Travel
Travellers Code of Conduct
• Responsible Travel. With growing concerns about the world around us, people are becoming more aware of their surroundings and the effects that we humans have on our direct and indirect environment. AdventureYogi strives to educate people about caring for their impact on their locality and beyond. This is not force fed but we believe that every little helps. We can all play a part to even if snowboarding or climbing in a France ski resort or surfing on a beach in England.
• Go by train or bus. This is why we have decided to keep our yoga holidays and yoga retreats as local to the UK as possible, so that people can get to us by train or bus and it won’t take 3 days to do it! Sticking to Cornwall is easy overland; France, on the other hand is a little bit more of a push. To make overland travel more appealing we offer incentives such as a FREE treatment (worth £50) of your choice, to relax those muscles after the night train to Bourg-St. Maurice! Remember: Slow travel is the best way to travel! Beautiful landscapes, different cultures and languages…we are missing out on so much by flying.
• Sponsor a charity. To take it one step further, we decided to sponsor a local charity that we believe in and is close to our hearts & philosophy. We also chose them as we are able to track to see where our donations are going to. We chose Sustrans so check it out on or Charity page.
• Eat Organic and Local Food. We love healthy eating and we feel the benefits from it everyday, especially when we slip up at special occasions and over-indulge (yes we are all prone to doing that sometimes!). But the reasoning for being conscious about what we eat is more than just noticing the health benefits; we know that it can foster a healthy awareness of the local economy plus doing our bit to encourage a healthy planet. Hence all the meals we provide will use locally sourced and organic produce where possible.
• Education on local area. We always send out an email to all guests prior to their adventure explaining the local area and what to expect. But as we have streamlined our trips to be only in France & England, the depth of information is not as needed as it used to be. We always organise a trip to the www.edenproject.com when we are in Cornwall, as this is an inspirational place that many people haven’t been lucky enough to go to.
• Supporting the local communities. Buying gifts & local handicrafts is not on most of our guest’s agendas, as they aren’t going very far afield. However, some guests like to buy local produce from the local farmers market – in the form of cheese & wine in France! And in this small way we ensure that this supports the local community. And in Cornwall, the same applies. Gifts normally come in the form of local honey, fudge or presents from the Eden Project.
• Recycling & water consumption. We recycle everything we use within the chalet and villas and also when we are on the being active wherever we may be! We have signage up in all our locations which explains that even though water is not in short supply, it is important not to be wasteful. The things we encourage our guests to think about are: Having showers not baths (especially in the mountains as this reduces the amount of power we need to use to heat the water); Turning off the tap when they brush their teeth; Not filling the kettle to full up when making a cup of tea for 1 or 2 people; Only changing linen once on week-long adventures and not at all on the weekends to minimise power used for washing; Encouraging people to fill up their water bottles, not buying new ones everyday.
For more info on our green travel suggestions for each location please look at our FAQs pages for each adventure or contact us here.
Environmental Considerations
France
Our accommodation is has been lovingly restored to its former glory. Dating back to 1877, it is the perfect example of a traditional French farmhouse. All the restoration work was done by a local carpenter & genius – Jean Paul. All the wood is reclaimed and definitely gives you the wow factor when you walk into the entrance hall.
The farmhouse was heavily insulated during the refurbishment to minimise the amount of heating we use. Also the orientation of the accommodation is ideal, as it’s south facing, so our dominating large windows at the front of the chalet, have a natural greenhouse effect. Plus our under floor heating and roaring open fire in the yoga studio/banquet hall means that minimal heating is needed to keep our stretching & hungry yogis warm.
We are religious about recycling and all our water supply comes straight off the mountain. We compost all food waste and feed it to the happy pigs next door. We encourage guests to be very aware about consuming the minimum amount of energy possible, without going dirty & living in the dark! We also suggest to guests that unless absolutely necessary sheets & towels are not washed daily. And all our cleaning products are naturally, environmentally friendly.
And the most exciting developments for 2010, is that we have applied for a grant to put in Solar panels on the sunny slopes in front of the farmhouse. As we have a large space for them to be installed, it has been calculated that we will be able to not only run the entire farmhouse off them, but also supply local houses in our hamlet with it too. Watch this space.
