Duke of Edinburgh Workday

Posted on February 14, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

It always gives us a huge amount of satisfaction when we work with our young Duke of Edinburgh volunteers. George’s task is to create a clearing and get a bench put in, a bird nesting box up, and some wildflower seeds in the ground.

The bench, made by our friend Andrew out of recycled wood, came in kit form, so George and Reece had to assemble it. Luckily we had very comprehensive instructions to follow. The second part was digging the holes and post-fixing it in place. We used two bags because the bench sits quite high, so there will be a little extra flex in the legs. We checked and double checked to make sure it was level across the length and the width. The view is pretty magnificent, the bird-box is close, and Andrew had left a couple of uplifting messages for George on the bench, which we all thought was a lovely touch.

As you can see, I was doing all the supervising and taking photos. It’s a hard hard life!

It’s nice to go into boy scout mode and get our tarp up again, although the light drizzle stopped as quickly as it started.

The next stage for George is to clear the ground in front of the hedge and create a small wildflower glade.

This will create a pleasing foreground to compliment the gorgeous background, and create nectar to attract insects, which will provide food for the brood of birds that take up residence in the nesting box.

After all that hard work, we re-grouped at the recycled picnic bench for coffee, cookies and just generally chatting about god knows what…

We then pushed on southwards easing out the path edge by making scallops, and trying to work out where the sun will be at the height of the summer.

Our rudimentary hedging is beginning to come to life and bud up. This is going to be so beneficial for wildlife when it’s dense and full of berries.

The farmer has started cutting the hedges so the views over the heath are really good. I asked why it is done so late in the season and he said that cutting it early is simply destroying a valuable food-source for so much wildlife.

Our YouTube between the benches.

As you can see, it’s still very wet. According to the Met Office, this winter has been the wettest since 1890. What’s that? 130 years or so? All we can do is work around it until it dries out.

Our snowdrops are out and the path edge is looking good with loads of wriggles to create little micro-habitats.

In other news, we did a bird box audit and mapped them all with what3words. It makes it easier to observe them when it all greens up in a couple of months

We have 40 closed bird boxes, 7 open boxes and 5 bat boxes. It’s going to get very noisy probably late April/early May.

I also mapped the benches, we have 9 picnic benches and 18 pedestal benches.

We have just two more weeks before the bird nesting season starts and we’re in a relatively good place.

Until next time!

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Year Of The Dragon

Posted on February 7, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

This week we celebrate the start of the Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) and this time around it’s symbolised by the dragon.

In the Chinese culture, the dragon represents good luck, strength, health and also the male element Yang. The dragon is unique because it’s the only mythical creature of all the animals in the Chinese zodiac.

Another little nugget of knowledge – back in the very olden days, there was only ten months in the calendar. Winter was considered a non-event so was written-off and the year started in March. The Romans invented the Julian Calendar in 46 BC, adding January and February, and was used for 1,600 years before the Gregorian Calendar replaced it and added the Leap Year to stop the calendar drifting out of sequence with the seasons.

Thank me later when you win the pub quiz…

We started today at the recycled picnic bench and tackled the tree that had narrowly missed completely crushing it.

I don’t know how we managed to move the whole thing, or rather, how David managed to keep going at it and get it moved, but we did it and it will make a perfect home for a huge amount of bugs and insects over many many summers.

After a quick slurp of coffee and a biscuit or two, we carried on south-bound just creating little areas that will get a decent blast of sunlight in the summer.

If you are wondering why we want the path to be wide and sunshine hitting the ground, just wait until spring when the path is green and full of wildflowers, bees and butterflies.

Our YouTube of the bit that we worked on today.

It will be interesting to look back on these when it has greened up in a couple of months.

In other news, we had a lad called Max do his Duke of Edinburgh with us in 2022. His task was to take the bits from a smashed up picnic bench, salvage what he could, and make something. He made three dainty little benches that did very well until the mob of angry squirrels smashed two of them to bits.

I put my recycling head on and made a new bench out of the two smashed up benches. So the thing started as a picnic bench in someone’s garden, they gave it to us and we refurbed it, it got smashed up and Max made three benches out of the salvageable bits, and now it’s on its fourth incarnation.

It’s just somewhere to rest your weary legs and enjoy a bit of green-time.

Possibly a joke about Trigger’s broom in there somewhere, but, yeah, we love recycling.

And whilst I am rattling on about recycling, we swapped over a woodpecker ravaged front of a bird-box, and banged the old bit through our woodworking workshop, and replaced a box front that met a similar fate close to Berrybanks.

