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Eight wildlife heroes turned out this week. George, Steve, Dave, Ian, David, Martin, Reece, and Paul. We had a task on our hands that has been on the “To Do List” for about five or more years. We cut back a load of hawthorn trees ages ago and fully intended to come back and “tidy up” the stumps.

They have bugged me ever since.

Cutting back (pollarding) Hawthorn trees not a good idea because they will produce a lot of spindly growth that is difficult to manage and really unhealthy for the tree. Branches become interlocked and start rubbing against each other, leading to infection and disease.

I have always thought that if someone was unfortunate to come off their bike, they could end up doing a faceplant right on top of the things.

And aesthetically, it doesn’t look great.

We have also started pushing the edge of the path back by about 12 inches. We need a buffer between the path and the wildflower-rich grassy zone.

It stops the path from becoming narrow and also allows the vegetation to flop at the end of the summer and not come onto the path. Nothing worse than nettles brushing against your shins.

At half-time, we broke for coffee.

We had a bit of a French flavour to our break this week. Lovely biscuits and a lovely view up, down and to the side.

We have had kids playing and making dens.

This really warms my heart. We want the trail to be open to everyone, and this is so good to see.

We also litter-picked.

The gift that keeps on giving. Would be nice to earn some womble wages now and again, but never found so much as a 20p piece…

We need to use this time of the year to work out where our next glades will be. Ideally, we want about 15 metres of open space with the scrub cut right back and the majority of the trees on the edge laid into a hedge. We need young trees that are easy to manage. There is no point trying to chop back a 50-year-old oak tree when we have young hawthorn and elder everywhere.

If we have a mature tree, we can build the glade around it by cutting back to the south of it. That way, the tree will complement the glade without blocking out a load of sunlight.

We can mark the areas using what3words so we know where to come back in the autumn.

I’m really happy with how we are looking. The amount of footfall was good today, with people walking and cycling past, so it is getting used.

Sadly, some idiotic squirrel decided to break our bench on the Dunchurch Bridleway bit, so a quick repair was required.

I didn’t want to leave it until our Friday workday because it’s the school holidays and I didn’t want to risk bits going walkabout whilst we wait until we are there.

Super day today, it really does feel like somewhere special.

On Friday, we are strimming back the path to Solstice Coffee Shop, and next week we are at the Cawston Bridleway bridge removing a couple of stumps and strimming the path edge northwards to where we got to today.

Thank you to all of our patrons and people buying us a coffee. It really does help.

Until next time!

Paul