It feels like, another month, another full moon, and this week we witnessed the last full moon of the year. The Cold Moon, so called because it signifies the start of the long and chilly winter. The bitterly cold nights, followed by the weak sun that literally seems to drag itself up out of bed every morning with the tiniest glimmer of warmth.

Spiritually, the Cold Moon is a time for reflection and rest, time to recharge our bodies, minds and souls. Making peace with conflict and creating harmony within ourselves.

It’s also our last workday for what is Season 14 of this great adventure. We have had fun doing woodworking projects, overhauling our bird-boxes, really getting into recycling, and setting out our intentions with the path width. We have sold merchandise with our logo on, drank gallons of coffee from our new all-terrain mugs and eaten so many biscuits and cookies that it’s amazing that I’m not a stone heavier than last year – oh, hang on!!

We battled yet another storm. This one is called Storm Gerrit and brought the usual torrential cats-and-dogs rain that seem to be as common as the full moons.

If you look at the Met Office map, you can see that the God of Weather was smiling down on us. Whilst just about everywhere else was battening down the hatches, we had a little oasis amongst the stormy madness.

For this last one, we are still fighting to get around the flood water that keeps spewing out of the Berrybanks culvert. The whole thing might dry up in the summer, so I’m really conscious of how much time and effort we invest here, but on the flip side, if it does dry up, we have created a really decent platform for us to work on the south-facing embankment next year.

Once we punch through with the path, we can then work on the flow of the water so it stops pooling up, or get it to pool on the other side and allow the path side to remain dry. It all looks very soggy at the moment because of the incessant rain.

A cheeky little YouTube for people who like to see vids rather than fots…

A few people came along today and seemed happy with where we are at, and a scurry of squirrels took a glancing interest as they hunted for nuts and berries.

We stopped for coffee and cookies at the half-way point.

And this is where we made the group decision to battle on with this end of the path to get the job fully finished. I don’t normally like to spend too much time on the same section because it starts to feel like we get a bit bogged down, but I think we just want to see it through to the bitter end.

Obviously this is going to impact the work that we do at the other end, but once this end is done and we keep on top of it, it’s never going to suck up so much of our time and effort again.

Well that’s about it for this week, this month, and indeed, this year. It’s been great fun and has stretched our skills, or forced us to learn new stuff, we always have a great laugh and the path is always evolving.

Next year we have our rustic bench to make and put in, we also have George who will be doing his Duke of Edinburgh early next year. We have a bench from Andrew, who makes the bird-boxes, for George to install. The bench has to have a decent view so that will be an interesting challenge. There’s loads of other good stuff in the pipeline so watch this space.

And lastly, if you like the look of what we do, come along and give it a go.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year and looking forward to shaking off the Crimbo Limbo, where nobody seems to know what day it is, and cracking on in 2024!