Church Links

Holy Trinity, Cleeve wins Green Church of the Year 2007

Holy Trinity recently entered the National Green Church Awards sponsored by the Church Times (the worlds leading Anglican weekly newspaper). They were successful in two categories - 'Campaigning to Cut Carbon' and (as a consequence of its range of environmental activities) the overall First Prize winner "Green Church of the Year". Part of the focus for this award was the Court de Wyck walking bus scheme.

Rev Cathy Horder -

"In 2005 Holy Trinity Church won an award as the first Ecocongregation in the Diocese of Bath & Wells. We had begun our eco-programme in 2002 with various projects in and around the church. After winning this award we began to look for ways in which we could work with the community of Cleeve in creating a more sustainable lifestyle. We had an evening in which we showed the Al Gore film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and this was followed by a public meeting at Cleeve Village Hall to see if we could find ways of reducing our carbon footprint in this village.

The idea of the Walking Bus was initiated by Chair of Governors Dave Mortimer. It developed out of the School Travel Plan which he had formulated with the help of other governors. After consultation with North Somerset Council and appropriate training, we began the Bus after Easter 2006.

At first we only had five children, but by the end of the summer term it had risen to eleven. In April 2007 national walk-to-school week took place and we decided to run the bus every day during that week. From that the impetus to run it regularly on three days a week grew (Tues/Wed/Thurs). There have been fluctuations in numbers, but during the sunnier months we had over thirty children on our books. Our ambition is to run the Bus five days a week, so we are looking for six more volunteers to cover Mondays and Fridays!!!

As a result of all the things going on at Holy Trinity, the Walking Bus and our petition against the expansion of Bristol Airport we won the overall best church of the year award."

Congratulations to Holy Trinity from all at Court de Wyck