Warmer weather is rolling in. Mornings are not quite so chilly and by about 11:30 am, we are knocking on the door of late teens, or even low 20 C (70 F).

On a first look at the numbers today, it felt like everyone was abandoning me!!!

Was it something I said??

But then the hazy recollections of various people telling me that they are on holiday this week, or actually having to work for real money, slowly came through the early morning brain-fog.

A mere five of us were left to pick up where we left off last week. Andrew, Mark, Steve, Dave, and Paul.

That place being our most southerly picnic bench at Potford Dam.

Not a bad place to set up camp.

The mission was to get as far as we could southward.

We got to the bridge, which is the start of the connecting path that makes the whole network connect up the various communities.

The whole circuit is about 6 miles and the connecting bit is ringed in yellow.

But before we crossed over the bridge, coffee, biscuits, and a huge intake of the wonderful view was needed.

Beautiful hedges full of spring blossom and wildlife, and decent banter and general conversations that keep us all connected and laughing.

The task on the other side of the bridge is really just to keep the connector path open and allow people to walk two-abreast, and be able to see what is ahead.

If we just leave it, then we get all the vegetation flopping onto the narrow path, which means people get bitten or stung, and everyone has to walk single-file “Indian style”, which is not very condusive to having a conversation.

However, we still leave the wildflower-rich grassy strip to keep the pollinator highway on both sides of the path.

This is perfect. Just what we want from a bees and butterfly point of view, and aesthetically, it ticks all the boxes. It’s literally buzzing with life.

Amazingly, we got to the Sky Blue Bench. Exactly 400 metres from where we started. How we managed to get this far is a bit of a mystery, but we did and have set ourselves up for one last push next week.

The last photo shows the task ahead. About 600 metres before we get to the off-ramp that leads to Dunchurch Bridleway.

Lastly, we litter-picked the whole greenway on Monday.

Pretty pleased with the lack of litter.

Dunchurch Bridleway:

It feels like we are doing a pincer movement on the last bit of the path that connects this trail, and the Cawston path.

The easterly section is done. The westerly section is hopefully where we will be next time. However, everything is growing at a tremendous rate.

We broke for coffee, biscuits, the view, and the lovely wildflowers at half-time.

We have to keep an eye on the bracken though. Last year we left it too long and a family of bears moved in…

Joking aside though, what a time to be out doing this sort of thing, rather than listening to the news and stressing over the state of the world that we live in.

One thing is for certain, nature keeps doing her thing and everything else is just transient.

Thanks for being here if you got this far.

Until next time!

Paul