It’s rough and ready, but I’m pretty sure the birds wouldn’t want it any other way.

Next week we are putting in a bench made by Andrew (thank you) with our DofE lads. More humping bags of postfix, but it will be worth it. And then just two more weeks until the bird nesting season starts.

We also litter-picked from where we started, south-bound, so our end-users can enjoy the path to the maximum.

Lastly, at the start of each month I’m going to do a little round-up of last month’s blogging stats. I love looking at numbers, statistics, number patterns and sequences, and I’m sure there are other similarly geeky people out there who maybe like the same.

We had 48 countries tuning in, these being (by number of visits) United Kingdom, United States, India, Canada, Kenya, Pakistan, Spain, South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Philippines, Israel, Ireland, Oman, France, New Zealand, Mexico, Malta, Egypt, Romania, Indonesia, North Macedonia, Switzerland, Greece, Zimbabwe, Italy, Uganda, Portugal, Denmark, Nepal, Belgium, Qatar, Lesotho, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Japan, Mongolia, Latvia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

Comments: 56

Likes: 356

New Followers: 39

And with that, I’m off to order some sweet and sour chicken balls and a portion of spicy fried rice to celebrate the Chinese New Year! Or is it a bit early??

Until next time!

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We Made It…

Posted on January 31, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We finally made it to the end of the month. It seems like day 131 but is actually just day 31. In my mind, if I had designed a yearly calendar, I like to think that after a couple of years I would have put my hand up and admitted that I had made a mistake in making January so long, and rehashed the whole thing so summer months were longer and winter months were shorter.

It was probably the Romans who invented it and maybe admitting a mistake meant a trip to the Colosseum to fight lions or Spartacus…

But anyway, it’s all behind us for another year, so onwards we go.

This week we started at our bench called Bethel and worked backwards to where we finished last week.

It’s all about creating scallops, keeping the path wide so it stays dry, creating windows along the edge, and habitat piles with the cuttings, for insects and spiders.

Our YouTube from bench to bench.

We also did a litter-pick from where we started, northwards.

As mentioned last week, we have a surprise – a new addition to our coffee break.

Look at these beauties…

A very special all-terrain vehicle on our all-terrain mugs!!

This is HUE166, the very first Land Rover to roll off the production line in 1948. Nicknamed Huey and of course, is world famous. This is where the Land Rover story started.

I spotted some fungi whilst litter-picking.

And we had another tree come down. This one had tangled itself up with another one and people were walking underneath it.

When I released the tension the thing hit the ground with such a sudden and quick thump that it surprised me, even though I was expecting it and had my feet well clear. Please don’t walk under things like this and risk getting squished.

We also got a couple of old refurbished bird-boxes up, and a new one that Andrew made, to go with the new bench in the clearing that George is making.

We need to do a woodland tree audit in the spring/summer so we know what we have. That will be fun.

Lastly, I bumped into a chap from the Woodland Trust in one of their woods and explained what we are doing, which is trying to make a trail through a pretty woody linear disused railway-line, and make it feel like a wood. He gave me four bits of advice. 1, make the path as wide as possible to get maximum biodiversity. 2, make the path as wriggly as possible to stop the wind-tunnel effect that a straight path will create. 3, create as many scallops as possible to maximise the length of the edges and create micro-habitats for bees, butterflies and other insects. 4, thin, thin and thin the trees to allow what is left to grow to maturity.

That’s about it for this week.

Until next time!

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Hungry Like The Wolf

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

It’s that time of the month when we have a full moon. This one is called the Wolf Moon for some reason that I will delve into in a second. I don’t think that we have wolves here in the UK. They do have them in Mongolia though. I saw a picture on a Mongolian blog and I commented on how nice the person’s dogs looked and I was very quickly corrected because they were in-fact wolves. What the person was doing taking photos amongst a pack of wolves will forever remain a mystery to me.

After consulting with the old farmers in my village, the Wolf Moon is called such because wolves howl to mark their territory and also to hunt. Because everything is so frozen, still, and quiet at this time of the year, the howls can be heard for miles and miles.

Thank me later when you win the pub quiz.

Astrology wise….

As the first moon of the new year, the Wolf Moon is generally seen as a positive symbol of hope and renewal despite arriving in the dead of winter. It represents the light that persists even in the bitter cold darkness.

