If you are viewing through the WordPress Viewer click on cawstongreenway.co.uk for a far better experience.

It’s the first day of spring today. Personally, I don’t go by the 1st March date because nothing really seems to happen until about now. Five wildlife heroes donned their capes and made it out today, and three yesterday. Steve, Reece, Martin, Dave, and Paul, today, and Ian, Steve, and Paul, yesterday.

The first of our blossoms came out to greet us. A Cherry-plum, which has rather nice fruit later in the year, so I am told.

Yesterday we did a little bit of work on the last wet bit of Berrybanks.

Water is leaching from somewhere and just puddling up across the entry path.

I tried to build up the level but it just turned into a mudbath.

We found some abandoned pipe and used it to carry the water under the path.

It seems to be working!! We threw a load of brash onto the wet mud to help it all dry out and give the ground a bit of strength. It really is just a trickle, but annoying.

We enjoyed a cuppa and then tidied up the main pond.

We saw freshwater shrimp in the bottom pool, which was a nice treat.

A very rewarding morning.

Today we continued with re-staining the benches.

A very welcome sausage and fried onion roll was had at break-time, along with a good slurp of hot coffee.

Sausages starting to brown up nicely on our camping stove. I forgot to take a photo of them fully cooked because I was way too busy stuffing my face.

We have four benches left to do on this southern end, which will be next week’s job.

We can see how scabby they have become because we missed the stain at the end of last summer.

This brings us nicely onto the To Do List 2024/25

The only thing we didn’t do was re-stain the benches ready for winter. So the To-Do List works and I have started jotting a few things down for 2025/26. Feel free to take a look and let me know your thoughts or indeed, anything that needs to be added.

We also litter-picked the southern end of the path. 4.6 km covered.

That’s 6,000 steps and a lot of bending and reaching…

We saw our first butterfly of the 2025 season as we walked back to the entrance.

A Brimstone. We also had a visit from a big furry red-tailed bumblebee. I have a feeling this year will be a good one for wildlife!

Next one is Friday on the Dunchurch trail.

Until then!

Paul