How Many Blokes Does it Take to Build a Bench?

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We had a super donation from a lovely lady called Jacquie this week in the form of a bench, and enough buy-me-a-coffee hits to pay for the postcrete to fix it into the ground, and then bacon for our “first workday of the month” scran for easily the rest of the year.

Thank you so much, Jacquie.

Eight of us wildlife heroes turned out on this super sunny morning. Marcus, Ian, Martin, Steve, Matt, Reece, Dave, and Paul, and after lugging all of our gear onto the path we split into two groups. The first group had to go and get the bench and the second group had to find a good location for it. Not sure if we had done much wildlife stuff at this point.

The bench had been taken apart and restained, so we had to rebuild it.

The old joke – “how many blokes does it take to build a bench” was pretty forthcoming…

I won’t mention how many attempts – what happens on the greenway stays on the greenway…

But we eventually got there, and the bench now sits in a pleasant little clearing with decent views down the path.

What a beautiful spot to sit and watch the butterflies as they dance in the shafts of sunlight, and listen to the constant chorus of birdsong.

Whilst the five of us wrestled with the bench and bags of postcrete, Steve, Marcus, and Ian carried on with the strimming to stop the vegetation doing a triffid-like invasion of the path.

We can now see how the zones are starting to work. Path, short margin, wildflower-rich grassy margin, scrub, and trees, as we move towards the edge.

In my mind, the wildflower bit needs to be much wider, so we will be pushing the scrub further back in the autumn. But, oh my days, it’s such a nice place to be.

We enjoyed a caffeine boosting cuppa and flapjack quite late in the morning.

I keep saying it – it’s so good to bond, with coffee, shared food, and rolling up our sleeves and just getting on with the tasks.

I did a quick YouTube to try and show where we are at.

It makes me feel as proud as a peacock that we have created this. Honestly, it was an unofficial rubbish dump when we first started some 16 years ago.

And even the gift that keeps on giving has stopped being so generous.

Brilliant news!!

Next week, we are at Potford Dam, grubbing out brambles from our new scallops and we get to see what Marcus has up his sleeve… On Friday, we are on the Dunchurch path, keeping the connection working.

And next week being the first workday of the month can only mean one thing – BACON!!