Robin and Louella are confident that they will be proved right in their belief that, in the right place and subject to strict planning regulations, power from the wind, the sun, biomass and water will play a significant part in saving the planet.

Home to the explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison and his wife Louella, Cabilla Manor is a spacious Georgian farmhouse on the edge of Bodmin Moor, run for the last fifteen years as a successful, luxury Bed & Breakfast business.

Built on the site of a Domesday manor, the present house is a listed building built in 1780 and 1820. A working hill farm, it is surrounded by acres of woods and moorland. Horses from the Camargue in Southern France, and sheep and cattle are farmed.

Robin has been involved in environmental campaigning for many years. A founding member and now President of Survival International, which is today the world's leading human rights organisation, campaigning for the rights of indigenous tribal peoples and uncontacted peoples, seeking to help them determine their own future.

In the late 1970s he led the largest scientific expedition to date for the Royal Geographical Society, taking 120 scientists deep into the heart of Borneo for fifteen months to study the tropical rain forest properly for the first time. This expedition, the subsequent scientific papers and Robin's book, Mulu: The Rainforest started the global rainforest movement.

In the late 1990s, Robin created The Countryside Alliance out of three country sports bodies.

Robin has been President of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and is President of the Camel Valley and Bodmin Moor Protection Society and the Cornwall Red Squirrel Project.

After years of campaigning for many causes, Robin and Louella decided last year to invest in renewable energy in, for them, a major way.

• Discretely positioned behind the house is a field array of 50kW of photovoltaic panels supplying electricity to the house and for export to the grid.
• Further up the hill is a 15kW wind turbine. This also supplies electricity to the house and exports to the grid.
• Central heating and hot water are provided through two large Air Source Heat Pumps.
• Robin's son Rupert runs a forestry business, which is developing exciting new forms of biomass production.
• In the deep valley below the house are the remains of ancient mine workings, where there were formerly five water wheels. Plans are in hand to use the existing leat and thirty metre drop to install a 50kW water turbine.

If the plans to install a water turbine come to fruition, this would make Cabilla Manor the only farm in the UK harvesting power from all four elements: Earth, Fire, Wind and Water!

Robin and Louella also drive an all electric, zero emission estate car, making all their travel within Cornwall effectively free.

Robin and Louella (pictured below) admit that it has been a scary time, as the coalition government appeared to waver in its commitment, but they are confident that they will be proved right in their belief that, in the right place and subject to strict planning regulations, power from the wind, the sun, biomass and water will play a significant part in saving the planet.