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Six of us turned out today as a rag-tag group of wannabe lumberjacks. Reece, Ian, Matt, Steve, Martin, and Paul. Actually, that is a total fib – none of us wanted to be playing at lumberjack stuff after the first five minutes of a very frustrating and incredibly testing hour.

We made a fatal mistake when putting in the bench donated by Jacquie two weeks ago. We forgot to look up and make sure there was clear air above it.

So of course, the inevitable happened…

We had three choices: move the bench a couple of feet north, cut the whole tree down, or lop off some of the overhanging branches.

We chose what we thought would be the easiest option.

Oh my days!!! It took four of us a whole hour to finally bring the stubborn brute of a branch down. As you can see, there is very little way to get any downward pressure on the saw blade. And when the thing finally dropped, I narrowly missed getting splattered all over the path by it.

It’s using muscles in such an unnatural way that was killing us, and having to constantly look up as a shower of sawdust came down like confetti and got into literally every orifice, was murder on our necks.

But it’s done now and hopefully no more poo on the bench!!

We broke for a really very much needed coffee and a rather nice selection-box of chocolate biscuits.

Martin and Steve had been strimming southwards before the break, so I joined them afterwards, while Ian, Matt and Reece cut back a few low-hanging branches and dug out an annoying stump.

It feels almost criminal to be strimming the wildflowers on the edge of the path, but to leave it means man and nature are constantly colliding rather than living in harmony with each other. It does highlight the need for us to push the scrub further back so that the wildflower margin is much wider. A job for September.

I couldn’t help but admire the views from where we were working.

Just being there and connecting with nature, the whole fellowship thing within the group, the volunteering aspect, and the making a huge difference to the local infrastructure is pretty mindblowing. If someone told me that I would have been doing this 20 years ago, I would’ve laughed in their face.

I had a window of time on Monday, so I did a bit of a solo session. It looked like some baffoon had jumped all over our picnic bench in the birdfeeder clearing, so I re-stained it and also covered up the cement dust on the new “friendship triangle”.

It makes it so much more inviting when the benches are clean.

I noticed that some kind soul had put some fat balls in the feeder, and that prompted me to feed myself.

Decent coffee, a good book, bacon, egg, and solitude were all that I was after. Strangely, a conveyor belt of people seemed to come past. I must have looked a right sight sitting there like Stig of the Dump with my nose in my book as my food was gently cooking!!

The last bit of the day was a quick 2-mile litter-pick.

We really cannot complain about that. Someone had left a Domino’s pizza box at one of the friendship triangles up towards the northern end. I’m just happy that people were able to sit at our benches and enjoy food.

For me, sharing coffee and food, whilst chatting and stuff, I dunno, it just seems like something our ancestors would have done some 300,000 years ago. It just feels right.

Maybe I’m just a bit of a weirdo…

Dunchurch Bridleway

We cleared it to the end, so the connection of both the Cawston and Dunchurch communities are good.

A rubbish YouTube of the western end (the sunlight was not liked by my phone camera).

And that is about it for this week.

Next time we are at Dunchurch on Friday at the most easterly point, and then at Cawston next Wednesday pushing on at Potford Dam. Come along and say hello, share a coffee, bring biscuits and we will love you forever!!

Until then!

Paul