Yep, two more weeks of the Bird Nesting Season. Two more weeks of twiddling our thumbs doing not a lot. Just snipping back bramble runners that try and invade the open space that is the path, fixing benches and picking up the litter from the hoi polloi who seem utterly unable to take their rubbish home with them.
I suppose we could go all David Bellamy and start creeping through the undergrowth doing insect and plant identification and recording, but to be honest, it takes a special kind of person to be doing this. Someone with oodles of time and the patience of a saint.
Sadly, none of us are like this. Well I say sadly but I don’t really mean it. I am not sad about it because I could not bear to be into such tediously slow stuff. But hats off to people like David, and all the others, who can spend hours and hours studying these things.
So today we started at the underpass and worked southwards and back. That’s 1-mile out and 1-mile back again.
We litter-picked a bin-liner of rubbish. Beer cans, plastic bottles, food containers and the like. It wasn’t that bad considering it’s the school summer holidays, so we shouldn’t complain too much.
We also snipped back bramble to keep the path wide and the views open.
And we strimmed under all the benches.
If the grass is long, I guarantee that there are gonna be critters in there who will shoot up your trouser leg and start munching on your calf, or your thigh, or worse, as quick as anything. Obviously, we want our end-users to have a brilliant time when they visit the greenway, so we try to make it as pleasant as possible. If you are susceptible to insect bites, you might like to tuck your trouser bottoms into your socks.
We need to re-stain the benches but I am holding off whilst I have children in tow. It’s all fun and games until someone gets a bit over-enthusiastic and starts splattering everyone else with poo-brown coloured wood-stain.
Which leads us nicely onto the bench maintenance. The rectangle picnic benches need some attention.
The wood, whist obviously rotting in places where the damp has got in, seems relatively strong and pretty sound. Rather that replacing the slats, I might go for a plastic wood-filler and see it we can get a few more years out of what we have. I don’t know. I can work out what the lesser cost will be and decide then.
Our wildflower glades are absolutely alive with bees, butterflies, hoverflies and the like. It’s a joy to behold and you cannot help but admire the insects diligently working away, like they have done for thousands and thousands of years, and just keeping nature on a constant and continuous cycle.
Well that’s about it for this week. Next week we are doing the same as this week, starting at the same place, but working northwards, and the week after that we are at Potford Dam doing the same again. And then the fun really starts. We want to do loads of work on the Hawthorn Trail and really get the hedge working for wildlife, but also make it really obvious that it’s an alternative, and just as good, path.
As I mentioned last week, we have a grant from Warwickshire County Council for two round picnic benches on the Bilton end of the path. I need to line up all the ducks to get this to happen as seamlessly as possible. As I am sure you can imagine, there is a lot of humping of heavy stuff and a lot of stuff that needs to happen in a sequence that goes like this – concrete in ground, steel lugs set in concrete, legs of benches attached to lugs with security bolts that can never be undone, and everything flat and level. It’s my worst nightmare, to be honest!!
Next week we will be working out the two areas for these benches.
Until then!
Cawston Greenway 
Top job. I had no idea there was so much maintenance involved!
Turn your back for a minute and the blooming brambles are in there!!! 😉
An endless supply of jam 😉
Yummy 😋
Good job. Real work. I think Bellamy would approve 💐
Ah, thank you. I hope he is looking over us with a nod of approval 😉
That all sounds wonderful, especially the presence of bees.
Yes, it is lovely to watch them working away 😀
Beautiful post
Ah, thank you 😊
You have a lovely conversational style of writing and I feel prompted to remark on quite a few things… It’s baffling to me as to why people don’t look after their own litter although it is tons better here in the UK than where I lived in South Africa…. The wildflower glades look fabulous, very inspiring…
I don’t know much about brambles. Do you just trim them off at the ends where they are encroaching or do you try to cut the whole branch/cane off closer to the roots… Or are these little plants coming up? And lastly I wish you all the best on your woodwork maintenance.
Oh thank you. Brambles should be cut right back to the root every 4th year or they get very leggy and don’t produce much fruit after year 3. We enjoy the woodwork bits a little too much 😉
We also have a lot of birds here in Berlin, no problem to do bird watching downtown or on our balcony. Near Brandenburg Gate at Tiergarten Park you may find the colorant kingfishers for example. It sounds crazy but
living conditions are good for wild animals here due to a lot of green areas here in the city (more than 35 % of the total area). Best regards @ Ulli
Great to hear 🙂
Here you will find information about a very special bird
I was lucky to see it once in my life 🎃 Ulli
Wow that’s colourful 🙂
Oh man. You are really lucky to have such a beautiful environment around you! morden technology has just made the world a sphere of metal and concrete.
Thanks, it was literally a dump when we started 14 years ago. We pulled out so much rubbish 😭
Lol. I really appreciate your work man, you are cleaning the earth that most of the people don’t even think about , I don’t really believe in god but I’m sure that if heaven and hell consept is real, then men like you will be the one to enter heaven!
You are also kindly invited to join my international digital project on clinate change as detailed here
Everybody can participated as it concerns the whole world. Why is homo sapiens so stupid? A possible approach and beginning – an international campaign has just started here, by letter and email, but also via global mailart- and networker-platforms in this regard worldwide. All is possible if we will just try it!
Cheers,
Ulli from Berlin
Well written! Very well written! Thank you
Ah, thank you. I try to entertain 😀
Nice 👍
🙂
I’m wowed
Wow!! Thank you 🙂
Hi! I haven’t been able to unearth a link to follow your blog. Where do I go?
If you put http://www.cawstongreenway.co.uk into Google it will ask if you want to follow 👍