Spiritually, the full Wolf Moon is a call for deep self-reflection and the unseen connection to our own “packs.” Humans, like wolves, are social creatures (even if some of us are introverts who enjoy solitude). We exist within communities and therefore must sometimes put social responsibility above personal desires, agendas, and individual freedoms.

The closest we are going to get to a howling wolf is a screeching squirrel. Have you ever heard the noise that a squirrel makes. Bizarre that such a little beast can make so much noise.

We had yet another brace of storms battering us this week. Storm Isha rolled in on Sunday and caused major disruption, followed by Storm Jocelyn.

Our newly widened path coped fantastically and without problem.

Today we cracked on with our southward quest of getting rid of self-seeded tree saplings and creating “windows” in the sides.

The reason we are getting rid of the tree saplings is because they are way too dense and will be robbing the older and more established trees of nutrients and space to grow.

The windows are to get away from the long green tunnel feel that the path has in the summer when everything has greened up, and so that people can see out and feel part of their wider surroundings, as well as letting sunlight in.

We also hatched a grand plan to mark the trees that are blocking the sun from hitting the scallop clearings in the summer, and then thin the branches at the end of the year. Genius!

So you see, there is some sort of method to our madness.

Our YouTube of the bit we worked on today.

A little further down the trail our recycled (multiple times) bench nearly took one for the team, again.

Just look how close that was!! If it’s not the angry mob of naughty squirrels, it’s Mother Nature herself trying to bounce stuff off it. Thank you to whoever was mercifully looking down on the bench and saved it.

In other news, George, who is doing his Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award has started on a wildflower clearing for a bench that Andrew kindly made for us.

The hedge needs cutting back and the view widening, but you get the gist of how this is going to look. I think George is very much on the right track.

Next week we carry on with the plan, but with only five more workdays before the bird-nesting season starts, I am wondering how far we will get. But at the end of the day, what doesn’t get done this side of the nesting season, will get done in September onwards, and with our aim to keep the path wide over the spring and summer, we will have bucket-loads, in fact, barrel-loads more time.

We have a rather nice surprise next week. If you think about what most of our conversations revolve around, as we slurp coffee from our all-terrain mugs, and stuff our faces with biscuits and cookies, you might be able to guess. If not, you will have to wait until then.

Until next time!

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Blue Monday

Posted on January 17, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

That was the Monday just gone. It’s supposed to be the most depressing day of the whole year. The third Monday of the New Year when people have dropped their new year’s resolutions, realise that they have over-spent at Christmas, pay-day seems like light-years away, and the short cold days and even longer cold nights just compound everything to make it feel 100 times worse.

There is actually a formula for this phenomenon…

Where W=weather, D=debt, d=monthly salary, T=time since Christmas, Q=time since the failure of new year’s resolutions, M=low motivational levels, and Na=the feeling of a need to take action.

But it’s not all doom and gloom because brighter days are just around the corner. A nice short month called February is next, where your wages seem to last that little bit longer, the sun doesn’t set so early in the day, and snowdrops appear in the flowerbeds. Indeed, by the end of this month, the sunset is nearer to 5:30pm, the end of February is nearly 6pm and by the end of March it’s pushing towards 8pm.

Definitely something to look forward to. In the mean time, you know where we are if you need to chat with what I would consider are normal, well-balanced people (biased of course).

You may remember that last week I mentioned that we have a bit of exciting news to share. Well, we have received an incredibly generous and much needed donation from Wickes, the DIY chain.

This gives us enough fire-power to keep the nettles and grass really short on the edges of the path over the spring and summer. Ideally the path needs to be 3-metres wide. No more narrow trail where people have to walk single-file or get stung as they are forced to leap into the stingers, as they give way to passing bicycles or people coming the other way.

Thank-you, Wickes, you have earned a place in our “Sponsors” tab above. Please click on it and “like” it so sponsors can see that they are being looked at.

And before anyone starts hollering “what about the wildlife”, we’re making a transition from path, to short grass, to wildflower-rich longer grass, to scrub. So don’t panic Captain Mainwaring!

This week we managed to escape from the gravitational pull of the northern end of the trail, and started at the underpass, which is the halfway point, working southwards.

There are seven workdays left until the bird-nesting season starts and we move away from heavy cutting back, so we need to make every workday count.

I’m currently juggling three thoughts in my head at the moment, which is unusual for me because I can normally only manage one at a time. Make gaps in the dense scrubby tree edge to let sunlight in, removal of tree whips so mature trees can flourish without loads of competition, and deep scallops in the scrub where the new sunlight is hitting the ground.

