Category Archives: PEDAL

PEDAL AGM, 28th January 2022

Our upcom­ing AGM is on Friday 28 January at 6 pm.  Here is the link to enable you to join the meeting:
https://zoom.us/j/96039653599?pwd=d1NJSXFmNVAzN1B2Sm9ra1dNdmpsQT09. You can find the sup­port­ing doc­u­ments in the link below.

Following the usu­al, brief AGM busi­ness there will be a talk by three speak­ers reflect­ing on Cop 26: Dr Paul Rouse, Carbon cap­ture spe­cial­ist at Imperial College pre­vi­ously Climate Change adviser to the UN for the Carnegie Foundation, Kim Ward and Justin Kenrick.

This will be fol­lowed by a dis­cus­sion about the poten­tial ped­es­tri­an­isa­tion of Portobello High Street fol­low­ing a work­shop on this theme at the Heart Talk Porty event last November.

PEDAL AGM 2022

Electric Bungalow Community Garden

NOTE FROM BATH STREET COMMUNITY GARDEN

Members of the Electric Bungalow Community Garden would like to thank the wider com­munity in Portobello for all their sup­port and encour­age­ment after the garden on Bath Street was bull­dozed last Thursday.

bath st memorial

Please feel free to drop by and add some­thing (per­haps draw a flower on the pave­ment, weave cloth or wool into the fence) to add to our memori­al just outside.

The group is con­sid­er­ing our next steps and will post plans on the face­book group and the PEDAL web­site in due course.

PEDAL ‘Street Level’ — make it happen on your street!

PEDAL ‘STREET LEVEL’ NEEDS YOU TO
“DO GOOD STUFF ON YOUR STREET”

Would you love to have a street party on your street — but nev­er got round to mak­ing it hap­pen? Or do you think car-shar­ing with a few people who live close by would make sense, but you’re not sure how to go about it? Maybe you think it’s crazy that 10 people in your street have a lawn mower, when you could all just use the same one?

If so, Street Level may be for you.

It’s not com­plic­ated – just the chance to bring togeth­er a bunch of people who’d like to start some­thing good on their street — so they can share a bit of mor­al and prac­tical sup­port. Let’s get togeth­er, share ideas and resources and sup­port one anoth­er to make good things hap­pen on our streets.

The kinds of things we might do are:

Organise street parties

Join Streetbank

Get on-street bike storage

Start com­munity gardens

Build on-street planters/trees

Make or com­mis­sion pub­lic art

Share chick­ens

Start food/solar/insulation co-ops…

… stuff like that.

If you’re inter­ested, email info@pedalporty.org or call Eva

Wassailing cancelled due to persistent rain

We have reluct­antly just decided to can­cel the was­sail­ing today due to the weath­er. Sorry! — and we hope you see this in time. We did­n’t think it would be much fun for a few die-hards to be singing in the rain and that it wouldn’t achieve the pur­pose of get­ting folk togeth­er for a nice com­munity event and encour­aging more folk to come to the orch­ard. But we do hope to re-arrange and will keep you posted.

We have had two ener­get­ic singing work­shops to learn the was­sail songs — includ­ing one with young people at Woodcraft last night — so there is a band of great was­sail­ers ready to go. 

Portobello Market, Saturday 3rd August

Will the heat wave come to the mar­ket!? Who knows, but it does­n’t mat­ter either way because there’s always a warm atmo­sphere and lots of fun to be had at the market.

There’ll be live music and face paint­ing of course.

It’s been a great year so far for Portobello Market, and August looks like a bump­er crop of traders, the most so far this year. We’ll even have a real espresso cof­fee van on site! Woohoo! 

Our loy­al reg­u­lars are there with their organ­ic meats, breads, fruit & veg, oils, cheeses, candles, soaps and garden fur­niture, togeth­er with crafts, out­door garden fur­niture, plants, nat­ur­al rem­ed­ies & ther­apies. The list goes on. Amazing variety!

Check out the PEDAL web­site for more details and for a full list of stall­hold­ers.

So come along between 9.30 and 1.30 at Brighton Park on Brighton Place, Portobello, and join in the fun.

Portobello Market, Saturday 3rd March

Satrurday 3rd March is Portobello Market day!

This month we’ve got award win­ning oils, fresh fish and meats, artis­an cheeses, unique snacks, hand made soaps, cards and gifts, sea­son­al veget­able, sushi and noodles, organ­ic herb­al teas, knit­ted gifts, Fair Trade products and a first class BBQ for those hungry mouths

So come along on the 3rd and sup­port your loc­al sus­tain­able mar­ket and find out about the excit­ing devel­op­ments for the next mar­ket in April.

Where: Brighton Park, Brighton Place, Portobello, Edinburgh, EH15 1LJ

When: 9.30am – 1.30pm

A full list of stall­hold­ers for 3rd March is avail­able here.

