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Five wildlife superheroes turned out today. Matt, Steve, Martin, Marcus, and Paul. It’s been an emotionally and physically exhausting week for me, so it was really good to just kinda get back to my happy place and regroup a little.

I keep banging on about mental well-being and how we provide a safe space, both within the workgroup, and also connecting with nature and just getting out into the countryside. I kid you not, it works.

We had a few tasks to tackle today. The first was a large tree coming down on the embankment and the top of the tree was pushing into the path.

I had this vision of someone walking along scrolling on their phone and getting poked in the head by one of the branches. So we gave it a gentle snip back, and then a bit more, and then some more.

The gentle pushback became quite brutal in the end. Boys will be boys!!

We made a superb habitat pile that will get full sun. It will drop down as it settles and be full of nooks and crannies for all sorts of wildlife.

The thicker bits of timber will be cut into 5-inch lengths and we will drill a load of holes ranging from 3mm to 10mm into them, and attach them to the south-facing side of trees. These will then become fantastic sites for different types of bees to lay eggs.

We might end up with our very own bee colony!

After the tree was despatched we broke for breakfast, or lunch, or brunch??

I had to be reminded to take a photo of the bacon after a couple of rashers had been served up. Yeah, we were hungry. The view here is pretty decent, so we enjoyed it.

Another annoying tree that had fallen across the path was quickly despatched with Ian’s saw.

We will be putting in a funding application in May for more of these saws. They go through branches like a hot knife through butter.

We also set about giving some of our benches a fresh coat of wood stain.

There are plenty more to do so it will take a month or so to get them all re-stained and looking fresh. The last thing that we want is to be offering manky seating and tables to our end users, who might want to use them for a rest or a picnic.

If I was having a picnic I would hope that it would look something like this…

Yes, one is allowed to dream now and again. The grim reality is that it would be a coffee from my flask and a bacon roll, probably.

It was nice to see the path starting to dry out, and loads of dappled sunlight, on the section from the underpass to Berrybanks.

We’re in a deep cutting here, so when this starts to dry, we kinda know that the transition from winter to spring is happening.

This is what we get when we clear back a line up the bank of the cutting, so shafts of sunlight hit the ground. I’m hoping that I remember this in September and we can do some coordinated thinning-out. When it greens up the cover will become a lot more dense.

Lastly, I was lucky enough to see a beautiful red sky from Mick’s sunset bench in the last week.

Mick would come down to this spot just to catch the sunset most evenings.

A good old boy who we all miss dearly.

That’s it for this week. Next week we are back at Berrybanks just doing a final tidy-up, and sticking a bench in, so people can sit and listen to the water as it flows into the drain and meanders its way to the River Avon.

Until then!

Paul