When I woke up and looked out of the window this morning, I uttered a curse or two. It was raining, and the forecast for the morning looked pretty awful.

I sent out a WhatsApp message to the group to meet under the Bear Pub bridge. At least our kit would stay dry, even if we did not.

Somehow, the rain never came! In fact, we had sunshine dappling through the trees. A little miracle, because at about 2pm, it came down by the bucketful and hasn’t stopped since!

We had a bumper work party of nine. Marcus, Steve, Ian, Dave, Matt, Reece, David, Martin, and Paul. We shifted more trees that are growing at funny angles and are just generally overcrowded.

We eventually want trees that are growing straight upwards and have the room to put on decent girth. The cut-down ones will make fantastic habitat for all sorts of insects as they slowly rot down.

We broke for coffee and flapjack at half-time.

I’m not sure about everyone else, but I was desperate for an energy boost at this point. This really is hard going, but the difference as the sunlight floods in is pretty amazing to see. We had a huge number of people passing by, so word is out about this section becoming a nice place to walk.

We had a dilemma… Someone had smashed the seats off our Berrybanks picnic bench. I was going to rebuild it and place it somewhere else, but then I thought that it’s just going to get dragged back, and whoever is getting upset that the youth have a little den will probably smash the seats off again.

When I pulled it out, I was pretty horrified at what I saw, but I got to work and made it sort of usable again. I placed it in the middle of one of our friendship triangles. Nobody is smashing these seats up!!

Lastly, a quick litter pick, and our day was done.

Dunchurch Bridleway

Four of us turned out on a sunny Friday morning with the idea of making a bit of a glade around our picnic bench. Dave, Ian, David, and Paul. This is south-facing, so absolutely prime for wildlife.

We want the area to grass up and be full of wildflowers. A lot of the trees were dead for some odd reason, and as you can see, massively overcrowded.

The path needs to be a little wider so people can walk two abreast.

This will be our focus across the winter. It’s not massively opening it up, but just pushing it out gently.

We had a coffee and cookie break before the really backbreaking task of removing the stumps.

If we leave them, we never kinda get back to them, so we need them gone.

When the grass starts to grow, you will never know that they were there!

Lastly, a log-pile for insects to make a home.

Cursing that I got my shadow in the picture, but the sun is so bright and I cannot see the phone screen!! Well, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

Tritax Corporate Volunteer Workday

We had the lovely people from Tritax helping us out last week, too. 15 eager volunteers helped push back the scrub, cut trees, and really let the light in on the section that we are working on at the moment.

This is so helpful and gets us ahead of the game a bit. The session was led by Marcus and Steve, and was super successful.

Marcus and Steve have made the corporate days into something really good. I simply couldn’t do this because I am just not a people person. I am glad that I can identify my limitations, and we have enough strength and depth in the squad to still make the magic happen.

Lastly, the Tritax crew did a litter pick, so we are looking good for autumn walks.

Thank you, Tritax!

Next week, we are at the furthest north friendship triangle benches, where we need some of us to go southwards, and some into the deepest north. The week after, we are all northbound, just easing the trees back and letting the sunlight in.

Until then!

Paul