We are on a bit of a mission to try to connect with the Mothership.

North of the green ring is where we kinda stop as Cawston Greenway and go off eastwards to connect with Dunchurch Bridleway. The blue ring is what the landowners have done to connect with Leamington Spa (where the railway went when it was working), and the yellow ring is what they will be working on next. I imagine this will be from September.

The Mothership is the National Cycle Network Route 41, which is south of the YOU ARE HERE label.

I had a poke about on the south of the yellow ring and just pushed the path back a bit to allow walkers and cyclists to use it without being stung to death.

Slow progress.

On Saturday, we had a poke around from the north end of the yellow ring and just tried to work out if we could make a path through the jungle.

There are some really wet areas, and the tree canopy shade is not letting anything dry out.

It was a good session with Nathan, Ian, Dave, Martin, and Paul.

We were back down there today. The more time that we spend on the land, the more that we start to understand how everything interacts and why the water is puddling up.

Six of us made the long trudge down to where we were working. Ian, Dave, Mark, Ram, David, and Paul.

It just feels like a slog and is where we were with the Cawston Greenway some 17 years ago.

We broke for coffee and Oreo biscuits before pushing on.

And then, to our surprise, we discovered that someone else had been down here and smashed through with a brushcutter, south of the A45 bridge, and had started to channel the standing water into a gully and off the path.

This is brilliant. If we can get our standing water to join their gully, the whole thing should eventually dry out.

Anyway, we were happy to get back onto familiar ground later in the day and give our benches a lick of woodstain.

One thing that really irks me is seeing wooden benches installed and just sort of left to decay.

As you can see, we have a standard that we kinda work to. Whilst they look a bit shiny due to the wet woodstain, we do like to keep all the benches looking inviting and clean enough to eat food from.

The “pollinator highway”, which is the bit between the path and the scrub, is really starting to come on.

It’s just getting better and better as spring turns to summer. It feels magical to walk along the path with all the colours, butterflies and bees.

And lastly, a litter-pick of the whole path.

Next one is this Friday on the Dunchurch Bridleway, and then we are back on familiar soil at Berrybanks next Wednesday.

The adventure this week has taken me right out of my comfort zone…

Thanks for reading if you got this far.

Until next time!

Paul