You may have noticed a new tab above called “Hawthorn Trail”. This is the 220 metre secondary path that we created that stops that kinda walking out and then back again, along the same path. I don’t know about you, but I hate having to walk back the same way that I came. A circular walk is, in my mind, a much better option.

However, a circular walk on a linear disused railway-path is obviously a little bit of a challenge. So last year we rolled-up our sleeves and created the Hawthorn Trail to create an incredibly elongated, but nonetheless, circular bit.

Sustrans, the land-owners, are really into hedges and wildflowers. What we have here is a path along a rough edge, that we can slowly turn into a hedge, that will support a huge number of birds, small mammals and insects, which is next to a wildflower meadow that is absolutely buzzing with bees, hoverflies, butterflies and any other insect-life that you care to think of.

Today we decided to give it a bit of a trim and work out what we might like to do with it over the winter. I created a YouTube of it so you can get an idea of where we are at.

And before anyone starts worrying about disturbing the existing wildlife, there was nothing here apart from a thick canopy of trees that were all the same age and type, that being Hawthorn, and just gloomy darkness underneath.

We had a mob of angry squirrels attack one of our little benches this week. Obviously a case of too much fighting-juice, again, so we did a quick repair.

We have our little helpers, due to the never-ending school summer holidays!

Halfway through the repairs and snipping back, we enjoyed a coffee and macaroon. We thought about doing a litter-pick but there wasn’t any, which is pretty amazing.

And here are a couple of photos of the wildflower meadow that we are next to. I really want to get away from the green tunnel feel that we always seem to end up with at this time of the year, and bring in more light, decent views, make it more airy so people feel safer and the more open it is, hopefully the less vandalism we will get.

It’s gone a little bit over, now, but who on earth would not want to walk next to a proper wildflower meadow with a decent hedge. The wildlife is incredible and the urban backdrop is fine. We have arable crop fields galore on the other side, so it creates a lot of diversity. We might knock together an owl box in our workshop and pop it up somewhere. It will need to be 4-plus metres high, so that might present a challenge, but you know us lot, we love a challenge.

You may recall me wittering on about the flooding at the culvert at the other end, back towards the end of last month. Well England being England and summer being, well, a bit of a wash-out, I took the opportunity to see what was happening with the culvert whist the monsoon came down last Sunday.

The run-off from the new housing estate is immense and the culvert is probably blocked a bit, looking at the measly dribble coming out of the other end. What to do? I really don’t know. The thought of getting on my hands and knees to look down the pipe fills me with absolute horror!!

A YouTube of the volume of water.

I’m sure we will work something out, somehow.

For my fellow geeks, here is an updated world map with the countries that tune in, shaded in pink. A bit better that last time I looked, which was about 6 weeks ago.

We really need to nail Greenland. It’s just screaming out to go pink!!

That’s it for this week.

Until next time!