Thanks to Warwickshire County Council, and Rugby Borough Council, we won a grant for two picnic benches towards the northern end of the path. This means that our end-users on this part of the path can enjoy the same benefits as the end-users down the southern end.

Today was all about creating the spaces for these benches.

As you can see, we have made a little modification to help direct people to the blog and hopefully encourage more people to see what we are up to and join in.

My nerdiness quite likes the fact that people will sit down at the picnic tables, type the greenway address into their phone and read about the very picnic tables that they are sitting at!! Does that sound a bit weird?? Welcome to how my brain works!!

We have two very different sites for the benches.

The first one is south of Berrybanks where everything is reasonably flat, but massively dense scrub.

It’s really important to get the benches positioned in sunlight with no overhanging trees. If branches are overhanging we end up with bird poo all over the things, and they also never get a chance to dry out, so become a mildewy green that puts a horribly damp stripe on people’s bottoms if they sit down.

This one was quite easy to get the sun to work with us.

The second bench is north of The Bear pub and in very deep cutting, so proved a little more challenging.

We created a clear area up the bank so when the bench goes in, there will be a shaft of sunlight on it. Probably dappled as you can see from the photos, but if we just keep nudging it back, the sunlight will be better and better for the bench.

We also litter-picked a big bag of rubbish whilst we were out and about on the trail today. I would like to think that people have a thought process that goes something like – hmm, this is nice and litter-free. I will take my litter home with me. Sadly, this does not happen…

And that was really that for today. Just a lot of preparation for the next two weeks when the benches actually go in.

However, there is more news to share…

We have another new country tuning-in. Eswatini (previously Swaziland) in Southern Africa.

Quick Facts:

Eswatini, formally the Kingdom of Eswatini and formerly named Swaziland is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its north, west, south, and southeast. At no more than 200 km (120 mi) north to south and 130 km (81 mi) east to west, Eswatini is one of the smallest countries in Africa; despite this, its climate and topography are diverse, ranging from a cool and mountainous highveld to a hot and dry lowveld.

The population is composed primarily of ethnic Swazis. The prevalent language is Swazi. The Swazis established their kingdom in the mid-18th century under the leadership of Ngwane III. The country and the Swazi take their names from Mswati II, the 19th-century king under whose rule the country was expanded and unified; its boundaries were drawn up in 1881 in the midst of the Scramble for Africa. After the Second Boer War, the kingdom, under the name of Swaziland, was a British high commission territory from 1903 until it regained its full independence on 6 September 1968. In April 2018, the official name was changed from Kingdom of Swaziland to Kingdom of Eswatini, mirroring the name commonly used in Swazi.

Somebody got a bit shirty with me for “collecting” countries on the blog readership. I don’t know why. It is challenging to do but also really rewarding to learn about other countries in far away places with radically different cultures and stuff. Go back up and re-read the geek bit and that might help you to understand…

And lastly, We have been nominated for CAVA Award!!!!

How exciting is that!!

Well that is it for this week. Lots of investment going in at the northern end so hopefully people will be happy about that. Do join in if you feel like you want to, or become a Patron to keep us fully stocked up with coffee and biscuits.

It’s gonna be a tough couple of weeks as we hit Autumn, humping heavy stuff up and down the path, but it will be worth it.