Stay warm and save money this winter with PEDAL’s free energy saving guide

PEDAL has pro­duced a guide to sav­ing energy at home, writ­ten by energy experts and avail­able on-line and in paper copy. The book­let answers some fre­quently asked ques­tions and sug­gests a range of ways you can make your home more energy effi­cient – from using energy sav­ing products to chan­ging the way you run your home, and from installing insu­la­tion to gen­er­at­ing your own renew­able energy.

There are lots of tips with check­lists in this book­let for you to record what you’ve looked at and done. We’ve included actions that are appro­pri­ate for older houses and tene­ments, as well as newly built ones.

You can down­load a copy here — PEDAL Energy Saving Booklet

Printed cop­ies are avail­able from:

  • Portobello Library
  • Portobello Town Hall
  • Portobello Community Centre (Adelphi Grove)
  • Portobello Swim Centre (Promenade)
  • Earthy (Windsor Place)
  • Woodwares (Portobello High Street)
  • Citizens Advice Bureau (Bath Street)
  • St James’ Church Hall (Rosefield Place)
  • Portobello Old Parish Church (Bellfield Street)
  • St Phillip’s Church Hall (Brunstane Road North)
  • Portobello Market (Brighton Park, first Saturday of every month)

Get your Porty branded T‑shirts!

A must-have for Porty fans near and far!

Home sweet home t-shirtPrice £12.50 for adults, £9 for kids.

We have 2 styles both made from Fairtrade cot­ton, I Love Porty and our pop­u­lar Home Sweet Home design com­plete with grid co-ordin­ates for Porty Prom.

All sizes avail­able in fest­ive red or white — S – XL stand­ard fit and 10 – 16 lady fit plus 4 chil­dren’s sizes to suit age 5 – 13. We also have some in Porty pink, roy­al blue or grey for the ladies.

Get your orders in quickly in time to catch the Xmas post! Call 0131 669 1124 — we can deliv­er locally…

Exciting dates for your diary!

Saturday Aug 27th 2−30−4.30 — Local Currency Event

Join us at Old Parish Church Hall, Belfield Street, to dis­cuss how to get an Edinburgh-wide loc­al cur­rency in place by this time next year (for more inform­a­tion, scroll down to the earli­er post on the subject).

Saturday Sept 3rd — Next Organic Market in Brighton Park

This will be the 1st anniversary of the mar­ket and — as well as the won­der­ful stalls — will include:

- a series of brief inspir­ing films from 10.30 and an organ­ic pic­nic (bring your own food or buy at the mar­ket) from 12.30 as PEDAL becomes one of 12 com­munit­ies across Scotland host­ing a ‘Blasta’ event cel­eb­rat­ing Local Food. (Blasta is Gaelic for ‘tasty’).

- a Big Things On The Beach pub­lic art event from 10 called TOXME which you are invited to par­ti­cip­ate in, an event which high­lights the tox­ic chem­ic­als we are exposed to in our daily foods and lives.

Sunday Sept 4th — POD’s Portobello Village Fair (2−5)

As well as con­trib­ut­ing to the light-hearted home grown veget­ables com­pet­i­tion, PEDAL will have  two stalls: one for the Orchard and bee keep­ing group, and one to enable people to ask ques­tions about our pro­posed com­munity-owned Turbine.

Saturday Sept 24th — Car Free Day (set off at 2)

- Meet at 2pm at the Cake Stand at the bot­tom of Marlborough Street to cycle along the Prom to the beach below the pro­posed Turbine site at Seafield, or join  us at the orch­ard any­time after 10 for the monthly work day and Equinox cel­eb­ra­tions and then cycle down to join every­one for the 2pm start.

- This year kids are going to need to per­suade their par­ents to help them dress up their bike before­hand, and we will be encour­aging row­ers, canoests and sail­ors to join us in demon­strat­ing fossil fuel free travel! We may even stretch to a time tri­al: see­ing how well a car, a bike, a skate­board, a skiff do racing against each oth­er if none of them are fossil fueled!

PEDAL AGM and Creating our Future Now! event

Over 50 loc­al people crammed into the Baptist Church Hall on Thursday 18th June for the PEDAL AGM and Creating our Future Now! event. Many left proudly wear­ing their new hot off the press PEDAL t‑shirts (avail­able from the PEDAL stall at Portobello Organic Market – get yours quick before they sell out!) and abuzz with the infec­tious energy that filled the hall.

PEDAL has had a busy and chal­len­ging year. Looking back to our March 2010 AGM we were intro­du­cing our newly appoin­ted CCF pro­ject work­ers, launch­ing the food and energy pro­jects and frantic­ally look­ing for anoth­er office. And now, only 15 months later we have said good bye to all the work­ers, moved into and out of the Baileyfield office and have just launched the joint com­munity wind tur­bine pro­ject with Greener Leith on the energy­share web­site. Not much time for stand­ing still! Continue read­ing