I was fortunate to meet Jonna (pronounced Yo-Na), who came to the shop to get a Magura disc rotor last week. (They work better on Magura brakes as they’re slightly thicker than Shimano discs).
She’s a wind farm engineer and she’s on a 2 year bike trip around Europe.
She’s visiting places on her trip to find out about how localities are going about converting to the new electric power shift, and how or if those communities are accepting and indeed adapting their behaviour because of this new technology. She’s also finding out about what technologies work best in different landscapes and climate zones across our continent
From my perspective it was inspiring to hear from her that there were many different renewable energy solutions happening all across Europe. It was also inspiring to hear she’s now cycled about 18,000kms if I remember correctly. From her home in Germany, north through Denmark to Norwary almost touching the artic circle, then back down through Sweden, Lithuania, Poland, Austria and Italy. Then she cycled the whole of the Mediterranean coastline of France and Spain, ending up in the Algarve. In Portugal she went north on an inland route and across to Madrid. From there she headed straight up north to Santander where she caught the Plymouth bound ferry. She did the ‘coast to coast’ Plymouth to Barnstaple route, and headed to Hinckley Point to find out more about Europe’s biggest nuclear power project but no one there really wanted to say very much about it
Luckily through my father who lives in Fishguard I was able to put her in touch with Transition Bro Gwaun, who a few years ago built a wind turbine with funding from locals amongst others. I believe my father gets a payout each time the wind blows! One of the perks of community energy?
She is going to visit the Transition Fishguard members and talk to them, (by cycling route 4 from Bath to Fishguard) to find out what they’re doing now and see how renewable energy is going from strength to strength there. At least they will talk to her, which makes me wonder why the nuclear people weren’t forthcoming
She has an amazing touring bike, which are pretty rare in the UK. It’s got a gearbox called Pinion, which is essentially maintenance free, with no chain with zero maintenance belt. I understand Pinion was founded by some ex Porsche employees, good on them! We have Pinion bikes in the UK but they all are sports mountain bikes. I can’t think of one touring bike from the UK with this system.
Good luck and best wishes to Jonna on her cyCLIMATEngineer project, as she described it in her email to me.
Great Post! jonna sounds like an inspiration on a fascinating journey. It’s cool to see a renewables engineer taking a local, bike’s-eye-view of larger systemic issues. Cool stuff!
Great post! Cool to see a renewables engineer taking a local view of bigger issues from the saddle of a bike. Great stuff
Yes it certainly got me looking deeper, in fact I learnt that Transition Bro Gwaun with it’s profits from a wind turbine have been able to find all sorts of ecological projects, all on their website.