Earthship UK

An Earthship is a revolutionary form of housing, featuring large south-facing windows to get the winter sun, a huge thermal mass of a back wall, non-load bearing walls made out of plastic bottles and load bearing walls made from earth pounded into old tyres.

They originated in New Mexico but development was held back by local planning restrictions. It wasn't until the chief architect was baws deep in the tsunami rescue effort that the powers that be let him keep his houses.

Anyhoo, in the UK there are two of these Earthships, one in Fife and one in Brighton. The one in Brighton has tours on the first and third Sunday of each month, starting at 10:30am.

We arrived at 10:31am and by the time I'd parked my car we saw the tour party disappear up a hill beyond some gates that had been locked behind them.

What kind of ground breaking environmentally friendly eco-housing do they keep behind barbed wire security fences? I couldn't quite believe it when they set the guard dogs on us that did seem a bit extreme.

I'm not sure about the girl, but I thought 'fucket, I'll build my own' if a bunch of hippies can do it, the so can I.

It was freezing cold round Stanmer Park, but it was kind of nice, so we had a bit of a wander.

There was this beautiful old church thing too, with a frosted up graveyard, next time I shoot a rural horror movie, I should use it.

And this old frozen up pond just crying out for stones to be chucked in to see how thick the ice was.

It was still early morning so we peeled off into Brighton central. There was this chocolate shop, in the window, left over from Christmas was a chocolate baby Jesus.