Cawston Greenway

We had the forecast rain on the weekend. All ten minutes of it…

Everything is bone dry, and the word “drought” is used more and more frequently.

Ten crazy team members turned out this morning in the blistering heat. Matt, Steve, Marcus, Dave, Mark, David, Ram, Andrew, Paul, and a cameo appearance from Pat.

We had two main tasks today.

Replace an old bench that got wrecked with something a bit more permanent.

Clear the path down to the temporary right-of-way that connects with Dunchurch Bridleway.

The Bench:

In the past we have always bought timber in 2.4-metre lengths. This seemed like a good way to use all of the wood, with a 1.2-metre seat and 60 cm legs. A 45 cm seat height means we are putting 20 cm into the ground. This is probably fine in a garden setting, but in a public space, the naughty squirrels can kick them over if they are having a particularly bad day.

Trying to be cost-effective is actually costing us more in the long term, both in monetary terms and the emotionally-draining repair work, so we have gone for a 3-metre length of timber, so the legs can go way deeper, and we have reinforced the top and leg-ends.

The cost of the tanalised timber is £7.74 + £1.00 for the brace + screws £1.25, so we are still able to knock them out for about £10. The brackets and washers add another £8 (bulk buy would bring this down to under £5), and I’m not sure if this is a bit of overkill. Time will tell.

Digging the deep hole was fun with our new auger tool.

Let’s hope that destroying the benches causes more pain than gain…

And an important life lesson can be learnt – if you wreck the thing that you are supposed to sit on, then you will have to sit on the floor like a 1st grader in school assembly.

The Path:

We got to the end.

The “end” being the off-ramp that takes the path across no-man’s-land and connects with the temporary right-of-way that leads to the bridleway.

It’s always a stretch to do this bit because it is so far away.

I have written to the Paths Department at Warwickshire County Council asking them to consider making this a proper right-of-way… Who knows how it will all turn out?

A decent coffee and Oreo biscuit break.

In the background, the farmers are bringing in the harvest.

I don’t know what it is, but there is something awesome about the harvest.

Massive thank you to Michaela for the buy-me-a-coffee last week. Very much appreciated.

Dunchurch Bridleway:

Just me and Ian last Friday, but we managed to strim the bracken back and keep the path open on this middle section of the bridleway.

We also cleared an area for our rebuilt bench.

Magnificent views over the fields, and this bench just makes the bench-spacing along the path kinda equal.

Oh, is that my OCD knocking at the door…?

Here is the map that shows the whole route and how it connects with the greenway.

There’s a public footpath back through the woods to make a triangle loop, but we don’t do anything with that.

And here are the positions of the six benches.

The thick red line is a new road going in, the blue line is the west side of the bridleway and a temporary Public Right of Way, and the yellow line is potentially a new Public Right of Way. We might end up abandoning the blue part of the bridleway if the other way works better; hence, no benches along that bit.

And here are the actual benches, east to west.

It’s a nice place to be, peaceful and good for a bit of self-reflection, with loads of public pathways going into the woods to make short circular walks if desired.

Lastly, we did the usual litter-pick, this time on the north end of the greenway.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for being here if you got this far…

Next one is at the Quadrant benches, replacing the kicked-over bench, and adding a bench that Andrew, who makes the bird boxes, had made for us a little further south.

I’m looking forward to getting the broken one fixed up and back in action.

Until next time!

Paul