This will create warm micro-habitats for insects and wildflowers to thrive.

Today we cracked on with the above plan and also did a bit of work on our hedge.

We also made habitat piles with the cuttings.

I don’t think we will be winning any prizes with the National Hedgelaying Society, but when it greens up it will look a lot better and be an absolute hot-spot for wildlife.

We enjoyed coffee and stuffed our faces with biscuits, again (thanks Andrew for the tasty treats), whilst enjoying the views and chatting about I don’t know what? Probably Land Rovers and things like that.

Here is our YouTube of between the benches.

It hopefully gives you a good idea of what we are trying to achieve.

That’s it for this week.

Catch you on the next one!

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We Finally Broke Through

Posted on January 10, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Last week I was getting a bit stressed about how we navigate the lake that has been stubbornly sitting across the whole path for months. It’s one of those situations that kinda takes up residence at the back of your mind and slowly gnaws away at you. However, the luck of the gods has been with us since the back end of last week in so much that it hasn’t rained at all, and the forecast is saying that it is not going to rain for a week or two.

The torrential river that has plagued us for weeks has turned into a mere dribble and we have reclaimed back a lot of our land.

We carried on with the pushing back because we want the path width through the summer, and to ensure the path is usable if the thing floods again. We also made habitat piles with the cuttings. These will be super homes for spiders and all sorts of lovely insects.

Once we got around the lake the rest of the path is dry and wide enough, so our work at this end is complete for now.

We might return later in the year with shovels and try to create soakaways towards the edges, but for now, I’m just happy to be moving on. As I think I may have mentioned previously, I don’t like spending too much time in the same area.

We broke for coffee and the last of the Christmas cookies and thought it a good time to revisit our three core values…

A Path For Everyone

Creating a path that is accessible for walkers, cyclists, joggers, families, pushchairs, mobility buggies. Wide enough so people can pass comfortably or walk two abreast, can see far enough ahead so as not to feel intimidated, plenty of benches to stop at and rest. Areas for youth and areas for families to enjoy a picnic. Geocaching and dino trail activities. Duke of Edinburgh Bronze, Silver and Gold Award Assessor.

A Wildlife Corridor

Joined up habitat for wildlife. Plenty of sunshine and clearings for wildflowers. Bird boxes and bat boxes. A bird feeding station. Biodiversity is maximised by rotational clearing of scrubby bramble to allow wildflower-rich grassy areas.

A Safe Place For Mental Wellbeing

Doing the workdays with a positive purpose, a reason, and a goal, is so good for mental health. But just using the greenway to walk or cycle, to have a little less screen time and a little more green time is so good for all of us. Connecting with nature reduces stress and anxiety.

Well that’s about it for this week, except for one last thing, ah-ha, what could it be, I hear you thinking. Well just another country tuning in to read the blog!!

Someone from Latvia dropped by. That’s 126 countries now. It’s probably a bit like collecting stamps. Totally boring and pointless to everyone except those who do it. But it is just a tincy wincy bit addictive though.

Some exciting other news to share next week so watch this space!!

Until then!

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Welcome To Season 15

Posted on January 3, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

That’s as many seasons as The X Factor, the crazy talent show that discovered artists and bands such as Olly Murs, Leona Lewis, JLS, Little Mix and One Direction, to name but a few.

Our quest for World Domination continues with the second least densely populated country in the world tuning in and taking a look – Formerly Outer Mongolia, but now just called Mongolia since the bit called Inner Mongolia became part of China. Who would have thought that someone sitting in a yurt, on a snow-covered plain, with wild horses grazing outside and a pot of coffee brewing in the corner, would happen upon this blog.

It amazes me every time a new country finds us. It’s so humbling and awe-inspiring at the same time. That’s 125 now. WOW!!

This week we had George, who is starting his Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award, join us. He will be creating a clearing in between the wildflower clearing that Charlie did for his DofE last year, and the little bench where the snowdrops come up. The bench has been made by Andrew and is ready to be assembled and concreted into place, as soon as George has made a decent clearing for it. It will have good views across the heath and nice wildflowers for nectar loving insects. Andrew also supplied a bird-box so a few rungs in the food-chain will be created in this exciting little micro-habitat.

I’m looking forward to watching this develop over the next six months.

Today the six of us marched onwards with the path widening. We seem to be having storm after storm after storm at the moment. This week it was Storm Henk, but somehow, we remained dry. It started to rain just as we finished.

