Recently OnCourse decided that we would take our responsibility one step further and look at becoming officially Carbon Neutral.

At first glance it all seemed pretty straight forward; we would need an audit doing by a qualified company, which does exist in Uganda.

After the audit we would then know how much carbon we need to offset. The trouble was that we would have to buy carbon credits to do this. This may be through buying credits from tree planting projects that are monitored by the UCB.

But we have 23 Acres of natural forest that every year just keeps growing. It is fenced off so there is very little encroachment. This is our driver training ground. The local wildlife seemed to have moved in as they also feel protected. So you may see the likes of bush buck, red tailed and vervet monkeys, snakes, mongoose and plenty of birds by day. On the night driving sessions we’ve seen serval and civet cats.

We have planted, over the years, a considerable number (well over 4,000) of indigenous trees as well as exotics. And we expect that in 10 years time to be the only section of forest left in our sub-county.

Unfortunately, our own site could not be used to off set our carbon!  We would have to buy credits.  I feel that this is being a little short sited by the companies that provide carbon off sets. We are not a big corporation that is situated in the middle of an industrial site with plenty of money to throw at their conscience. Maybe that’s the problem. As most of the carbon off setters are businesses.

There must be many companies that are in a similar situation to us. That want to go officially neutral but can’t have their own site/facility, which they want to invest in its development, taken into consideration.

So we have decided that this route is not for us. Why buy, as an example only, say 5,000 bucks worth of somebody else’s trees when we could use the money to plant our own on our own land.

So unless something comes up you won’t see OnCourse having an official Carbon Neutral stamp. But you can bet that we’ll continue developing our little patch of tropical forest into not only a haven for the local wild life but into a carbon sink that will easily soak up our own carbon with some to spare hopefully.

We generally go through this process every 2 years and it’s absolutely worth it. It gives me time to cut in camber on the corners and crown the straight.  Our double apex bend now has a nice positive camber; not quite the “wall of death” but getting there! And the main training corner has a definite negative camber to it.

The Skills Area

The skills area also went through the same upgrade and the course has been redesigned to include different corners and reversing sections. Those of you who have gone through it and revisit will find it a bit tougher than before as it’s tighter and requires extreme precision to get the 3 consecutive clear runs.

We recently had some students sail through our Protective Driving course of which the skills area is a major part. You know who you are. Get back here and try this one!!

For those who have completed the Protective Driving module successfully stand by for Part 2.  This will address the refresh and renew skills philosophy we have on driver training.

The Low Range Area

Next on the list is working on our Low Range.  We have already worked on the Sudan Pot Hole.  For those of you who were a bit disappointed that it was unusable due to the amount of rain we had; it is now open. We had to do some major clearing work but again worth it as I think it’s now going to be usable whatever the weather conditions.

Plans are afoot to work on the ascent and descent areas and the wadi crossing section. Watch this space.

The Congo Highway self recovery area has also been upgraded but you can still get stuck!! We are going to include this section in our advanced bush (Low Range) driving course.  You must have already successfully gone through our Low Range and self recovery course to qualify to participate in this one day module.  For those of you who have it’s a great way to renew and refresh your bush diving skills.

This new module will be described and advertised on our web site (which has also been upgraded and looks great) within the next few weeks.

Other Plans

Next on the list is to get our left hand drive training vehicles into shape. At the moment they are still going through some upgrades but should be ready in a few months.

By the end of the year we will have 2 fully functioning and equipped to deal with all our training modules.