Eight wildlife warriors made it today (Marcus, Reece, Dave, Ian, Steve, Nathan, Martin and Paul) and we thought we might try something a bit different on the first workday of each month.

We’re a pretty well-bonded group, but we thought we might like to get even more bonded and share some greenway brunch once a month.

I put out the call for help in the local village, and The Butcher’s of Bilton came to our rescue.

They gave us a huge pack of bacon. To be honest I have never seen so much of the stuff.

It was a beautiful moment. The bacon was cooked in batches and tasted so good. It was such a brilliant thing to do. Please click on The Butcher’s of Bilton to see their facebook page. They do some amazing hot food, breakfasts and of course, meat. Please try the bacon – it’s out of this world for flavour.

Once again, thank you so much for keeping the troops fed.

We cracked on with the scalloped pockets between the bench and the bridge. We have made them really deep to maximise the shelter for wildlife and get as much sunshine as possible.

We raked up the brash to give the seeds in the ground a chance to germinate. It’s already happening in the scallops that we created a few weeks ago.

My wildflower identifier is saying it’s Fragrant Bedstraw. We will see when it eventually flowers, but good to see that we now have “path – grassy edge – wildflower rich margin – scrub”. We just need to be really careful not to strim into the scallops.

The views up and down are lovely with the autumn colours.

Even on a dull day like today, it’s just a great place to be.

Here is our YouTube showing the scallops and progress.

When it all greens up it will simply blend together perfectly.

I did a bit earlier in the week and also started putting up our new bird nesting boxes.

Hanging off a ladder with a nesting box in one hand and an electric screwdriver in the other is probably not the best look, but coffee and biscuits made it worthwhile.

Dunchurch Bridleway

We had our Friday workday on the Dunchurch bit and covered about 200 metres.

We’re doing our best to bring as many of the mature trees into play as we can. It just makes it so much more interesting and a real pleasure to walk or cycle along.

I’m liking this bit very much as it starts to shape up and the path breaking out into wider glades before meandering onwards.

Winvic, the contractor doing the construction work have cleared the connecting path.

The two paths that we look after are now connected, via public right-of-ways and permissive paths.

This is such good news and what we have been waiting for. People can now walk or cycle between Cawston and Dunchurch on a completely safe off-road route. This is what “Connecting Communities” and “Active Travel” actually mean on the ground.

I’m really happy that the link is working again between the two paths.

That’s it for this week.

Until next time!

Paul