The worst of it was Tuesday with heavy flooding just about everywhere.

We made good progress and are not too far off the huge lake that we somehow need to navigate.

We do love a challenge. I’m thinking of a pontoon bridge but seeing as we are not allowed to build anything where people might slip, hurt themselves, and then try to sue us, we will somehow have to route the path around it.

The more footfall that we have, the more permanent the path will become. We can see it starting to form already.

We broke off for coffee and biscuits, that were kindly supplied by Andrew. They proved a little too moreish.

And we also collected a load of litter that we keep finding as we cut the vegetation back.

After a lot of digging around, I finally found the source of our new river.

The balancing pond from the new bit of the housing estate has a culvert that flows out into the brook that is supposed to go under the railway path. The culvert that goes under the path is tiny in comparison, so simply cannot cope with the volume of water coming in after the stormy weather of late.

It will probably dry up at some point, if it ever stops raining.

Until next week!

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Cold Moon

Posted on December 27, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

It feels like, another month, another full moon, and this week we witnessed the last full moon of the year. The Cold Moon, so called because it signifies the start of the long and chilly winter. The bitterly cold nights, followed by the weak sun that literally seems to drag itself up out of bed every morning with the tiniest glimmer of warmth.

Spiritually, the Cold Moon is a time for reflection and rest, time to recharge our bodies, minds and souls. Making peace with conflict and creating harmony within ourselves.

It’s also our last workday for what is Season 14 of this great adventure. We have had fun doing woodworking projects, overhauling our bird-boxes, really getting into recycling, and setting out our intentions with the path width. We have sold merchandise with our logo on, drank gallons of coffee from our new all-terrain mugs and eaten so many biscuits and cookies that it’s amazing that I’m not a stone heavier than last year – oh, hang on!!

We battled yet another storm. This one is called Storm Gerrit and brought the usual torrential cats-and-dogs rain that seem to be as common as the full moons.

If you look at the Met Office map, you can see that the God of Weather was smiling down on us. Whilst just about everywhere else was battening down the hatches, we had a little oasis amongst the stormy madness.

For this last one, we are still fighting to get around the flood water that keeps spewing out of the Berrybanks culvert. The whole thing might dry up in the summer, so I’m really conscious of how much time and effort we invest here, but on the flip side, if it does dry up, we have created a really decent platform for us to work on the south-facing embankment next year.

Once we punch through with the path, we can then work on the flow of the water so it stops pooling up, or get it to pool on the other side and allow the path side to remain dry. It all looks very soggy at the moment because of the incessant rain.

A cheeky little YouTube for people who like to see vids rather than fots…

A few people came along today and seemed happy with where we are at, and a scurry of squirrels took a glancing interest as they hunted for nuts and berries.

We stopped for coffee and cookies at the half-way point.

And this is where we made the group decision to battle on with this end of the path to get the job fully finished. I don’t normally like to spend too much time on the same section because it starts to feel like we get a bit bogged down, but I think we just want to see it through to the bitter end.

Obviously this is going to impact the work that we do at the other end, but once this end is done and we keep on top of it, it’s never going to suck up so much of our time and effort again.

Well that’s about it for this week, this month, and indeed, this year. It’s been great fun and has stretched our skills, or forced us to learn new stuff, we always have a great laugh and the path is always evolving.

Next year we have our rustic bench to make and put in, we also have George who will be doing his Duke of Edinburgh early next year. We have a bench from Andrew, who makes the bird-boxes, for George to install. The bench has to have a decent view so that will be an interesting challenge. There’s loads of other good stuff in the pipeline so watch this space.

And lastly, if you like the look of what we do, come along and give it a go.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year and looking forward to shaking off the Crimbo Limbo, where nobody seems to know what day it is, and cracking on in 2024!

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Winter Solstice

Posted on December 20, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We witness the winter solstice this week. The shortest and darkest day of the year, and the official start of the winter season. It all sounds a bit doomy and gloomy, however, the solstice represents the start of the festive period and is a time for celebration. It also means that the days get longer as the nights start to draw out again. Thank heavens for that!

Druids would visit stone circles en masse to worship the sunrise, witness the change of season, and slaughter a few cattle and other livestock to allow for feasting and survival on their meat throughout the colder months.

We don’t have a stone circle on the path to dance around in free-flowing pagan clothing, but we do have a wooden quadrant of benches. Feel free to do your thing, if you feel the need.