We are perfectly placed for green travel options. We are a convenient 20 minutes drive up the mountain from Bourg-St-Maurice, which is the rail doorway to The Alps. With lots of train options direct from St Pancreas & Paris – we give you the easy option to be green and just say no to easy jet! And we like to reward our guests who make that extra bit of effort to get to us overland. Every train traveller, receives a free treatment of choice worth £50. So the long journey can be erased from your aching body’s memory by a soothing massage.
However we do understand the time constraints of rail travel so will not be scathing towards fliers! But we actively encourage our guests to think about offsetting their flights. Or even better is to donate to our designated and local charity – Sustrans. As that way we can actually see where your money goes in actively trying to increase people’s awareness on green travel options. We donate 5% of our annual profits to them and hope that our guests will help to increase that percentage with personal gift donations.
Bristol Office/Workshops & UK Retreats
In our little office on Richmond Road we try and be as green as possible. We recycle & compost paper, food, card & plastic thanks to Bristol’s fantastic recycling service. We minimize the need to print/use paper by sending out e-newsletters, invoices & receipts. We buy recycled paper when we need it and our next batch of business cards are going to be printed on recycled card.
The same values continue when on our retreats. The two venues that we use are run by religious recyclers too, so it’s not difficult! Guests are told that they won’t have clean towels every day to minimize electricity use and we use environmentally cleaning products – such as Ecover & EcoFriendly.
We always send open emails out to our guests prior to coming on the retreat, so that people can organize car shares if it’s possible. And we are perfectly placed for train connections in both locations, so encourage people to travel this way. In addition to that we always suggest a particular train arrival time, so that we can organize group taxis back to the retreat.
Cornwall
In Cornwall all the same principles of recycling, minimizing water and energy consumption apply. We chose our venue for it’s stunning views, convenience of rail and road links, buzzing local life, places of interest to visit, proximity to the sea and availability of activities: surf, sailing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, waterskiing, climbing, co-steering. We hope that one day we will be able to own our own eco-retreat there, but at the moment ensuring that we are as energy conscious as possible, is the best way to be.
Economic Considerations
France
We always use local people for everything – from van hire, to cleaners to ski hire and shopping for food. We shop in the local organic supermarket in Bourg-st-Maurice and do as much shopping from the local farmers market as we can. And our milk comes from the farmer & his cows next door! We always take our guests to ‘Chez Marie’ which is quite possibly the most perfect French restaurant. Enjoy sitting back in front of a roaring fire, while ‘la mere’ Marie serves up the finest local cuisine in her sitting room. It doesn’t get any more rustic!
Bristol Office/Workshops & UK Retreats
We always buy all our food for retreats& workshops from our local shops, which we have great relationships with. Organic is used where ever possible and we are very aware about the important of offering seasonal dishes. We choose our suppliers carefully with regards to their ethical/responsible/green policies. And because they closely match our standards our main local suppliers are:
www.pukkaherbs.com – for wonderful yogi teas
www.thebetterfoodcompany.com – eco-friendly cleaning products and for all dried goods eg. Cereal, rice, herbs, spices, soya milk etc
www.nealsyardrememdies.com for all our massage oils
And not to forget our local fruit & veg shop – who don’t have a website : )
Another important decision we made was to do all our banking through award winning and ethical bank – Triodos www.triodos.co.uk. We felt that their values matched ours.
Triodos Bank finances companies, institutions and projects that add cultural value and benefit people and the environment, with the support of depositors and investors who want to encourage corporate social responsibility and a sustainable society. Their Mission statement:
• To help create a society that promotes people’s quality of life and that has human dignity at its core.
• To enable individuals, institutions and businesses to use money more consciously in ways that benefit people and the environment, and promote sustainable development.
• To offer our customers sustainable financial products and high quality service.
Cornwall
Our location in Cornwall is the buzzing all year round community of Polzeath on the north coast… We are spoilt for choice when it comes to local shops. The butcher, the baker, the grocer, the fishmonger – in fact all the shops are fantastic and the quality of locally produced and sourced food is second to none. We can even get all our ‘health food’ products locally, so don’t need to transport a car load of food bought in Bristol. Which obviously we very happy about, as supporting local economies in regions like Cornwall, is very important. And we also deliberately choose to run our weeks not in the high season, so as to ‘spread the wealth’ – as Cornwall is really affected by seasonal business.
