LAMANCHA business Bread Matters have received a gold star award - for green tourism.

Andrew Whitley has helped change the way Britain thinks about bread and now teaches baking at his home in Lamancha, West Linton.

And Bread Matters was assessed last week for the first time by the Green Tourism Business Scheme and achieved the Gold Award for its sustainable practices.

The assessor was impressed by a commitment to renewable energy, collaboration with local enterprises, and Andrew's joined-up approach to producing food, fuel and shelter from the five-acre smallholding.

Andrew told the Peeblesshire News: "We're delighted to have got Gold first time as we are still relatively new and it shows that with a little bit of planning and application businesses can reduce their carbon footprint. And it's gratifying that our customers fully support us too." Andrew and wife Veronica Burke have taken every measure to reduce the carbon footprint of their bread making courses and to minimise their impact on the environment.

A first step was to establish a network of local places for their course participants to stay and then arrange free transport, using local taxi firms to take everyone to and from Macbiehill Farmhouse. This reduces the number of car journeys and adds to visitors' enjoyment of their stay in the area.

The couple have also installed renewable energy systems and buy electricity only from renewable supply. A rain water harvesting system flushes the toilets and waters the vegetables.

The couple re-use and recycle everything possible, compost vegetable waste and even use egg shells as slug control.

Andrew and Veronica are both founding members, and Veronica is a director, of Breadshare Community Interest - a community-supported bakery based at Whitmuir Organic Farm.

Veronica said: "It isn't difficult to give people delicious food that they will be talking about enthusiastically for weeks, if you start with the vital, fresh and natural ingredients that are available locally.

"Add some fantastic bread made right here in our wood fired oven, and a few fairly traded ingredients from further afield, and you've contributed to a lot of livelihoods," she concluded.