Possibly not quite the same, but if you’re a Druid without a stone circle, a wooden quadrant is probably the next best thing. The bizarre thought of whoever invented the wheel and how people coped beforehand, just flashed through my head…

This week we pushed onwards with our path-share. We felt that we should give our new little river a name. The first few suggestions that came to mind are unprintable…

But onwards we pushed and we seemed to cover a lot of ground, roughly 170-metres. There were six of us today though, so that made a real difference. Despite all the rain, and the stream gushing like a gushy thing, the ground that we cleared last week did feel slightly firmer under foot. It’s going to be interesting to see how this all turns out when we get some sunshine, warmth and dry days.

When we broke off for coffee in our all-terrain mugs, and gorged on festive mince pies, my ability to count deserted me.

I somehow found that I had lost the capacity to count past the number four. I really cannot explain what happened, but we were a coffee short – sorry, Steve!!

We also litter-picked from the Berrybanks bench, to where we got to today. Mostly beer cans that someone had collected ages ago and just left in a black bin-bag, along with a very dodgy looking DVD, a sponge, and a pair of socks!

Here is our YouTube of where we got to and ending at the bench that we need to finish at, next week.

We want to make it so that people can walk either side of the large trees so they feel like they are walking in a wood, rather than next to a wood.

All-in-all, it was a very festive and jolly gathering, and we all wished each other a Merry Christmas when we finally departed.

As mentioned last week, I’m trying to create a rustic style bench. In my mind’s eye, it looks something like this.

I’m going to need a sander, a Black and Decker workmate and a lot of patience. If I can get a wildflower clearing like the one in the photo, I’ll be as happy as a dog with two tails…

It’ll be a nice little winter project to get my teeth into, so watch this space.

Lastly, we had yet another new country tuning in over the last week. Lesotho. Never heard of it? No, me neither. It’s a little place totally land-locked by South Africa. A chap called Teboho dropped by and checked us out. He runs a blog called The Truth News Lesotho which is a topical news platform.

Here are a few fots of the country…

Amazingly, that’s a total of 124 countries that have checked out this blog. Truly humbled and happy with that.

We are back next week, which is a first. Normally we take the week off and come back in the New Year. I will try and manage my mug counting a little better next time.

Happy Christmas!

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National Hot Chocolate Day

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

It’s National Hot Chocolate Day in America today. Everyone is encouraged to grab a hot chocolate (cocoa) and hunker down whilst snuggling up with a warm cup of the stuff.

Making a flask of hot chocolate proved a challenge too far, for my rudimentary kitchen skills, so we stuck with coffee and custard cream biscuits.

I brought extra coffee again, so the offer to anyone who might be struggling to get into the Christmas spirit, to maybe pop along and see what we are up to, get a focus on something positive and interesting, and maybe see if it’s for you, is always there.

Next week we might be wearing Christmas hats and Santa beards, so be warned…

Only joking! Health and Safety would have an absolute field day with all that hairiness. I will bring mince pies though.

This week we carried on pushing the width of the path out. We are now sharing the path with a reasonably fast flowing stream. The rain has been pretty relentless and the ground is like a quagmire.

We have Storm Elin and Storm Fergus to thank for this week’s downpour. I’m not sure how far we got because today was more about going sideways and getting the width. A skinny path is no good for anyone and will just force people into the water and the slightly higher ground will never dry out.

In other news, an angry mob of squirrels had one of their hedonistic parties last week. Note to squirrels – the winter solstice is next week, with the full moon the week after. Hedonism is supposed to be on these times of the month. Keep breaking the benches and you will have nowhere to sit in the summer!

Sadly the little pair of benches are beyond repair, which is a great shame because we had a lad make these for his Duke of Edinburgh award a few years ago.. I’ll go skip-diving if I come across a reasonable few planks of wood that someone is throwing away. It’s all fun and games, so no point us lot getting wound-up about it. I might even amaze you all with my new design of bench called The Rustic. Watch this space…

Here is our YouTube bench-to-bench. You can see how desperately muddy it is, where we got to, and what is left to clear before we get to the bench at the end of the video.

As I mentioned earlier, without taking the time to get the width on this bit, then there really is no point. It might all change in the summer when the rain stops, but if previous years are anything to go by, it gets worse in January and February, before it starts to get better.

That’s about it for this week. Seriously, if you are struggling with Christmas, we are here for the next two weeks with light-hearted banter and company, hot coffee and mince pies.

Until next week!

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