One thing I love about my work is coming into contact with many amazing projects and concepts.

Site visit

Last week I visited a stunning log cabin in East Devon. My clients Devondale Electrical were involved with the building of the cabin, supplying the electrical kit after winning a competitive tender. I went to meet Devondale’s Kevin Coles and RSPB East Devon Nature Reserve Warden, Toby Taylor to help me write a press release and case study about the project.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to find, but the cabin is an extraordinary building; made from trees felled on a nearby reserve. The trees were peeled, cleaned and assembled in Woodways yard, before being brought to the site and pieced together, like a jigsaw I imagine. The trunks are huge – this is a very solid-feeling cabin.

What’s more, the site is committed to using renewables. A biomass boiler provides the heating (fed by logs from the reserve), solar panels give much of the electricity needed (especially in the summer of course), and they are also using rainwater harvesting. The lighting is LED low energy lighting – provided by Devondale, of course.

The cabin provides accommodation for self-funded volunteers as well as a training room and meeting area on a mezzanine. It’s all beautifully hand-crafted and made me think that if I ever wanted to move away from PR, I might go and work for the RSPB – as long as I could stay in the cabin!

It’s a small world

While I was there, site manager Richard Bowmer kindly gave me the lowdown while he was finishing off a fireplace. Once again I was reminded that Devon is a small world. When I asked Richard if he was anything to do with Bowmers Restaurant in Budleigh, lo and behold he told me he’s married to the owner, Claire who I met a few months ago when I popped in to talk about their social media.

My visit was on the day that Devon battled with flooding once again (you can see the rain in the main photo), and my return from the cabin was a nightmare of impassable roads with abandoned cars floating in flood water. Being local, I knew of a back way to try, and snuck up through Gittisham before battling my way back uphill into Buckerell. A dramatic end to the morning, but I still had enough time to start work on the case study when I finally got back to the office.