Can you make a meal for 17 people with all ingredients sourced from within walking distance? Well, two of us set out to try, and video the experience.

The context was a recent training weekend in Bath of the UK Youth Team preparing to attend the UN Climate Change conference in South Africa in November to December. Could we help counteract their inevitable air miles by providing a minimal food miles meal?

The serious stuff first – what to imbibe? Bath Ales brew between Bath and Bristol, and the manager of their Salamander Arms offered several litres of their popular and seasonal ales from the keg. ‘Collect as late as possible on the day’ he said, ‘to have it near its best’. And wine drinkers? There are two vineyards at Bradford-on-Avon, and Waitrose stock their wine. Quick chat, big smile – one bottle purchased and a second as a goodwill gift.

Now some food to absorb the alcohol! Early preparation included digging potatoes from the Park St guerrilla garden (and they needed digging - the badgers had already started the job!). We supplemented those with more potatoes from Lyn’s garden, which was also the source of some gooseberries for dessert.

The Farmers’ Market was the inevitable first stop on Saturday. Sadly Arcadia Organics are little beyond our ‘walking distance’ limit, but Chris Rich is no more than down the road. Beautiful cauliflowers and lots of other veggies.

Local eggs, milk, butter, cream and cheeses are no problem. We were scratching our heads over salad dressing: definitely no lemon juice or balsamic. Keith Goverd at the Farmers’ Market solved the problem with cider vinegar, along with some juice pressed from apples grown in a garden within five miles of Bath. And all donated – a big ‘thank you’.

We were good on sweet smiles, but what about sweeteners for desserts? It had to be honey, but then we discovered that July was rock-bottom season for local honey - until Harvest came up trumps with honey from Pennsylvania, just north of Bath.

We had both had a really enjoyable day, explaining our task to local traders and finding immense good will and practical support, and a cheery willingness to be videoed. The cooking effort was joined later by the Youth Team themselves, and we all shared the feast.

What had we learnt from the day? People are wonderful (though we knew that already), and we probably could quite easily eat an exceptionally good diet with less than from 5% (oranges, bananas...) sourced from outside the immediate area. Another small step on the Transition path...

You can find out more about the UKYCC team here.