Clow Beck Eco Centre is a recently-opened environment education Centre on the outskirts of Croft, 5 minutes south of Darlington. It is a lovely place to spend time amongst thirty-three acres of woodland, grassland and streams.
The purpose of Clow Beck is to provide visitors with the opportunity to learn about how live a more environmentally-friendly life.
Courses available range from gardening, composting, recycling, cooking, arts and crafts, nature rambles, wood-working and land management.
As well as informing people about living in an environmentally-friendly manner, the Centre prides itself on being an example of best practice. One founding principle is to recycle and re-use materials as much as possible. The main building is built of straw bales and stands on second-hand car tyres. The kitchen where the cooking courses take place is built from stainless steel equipment donated by Beaumont Hill School.
In the vegetable gardens, the raised vegetable beds are made of straw bales and second-hand wooden planks. The compost and manure is donated by local organic farms and supplemented by organic matter produced on site. The Centre operates a simple recycling system with recycling bays separating glass, plastic, aluminium and food waste. Any organic matter is sorted into the composting bays ready for use in the vegetable garden and orchards.
The loos are compost loos which use no water and all the waste is recycled. Rainwater is collected from the gutters into water butts.
In the gardening classrooms, the tables are second-hand construction pallets standing on second-hand tyres and covered in the plastic sheeting used during the construction of the main building. The floor is simply straw. Plastic water bottles are re-used as seedling trays. To line the vegetable beds in the polytunnel rolls of plastic sheeting discarded by the builders during the construction of the main building are used. The beds are also bordered and supported by old scaffolding boards. Many of the vegetables are grown inside simply-constructed towers of second-hand tyres. The bridges in the woodland walk are made from second hand telegraph poles.
The Centre works closely with Darlington Borough Council to raise awareness of the importance of recycling and re-use. For more information, please contact the Centre on 01325 721778 or info@clowbeckecocentre.co.uk.
Clow Beck Eco Centre website [external link]