We had an incredibly generous donation from Dunchurch Pantomaniacs.

They have funded our fourth strimmer, a hedge-trimmer, a couple of extra batteries, and five bird-boxes.

This will be so useful in the autumn when we can push the scrub right back, and it is all the same range from Wickes DIY, so the batteries are all interchangeable.

Thank you so much.

We have made a couple of seats for the youth who tend to congregate under The Bear pub bridge.

When it was non-stop raining and it felt like we were living in a monsoon, they decided to try to move one of our picnic benches under the bridge. On finding that it was concreted to the ground, rather than get a spanner and undo the bolts, they decided to smash the seats off and try to make some seating in the dry.

Come on… This was never going to work out in a million years!!

We have salvaged a couple of pallets and made seating. There is no way in a month of Sundays that I am going to spend any money here when I am already down a picnic bench.

So we made this.

Aesthetically, they don’t look great, but these bad boys are as strong as a brace of oxen and are not going anywhere. And we have sanded them so nobody is going to get a ruddy great splinter in their bum…

Youth: If you want seating, talk to me and we can work something out!!

Today, we met at the Cawston Bridleway bridge and everyone carried on strimming northwards, whilst I just gave the top of the bridge a quick snip and trim. We covered about 500 metres today, so pretty impressive.

We make an effort to keep the access points open so people can get on and off. The width is just right along the path.

We had George back with us, who is doing his Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award.

Great to see you again, George, and a good shift put in.

Dave carried on with his bench name-plates.

We have nine picnic benches in total and they now all have names, thanks to Dave.

Whilst on the subject of benches, I noticed a huge clump of nettle-leaved bell-flowers just by Mick’s sunset bench.

Mick found this plant on the bit between the underpass and Berrybanks years ago and it disappeared one summer morning. Mick went on and on and on about it for about three years after. And suddenly here is a clump just by his bench. How odd.

A couple of other wildflowers popping up.

And the view from the little bench by Charlie’s wildflower clearing.

We have had some incredibly generous buy-me-a-coffee donations from Wendy and Pauline last week. I’m not sure if you are trying to kill me off by making me carry more Postcrete down the path, but my initial thought was to replicate the triangle of benches behind Henry Hinde Junior School where a public right of way goes past the school and over the greenway? This will allow the children to do Forest School if they so wish.

And just a reminder – this is the school that I went to and we would wave at the train driver and guard as the train trundled past at break times, back in the 1970’s.

Yes, I really am that old!!

Please let me know if another trio of benches sounds like a good idea.

Dunchurch Bridleway

No workday last week but I found a little bit of time to snip back the bramble that is trying to leap into the middle of the path.

I also found a little bench in the hedgerow, so released it and gave it a bit of woodstain to perk it up a bit.

This is the area that we have done just over 230 metres of path widening and I cleared the bramble on the rest.

There’s a fantastic little coffee stop called Solstice just east of where it pops out, and as you can see, a nice circular walk with off-road car parking to the north-east of the starting point. I’m going to re-do the geocaching trail from the car park, going past the coffee shop and working its way around the circuit, rather than the there-and-back route that currently exists.

I think the red line on the map above needs to be our first goal, and then try to work out how to connect the whole thing with the greenway. All we are looking for is a 1.5 metre wide path.

Football fever has taken over the UK and beating Switzerland in the quarter-finals was a big plus…

It’ll be amazing if we have similar luck in the semi-finals. Nether give up hope…

That’s it for this week. On Friday we are back at Dunchurch and hopefully in the UEFA Euro 2024 Final on Sunday!

Paul