Last week I was on a fantastic Building With Straw-bales course run by amazonails and held at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), near Machynlleth in Wales. The course was massively inspiring and motivating, to the point that on the train home I ended up eulogising about the virtues of straw building to a young couple (un)lucky enough to be standing in the same vestibule as me on the train between Birmingham's New Street and International. At Birmingham International I met a couple of friends who I was staying the night with, and despite having arrived 2.5 hours late (due to a poor, overworked train from Machynlleth which was overheating "due to the hot weather" that day) I still managed to have a crack at persuading them the best way to build their planned extension was (of course) with straw, before finally giving in to tiredness and need for bed.
I think the rampant evangelical fervour has now calmed slightly, but the course certainly confirmed and amplified everything I'd been suspecting about what a truly genius way to build, straw is. Here's some reasons why:
