Pink Moon

Posted on April 24, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

It was a toss up between the moon, which seems to be full again (they come round so blooming quickly) or Saint George and a dragon, this week.

I stuck with our moon theme whilst we are on a bit of a roll with them.

The Pink Moon is called so, because it’s associated with the first spring blooms of April, which are generally pink.

For once it actually seems to be doing what it says on the tin.

A chap in my local pub was saying that the moon is actually more useful than the sun, since the moon gives us light at night when it’s dark. The sun only gives us light during the day, when it’s already bright.

It took me a few minutes to untangle this in my head and even longer to try to explain it back. Such is life after a few pints of beer…

We did three things this week.

We replaced the Cawston Girl Guides bench. This time it has much stronger and longer screws so should be able to withstand any squirrel attack.

I have ordered a sticker to go onto the support beam so we remember which bench it is.

I do hope that this is the correct emblem. It looks like it is.

This bench looks onto a butterfly bank that we created at the start of 2023 and we have left it to do a full year cycle (summer to summer) to see what happens.

It’s full of stinging nettles, which was a bit of a disappointment at first, but so much insect life, including four species of butterfly, rely on nettles to survive, so hopefully we will be rewarded in the summer. If not, it’s nettle soup, nettle tea, and nettle beer – you have been warned!!

We also carried on with the transition from path to short grass to longer grass to scrub.

It feels a bit brutal to be doing this but it really is just a narrow strip and in a couple of weeks it will make such a difference.

Our bench-to-bench of today on YouTube for those who enjoy seeing our progress on video.

We also litter picked from the Potford Dam end right the way to about 50 metres north of the Bear bridge and back.

Nothing much of interest except an unopened bottle of beer. And no, I wasn’t tempted to open it and have a little tasting session, not after the grubby squirrels have had their dirty little paws all over it.

Whilst I was at the Potford Dam end I ventured down to where a public right of way connects us to Dunchurch Bridleway.

Hmmm, not really what I was expecting to see. We have some exciting news regarding Dunchurch Bridleway in the next week or so, Because of this I really need the two paths connected.

I have a workday there on Friday this week (10 to 12) so will do some digging around. A question that I will ask, would you want me to add those workdays to this blog (one a month) or do a separate blog for them? Please let me know in the comments.

Lastly, we have a new country tuning into the blog. It’s been such a long time since we had a new one and I think we have now been read by people in just shy of 130 countries in the world.

Nice to make your acquaintance person from El Salvador. Thanks for reading.

Until next week!

Paul

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Jaguar Land Rover Take Over

Posted on April 17, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We hosted a group from Jaguar Land Rover this week. They very kindly installed a new picnic bench in a clearing with super views.

A great day was had and the JLR team also picked up two bags of litter.

I did suggest that if they had a spare Land Rover knocking about, then we would be very happy to look after it. After explaining how we are really enthusiastic about them and would be hugely grateful even with an older model.

However, I think I might have put slightly too much emphasis on the word “model”…

A fantastic day and the bench will be hugely popular with that view. Thanks guys. We really appreciate your generosity.

In other news, we got the rest of the little benches stained on Monday.

And then we met today at Trigger’s Bench and carried on northwards with the shaping of the path edge.

This really is the width that we want to maintain over the summer. Normally the path gets really narrow and tight, and it becomes quite uncomfortable brushing past stinging nettles and bramble all the time. It also means people have to walk in single-file which makes conversations difficult. The nettles also droop into the path when it rains or towards the end of the summer, so we really need to avoid this happening.

Here is our YouTube of our progress today.

We covered about 400 metres last week and the same this week. Some parts of the path are naturally wide and will not need any work, so I am hoping we have enough time to really keep on top of it.

My thoughts are that we get up to the recycled bench next week and then jump forward to the underpass. The underpass to Berrybanks/The Bear needs to be kept wide. The rest sort of looks after itself. So that’s about 1,500 metres out of the whole 3 km that we need to keep down. Hmm… It’s going to be a challenge.

Next week we meet at the recycled picnic bench and work backwards to where we got to today. We also need to put the Cawston Guides bench back in, after a scurry of naughty squirrels had too much fighting juice and decided to wrestle it out of the ground!

Whilst the bench is back in the workshop it does give me the chance to stencil “Cawston Guides” on to it. Something which I have been meaning to do for ages.

Well that’s about it for this week. Thanks again to JLR, and onwards we go next week!

Paul

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Everything Went Dark

Posted on April 10, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We had a solar eclipse this week. That’s when the moon blocks out the sun and it feels like all of Nostradamus’s prophecies are being rained down on us in one terrifyingly frightful moment.

Everything pauses. Birds stop chirping, sheep and cattle stand in their fields in bewildered silence, humans look at each other with fear in their eyes as they realise that this is what will happen when the sun finally stops burning brightly in the sky.

And on that cheery note, we carried on with our wiggly path. Good news, our strimmers have multiplied, and so have our battery packs.

This was made possible with the donations from our lovely patrons. If you would like to support us with a small monetary donation every month, please check out the link on the right. It helps so much with things like this, food for the birds, public liability insurance and web hosting costs.

So on we cracked and the wiggle is starting to take shape. Because we are starting at the get-go, we are not letting any wildlife set up habitat on the path bit. There is plenty of vegetation, nectar sources and other stuff that will make terrific habitat in the margins, so don’t panic.

This time next month the edges will have grown and the path will be really defined.

We also worked with George who is doing his Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award, and stained benches up to the underpass, so that’s the bulk of them sorted.

Of course, it started raining shortly afterwards, but being a water-based stain it should be OK.

We also noticed wildflowers starting to pop up.

A sign that gives us a good feeling that we are on the right track.

And lastly, our YouTube of where we were working today.

The Dunchurch Bridleway is open again so I will be prodding about and working out how we reconnect this path to it.

We also have some exciting news to share next week – watch this space.

Until then!

Paul

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The Transfer Of My Thoughts

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

This week we started to try and transfer what is rattling around in my head, and see if we can create it in real life.

In my head it’s something like this…

At the moment it seems like a bit of a crazy pipe-dream, but I think it will take a giant leap forward next week, if it ever stops raining.

This is kinda where we are at.

It does seem a million miles away from what we want, but a couple of dry weeks and we should start to shape up with a much better defined path edge.

Our YouTube of the first bit.

We haven’t really pushed the scrub on the edges out as far as we needed to. A job for September. But as we can see, there is a decent width to the path. We just need a slightly more gradual transition from path to wildflower verge to scrubby edge.

Looking northwards, the natural kinks and curves are more pronounced as the path navigates mature trees.

Gosh, it really sounds like I am trying to convince myself.

We had our little helper again this week, due to the Easter school holidays.

Me and our little helper litter-picked whilst everyone else had a first go with our new strimmers from Wickes DIY, and then we regrouped for coffee and cookies.

It certainly feels like we have the right tools for the job, and I’m looking forward to when I can fully engage next week to see how it pans out.

You might have noticed the new tab above called “September Jobs”. This is a sort of notepad for jobs that we see need doing, but have to wait until the end of the bird nesting season. There is always plenty of stuff that we agree to do in the summer and by autumn, we have totally forgotten about, so hopefully this will keep us focused.

Lastly, I was going to put up the blog stats for March for the fellow geek-heads like myself, but nothing ever really changes with the views, visitors and visitor countries, so I would be padding the blog out just for the sake of it.

Instead, I found this geeky little app on my phone that maps out the area of fields. I think it is aimed at farmers, so I can pretend to be a wildflower farmer, or even one of those people who live in the woods. Loggers or lumberjacks, or something like…

But anyway, the area of the bit of the railway line that we work on is 9.44 hectares.

That’s just over 23.3 acres. With the average price of woodland being £4,696 per acre, we can see that the asset value does not just extend to the wildlife and the fantastic amenity for local residents. Although the commercial value of our trees is probably at log-burner/kindling level, due to the lack of woodland management and high density of everything, which is why we keep banging on about thinning the trees so that they can grow straight and to maturity.

And no, we are not going to start chopping all the trees down and flogging off the timber, before anyone panics and starts banging out a flurry of fiery emails to our local MP.

Some exciting news to share in a week or two so watch this space.

Until next time!

Paul

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Worm Moon

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

It’s that time of the month when the moon takes its 30th spin around our little planet and becomes full again.

It actually occurred on Monday, 25th March. Interestingly, although it reaches a “full” phase for a brief moment, our eyes may perceive it to be full for up to three days!

Why is it called the Worm Moon?

It’s called the Worm Moon because it’s the last full moon of winter and signifies the thawing and warming of the ground and the appearance of worm casts, as everything slowly starts to wake up and move about.

However, someone forgot to send the memo to Mother Nature.

The morning started cold but at least it was sunny. But by about 10:20 a heavy band of rain had set in and was obstinately staying put. With the temperature struggling to get past 4 degrees, it soon became very un-spring like.

But we cracked on with gentle snipping back, and trying to stain the remaining benches.

The rain got steadily heavier so we decided to have a cuppa in our all-terrain mugs and shared some chocolate-chip cookies.

As you can see, we have a little helper due to the Easter school holidays. We soon put her to work with a litter picker…

And amazingly, we found one of the painted rocks that we put out years ago…

We re-hid it and hopefully someone will have fun finding it again.

It all seemed to be drying out towards the end of last week, until a deluge of rain overnight. It really does seem like two steps forward – one step back, at the moment.

Next week we’re at the Potford Dam end with our new strimmers from Wickes, trying to get the first cut of those gentle curves made. It’s all in my mind’s eye at the moment so the difficulty is trying to get that mental image and turn it into reality.

I now know what enormous challenges great artists like Pablo Picasso had to wrestle with on a near daily basis…

Hmm… perhaps not.

And lastly, this week we had another unidentified visit from out of this world.

How bizarre that our little Martian friend has popped in again to see how we’re getting on.

And on that note, until next week, unless I get abducted by aliens between then and now!

Paul

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Spring Equinox

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Spring has officially started, at last!!

It’s actually the spring equinox today, the time of the year when the day and the night are an equal length.

In cultures around the world, the spring equinox has represented a time of renewal, fertility, and rebirth. In agricultural societies, the spring equinox marked the start of the planting season, when crops are sown and farmers begin preparing for the coming season of growth.

Sadly, I once again seem to have missed all the Pagan and Druid revellers at our pop-up stone circle. I might try to get up a bit earlier next year to capture the hedonistic partying.

DISCLAIMER: This is not the real view – if you catch a train, plane or taxi to come and see it you will be bitterly disappointed…

This time of the year is really exciting because everything is slowly turning green!

We can now start to see what it is that I keep blathering on about. Look how the path gently twists and bends, and the green swathes of path-edge that we will allow to become wildflower rich. We might just get a load of nettles in places, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all good for the wildlife.

Our YouTube of our progress.

We didn’t get to stain the benches this week because it was raining when we started, so we divided a load of snowdrops from our secret supply and added to the snowdrop bank.

If we just keep adding a little bit more every year, it will soon be a lush carpet, and this is only the third year so it ain’t so bad.

Our little bench on this bank is going to be stained next week and then we are going to stencil Chainsaw Ed onto it, in memory of Edmund who used to come down with his chainsaw and created this clearing, many years ago.

We broke for coffee and gingernut cookies at 11am and as you can see, there are a couple of spare all-terrain mugs and loads of delicious hot coffee going spare.

Dig deep for a little bit of social bravery and join us if you need a bit of positive human interaction.

There has been a lot of stuff in the current media about finding purpose in life, such as making a small part of the world around us a slightly better place, and how it can have a really positive impact on our own mental health.

And whilst we are skirting around mental health, here is a quick and easy guide to getting some good feelings happening in our brains.

If we just do one or two things and see if it makes a difference – leave a comment below to let me know what you think.

Let’s give it a go!

Whilst I was messing about in the mud, I remembered to fill up the bird feeders.

Let’s hope that the naughty squirrels don’t notice the free lunch on offer.

Lastly, we have yet another supporter…

Dunchurch Pantomaniacs have kindly funded five bird nesting boxes.

They are a lot more sturdy than the nesting boxes from Wilko, so hopefully we will get a good few years of use out of them.

Thank you, Dunchurch Pantomaniacs for the generous support.

Well that’s about it for this week. Next week we go onwards towards the underpass working northbound.

Until then!

Paul

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New Bench Design

Posted on March 13, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

This week we are really excited to introduce our new bench design.

And the good news is, they are for sale on an individual made-to-order basis.

Completely recycled from reclaimed scaffold boards to reflect the industrial heritage of the railway, and also the more general industrial heritage of the 1800’s. Each bench is handmade and is totally unique. We have left the dinks, scuffs and grazes in place to emphasis the rugged nature of each bench.

With three coats of Danish Oil to really bring the grain to life, these benches make a fantastic focal point in the garden or a useful seat in the house.

The price per bench is £45 and they can be fixed into the ground (60cm legs) or used freestanding (45cm legs). The length is 122cm and width is 23cm.

Please let us know your thoughts in the comments below?

The rest of the morning was just carrying on with the existing bench maintenance, which got us to the Cawston Bridleway bridge. The support that Andrew made for the sagging picnic benches worked well and everything is ready for the spring and summer.

We normally apply woodstain twice a year but it had been so wet last autumn that we never got round to it. It really shows in the before pictures so mental note not to leave it again.

And this time round, muggins remembered to pour the coffee before we stained the bench that we were working on.

As you can see, we have a new coffee flask. A thoughtful gift from my wonderful parents-in-law, so the offer of a coffee is now one that we can actually follow-through on. Please find some social bravery and join us if you need just a bit of human interaction. And honestly, I know how utterly difficult it is to make that first step.

As mentioned last week, we have a little brook that I would like to make more of. I moved one of our picnic benches and will improve the view slightly in the autumn.

We can just about see it through the scrub at the moment. All we need is a little window so it becomes a little less hidden whilst sitting at the bench.

Lastly, we topped up the bird feeder with fat balls and that was about it for this week.

Please do leave a comment about the bench. Good idea? Bad idea? Right sort of price-point?

Until next time!

Paul

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Bench Maintenance Part 1

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

It’s that time of the year when we get all of our benches ready for the spring and summer. This includes any repairs and a re-stain with our rather unfortunate poo brown coloured wood preserver. I really wish we had gone for a cedar red or even a medium oak, but to change now would mean sanding down every bench and starting again.

When we started, one of the first things that the nice people from Warwickshire Wildlife Trust told us to do, was look up Opportunity Cost.

OPPORTUNITY COST: The idea behind opportunity cost is that the cost of doing something is the lost opportunity to do something else; in short, opportunity cost is the value of the next best alternative.

Or to put it into an even simpler form, spend all of our time doing stuff that will give us the greatest return.

So unfortunately, poo brown is staying…

We managed to get four picnic tables done today. Andrew made a support to take care of the sagging that is happening to the round benches and it worked a treat on the first one.

The bench height is improved and the whole thing sits much better. We will be fitting the support to the other two round benches next week.

There was quite a bit of work to do on the rectangle benches but they look like new again.

Everything got a good plastering of wood stain and the usual yearly joke of “don’t sit down or you’ll get a stripey bottom” was wheeled out by you know who… It never gets old…

We also had a couple of repairs to existing bird boxes. I’m not sure if the boxes got walloped by falling branches ripped off by the recent storm savagery, or the delinquent squirrels have been partying in a hard and hedonistic way.

This one is in serious need of a total rebuild and retirement to a quieter location. We have broken one of our golden rules though – don’t put nesting boxes close to picnic benches. Far too much of a temptation for bored rodents after too much fighting juice…

In other news, we have a new sponsor.

www.facebook.com/DunchurchPantry

Dunchurch Pantry is a local foodbank in the village providing emergency food to anyone who needs it. They have generously supplied us with a bat box.

We have stained the box, and yes, you guessed right, poo brown, to make it not so obvious to the hedonistic squirrels.

We have installed it along the hedge-line and tried to get it as high as possible and south facing. Bats use the hedge to navigate and enjoy the warmth of the sun as they do whatever it is that they do in the box.

Let’s hope that we have some happy-batty residents sooner rather than later.

We also filled our bird feeders with some fat balls to keep our feathered friends happy.

I should’ve brought a couple more but at least there is food available.

There’s a fair bit in the pipeline over the next couple of weeks so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime I rediscovered our babbling brook.

We will maybe look at making this a little more of a feature in September.

Until next week!

Paul

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The Last Workday…

Posted on February 28, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

This is the last workday before the bird nesting season starts, the last of the really cold days where snow sits on the craggy peaks of the Warwickshire Mountains, as seen here in the distance, looking westward from our little bench that we put in last year. The days get longer and warmer, the buds on the trees are ready to burst into beautiful blossoms of pinks and whites. It’s a glorious time to walk the trail and see mother nature uncurling from her deep slumber. Take a flask of hot coffee, sit and enjoy the view, unwind and be full of gratitude that winter is all but over.

I think I snaffled the “bench with the best view” accolade…

Obviously the picture is made up. It’s a little joke that I was having with someone from Denver last week, and also a little tease with our friend Andrew, who claims that his bench has the best view on the trail, which I grudgingly (joke) have to agree with.

In other, more important news, our last “chopping-back” workday started at the Potford Dam picnic bench and we continued to make scallops that will hopefully green up with a wildflower-rich grass mix.

There is this belief that some people have in their heads that the path is going to stay as wide as it is now. They come up to me with a look of fear in their eyes and ask me about it. Rest assured, this is the blank canvas. When everything starts to grow we want to cut a snaking path through it that is full of chicanes, narrower bits and wider bits. I’m struggling to find an example of what is in my mind’s eye. Something like this but the path being slightly wider and, of course, more trees, maybe…

I would say, keep the faith. There is a plan and as soon as the layout works, we will use branches from thinned trees to edge the path so it becomes obvious where to walk or cycle. We really want to get away from the narrow track where people have to walk in single-file and are constantly brushing past nettles and getting stung.

We also seeded the bank of the bird feeder clearing and strimmed around the bench.

The seeds are all local and collected at the end of summer last year. Don’t ask me what they are because I have long since forgotten. It’ll be a nice surprise to see what comes up.

We also litter picked a massive bag of grot. A small bit of where we were working today, and I gave the Berrybanks section a good going over. Someone had dumped a bin-liner full of rubbish down there for some odd reason.

Whilst I was poking about I couldn’t help but notice Lesser Celandine and what looks like Lady’s Bedstraw literally everywhere.

I really must get the rest of our wildflowers onto the tab thing in the menu above.

Here is our YouTube for this week.

And lastly, the long-term weather forecast looks like there is little rain for the next two weeks or so, I’m hopeful that we get a chance to dry out a bit!!

The land owners are looking into the problems with the flooding so hopefully it will be resolved in the not too distant future.

This is the hole that is causing us so many problems!!

Jobs for the next six months:

Stain the benches

Bench maintenance including picnic bench strengthening and replacing rotten wood.

Split snowdrops from our secret supply to thicken up the new snowdrop clearing.

Stencil names on benches (Pikes Peak View, Ed, Mick, Charlie, George, Max, Max Two, Fab Four, (Bethel) etc, etc..). A great idea gleaned from Andrew with Bethel bench. The names are a mixture of fellow team members who have passed, youngsters who have done DofE volunteering with us, and a few others.

April is when it goes absolutely mad and we need to maintain a roughly two to three metre wide path (see above) but also try to get some gradual curves kinda working with path, wildflower-rich margins, shrubbery, and trees on the edges. Hopefully all we will need is electric strimmers and loppers for bramble.

Sow wildflower seeds that we collected last autumn.

Tree species survey.

Identify and mark trees for thinning in the autumn to maximise sunlight into scallops.

Maintain the bird-feeder set-up.

Monitor the bird nesting boxes.

Set up a pop-up coffee shop and let passers-by enjoy a beverage and a bit of conversation… Sounds mad but we all crave a bit of friendly human contact…

OK, the last one will probably never happen but if you catch us just before 11am there will always be a coffee going spare.

Until next time!

Paul

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Snow Moon

Posted on February 21, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

It’s that time of the month again. The moon has taken 30 spins around the earth and this weekend it’s full and called the Snow Moon.

After chatting with the old farmers in the village, the Snow Moon is called so because snow is most likely to fall in February and it also signifies the end of winter where everything is baron and empty, including the pantry, as food stores start to run dry. Which is why it is also called the Hunger Moon or the Bone Moon, where boiling bones to get the last bit of nutrition out of them was a necessity to ward off hunger and starvation.

From a spiritual point of view, the moon means that the cold hard struggle of winter is nearly over. We are awakening, and we are beginning to gather the motivation, energy, resolve, and plan to enter the growing season with positivity and confidence.

A bit of trivia, if the January full moon falls on the very last days of the month, there will be no full moon in February, because the moon cycle is 29.5 days long. To keep the other moon names in sync with the months, this is called the Black Moon. It happens approximately every 19 years and the next one is due in 2037.

We are back at the bit called the Bird Feeder Clearing. This was our first proper attempt at a wildflower glade and took us ages to clear it.

I remember the ecologist from Sustrans (the land owners) visiting and not really having a clue what we were trying to achieve, and that was probably because neither did we. In my head I could visualise what we have, but putting that into words back then felt clumsy and awkward.

But over the years the wildflowers have become established and because it’s in a reasonably deep cutting, it always feels nice and sheltered.

We rebuilt the bird feeder station after the angry mob of squirrels thought it fun to use the pole as a javelin, after a bit too much of the old fighting juice. And we even managed to get our tarp up before the wind blew it down for the umpteenth time and we just gave up!

It really is nice to just sit quietly and watch the birds flitting in and out, and if we are really lucky a rabble of long-tailed tits will appear and delight us with their super-cute faces and incessant chatter.

We have made a decision to not cut back the butterfly clearing. We want to get a full year cycle and see what happens in the summer. Hopefully there will be many butterflies, bees and other pollinators over-wintering under dead leaves and hollowed out stems of last year’s plants. Four butterflies rely on stinging nettles, which to our initial dismay, dominated the butterfly bank last year like a dark green rash, these being Red Admiral, Comma, Small Tortoiseshell and Painted Lady. It would be an incredible treat if our patience is rewarded this year.

  • Small Tortoiseshell
  • Red Admiral
  • Peacock
  • Comma

This is the last but one of the heavy workdays so I can happily look forward to giving my little biscuit wrists a rest.

No more chopping back and humping bulky stuff up and down the path for six months, followed by days of aches and pains…

Our first blossom has been spotted.

I am trying to remember to always leave a spare coffee in the flask. If you want to pop along and enjoy a coffee with us (usually around 11am) just do it. Honestly, we stand around making light-hearted banter and it’s all pretty chilled.

You might find that you like us and want to join in…

We found a broken bird nesting box and after a quick session in our workshop, it’s back in action.

And lastly, we litter picked to the end and back.

Our rather wet YouTube of where we are at.

Hopefully no more rain!!

Next week is the last week before the bird nesting season starts. We will be at Potford Dam, and then after that we have a lot of work to do re-staining and maintaining the benches, which will probably take up most of March.

Until next time!

Paul

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