon calculator, which they plan to distribute to 400 households in different neighbourhoods in the town.

At present Sustainable Bungay has a core group of about 10-15 people, a mailing list of 100 and working parties engaged in setting up a solar panel buying club, a car share, a pig club, land share and community-supported beehives. The core group comes together twice a month, officially for a core group meeting and unofficially for Green Drinks at the Green Dragon pub. They also produce a quarterly newsletter which is distributed throughout the town and to their mailing list as a PDF, and have made positive links with the local press and enjoyed interviews on Radio Suffolk and the Politics Show on BBC1.

Their main focus in the coming year is the creating of a permaculture garden and Living Library in the local Library courtyard. Like other initiatives in East Anglia they are running a Permaculture course (taught by Graham Burnett of Transition Westcliff) which will take place this January.



2010
After our initial permaculture course, the Library Community Garden was constructed, planted up and formally opened in September. The big news in 2010 was the extraordinary success of the Bungay Community Bees, the first Community Supported Apiculture in the UK, which attracted wide press attention as well as 35 members and six hives. The group also ran a second Give and Take Day, an Apple Day, gave a talk on economics, took part in Transition Suffolk, the Big Climate Connection and a local Cycle Strategy, procured a bio-diesel still, began a reskilling sewing sessions and a themed Green Drinks with speakers and enjoyed desseminating all Transition news on their new website and blog. Next year the food and farming group plan to start an Abundance of Fruit project and work with the local Black Dog Arts to create a Harvest Festival.

Website:http://www.sustainablebungay.com/
Contact Person: Josiah Meldrum
Tel: (01986) 897 097
Email: info@sustainablebungay.com
Twitter: Sbungay