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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International Volunteer Day

Posted on December 6, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

This week we celebrate International Volunteer Day (5th of December).

The day was set up by the United Nations General Assembly in 1985. It’s a day where volunteers are acknowledged and the spirit of volunteerism is promoted at the local, national and international levels.

It’s quite apt as we draw towards the close of our 14th year of volunteering on the path, and I for one can happily say that volunteering has brought me a whole load of personal satisfaction, taught me the joy of giving without expecting something back, given me purpose in my life, and helped me to make a load of friends along the way.

This week we tried to fight back the double-nemesis that is, water where it shouldn’t be, and the dreaded brambles.

Whilst I wait for a lightbulb moment in my head to deal with the blocked culvert, we have no choice but to clear the slightly higher ground and make that a new path, whilst the overflowing water seems to have claimed the old path and turned it into a flowing stream.

The flow of air and sunlight will dry out the new ground and give people a decent place to walk, whilst admiring our new water feature. If push turns to shove and we have no choice but to keep the stream, and the new higher path works out, maybe we can work with the water by making small holding pools and little weirs. It just makes it work better for the wildlife and more interesting to look at. It’s just a back-up plan B if we need it.

We also worked southwards to where we got to last week. It’s just about getting the width now, and maintaining it when everything goes on a mad growth spurt in the spring.

So far, it feels like we are on the right track.

We broke off for coffee and ginger-crunch cookies at our halfway point. As promised, I brought extra coffee for anyone who is not feeling the Christmas spirit, when it seems like everyone else is hopping, skipping and quite literally gambolling towards the holiday season.

Pop along and say hello, we even have an extra all-terrain mug to share the love, along with a great selection of cookies. If you want to join in, you are more than welcome.

Lastly, I have topped up the stock in our Etsy shop. If you know someone who enjoys walking on the greenway, why not give them a personal gift. And it’s a great talking point over Christmas.

Enjoy a brew in one of our mugs, then go and walk or cycle the path, maybe enjoy a biscuit at one of the benches whilst reading about the crazy adventures of us lot, and then commit to a New Year’s Reso to join us next year.

Until next time!

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The Beaver Moon

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

No smutty giggles at the back, please…

The Beaver Moon is called such, because it is when beavers prepare dams ready for the winter. It is also the time that humans would trap beavers for their furs. The Beaver Moon has a spiritual meaning of creating action and transformation in one’s life.

Another little pub quiz snippet that you can thank me for, later.

Today we met at the halfway point at the underpass and pushed in both directions. The southern push was to try and re-tame our hawthorn hedge, and also to see how far we could get with a battery-powered strimmer.

We want to get a couple more strimmers and keep the path wide over the spring and summer. I hate the way the nettles close in and make it uncomfortable for everyone, so we just want to push the path outwards and then have the short-grass, wildflower-rich long-grass, shrubby scrub and then woodland transition.

The underpass clearing is now cleared ready for next year’s wildflower growth.

Still a bit of tidying to do, but thankfully cleared of the dreaded bramble that really is our nemesis.

We covered over 300 metres today, so we are happy with that. We pushed northwards making the path nice and wide so it drys out and people can share it without pushing each other into the scrub.

However, the next bit is going to be tough. We have four workdays to try and clear as much of this section as possible, and navigate the path around the flooded bit. After that it will be the New Year and we will be back at the south end making scallops and stuff for wildlife micro-habitats.

Our YouTube of the progress today.

We had a really interesting conversation around our Douglas Fir, named Dougie, last week.

Steve suggested that it would be a good thing to collect tree seeds and plant them for others to enjoy, when the tree is 300 or so years old. What a wonderful legacy to leave. I think we could develop this idea and work with it.

Thanks, Steve.

For the next few weeks, I’m not sure what is worse. Dealing with the flooding or dealing with the ever encroaching brambles. The next four workdays are going to test us…

As always, spare coffee is available if anyone wants to pop along for a chat or join in. Don’t let the Christmas season drag you down if you are not feeling it.

Lastly, and you knew it was coming… We have yet another new country tuning in…

Bahrain. Feeling truly humbled with gosh knows how many people from 123 different countries around the world taking time to look at this blog.

Thank you.

Until next time!

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A Chariots of Fire Moment

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We’ve been sort of cruising along at about 120 metres per workday for weeks on end. Today it felt like the shackles fell away and we raced ahead covering 400 metres, and the next 400 metres looks after itself, so we leap-frog to the underpass next week.

What a lovely feeling!!

We started at the recycled bench and the first stint was working southwards to pick up where we finished last week.

The second stint was all about powering northwards to Charlie’s wildflower clearing.

As you can see, we made little habitat piles with the cuttings.

We had coffee and cookies and I brought extra brew. I have put it out there that if anyone is feeling a bit down or lonely as we hurtle towards Christmas and New Year, pop along and share a coffee. We normally break around 11am and have a cuppa and a bit of light-hearted banter. I think this week the conversation ranged from rabbits to squirrels to cats. You really needed to be there… But seriously, I know how rubbish it can make people feel when everyone seems to be getting into the Christmas holiday vibe and some of us are not, so do come along if you need to. And if you bring biscuits we will love you forever.

We have left the butterfly clearing that got covered in nettles almost as soon as we made it.

I’m just very conscious that we have created a micro-habitat with the nettles and if we go smashing through it, the whole thing will be destroyed before we allow a full year of insect life-cycle. Hopefully, we will get a load of butterflies next year.

Here is our YouTube of the day’s work. We all love it.

And lastly, another country has tuned in. This confused me at first. Republic Of The Congo. Not the Democratic Republic Of The Congo, which is a bigger country to the east. How on earth two different countries can be called the same name is totally baffling to a blithering idiot like me. Google it because I really cannot begin to explain…

That’s an amazing 122 countries looking at this blog. Very humbling, indeed.

Until next time!

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Remembrance Day

Posted on November 15, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

This week the significant events keep rolling in. Remembrance Day is, of course, a memorial day observed since the end of the First World War to honour armed forces members who have died in the line of duty.

My grandmother’s brother died in France from war wounds. Samuel Bacon, born 18/10/1897, died 25/8/1918, aged 20.

Nice to pause and remember the past for a little bit.

This week we had to battle with Storm Debi, which brought yet more rain and severe winds. We finished what we started last week, to give us a decent start today.

We also litter-picked from where we were today, to the southern end. It’s looking really good, even if we say so ourselves.

This last chunk took us all of October and November last year. Look at the blog for those months if you think I’m exaggerating. We really got bogged down with it. This year it has been a lot quicker and easier.

We need to invest in decent battery-powered grass strimmers to keep on top of it over the spring and summer. Watch this space!

We ploughed forwards, or rather, northwards and just missed the point where the path naturally widens, by about 15 metres. I will catch us up again ready for next Wednesday. I’m not really sure how much ground we covered but I reckon it was about 150+ metres.

We enjoyed coffee and cookies with our all-terrain mugs at the halfway point of the workday, where we entertained ourselves with light-hearted banter.

Lastly, we have a couple of fungi finds.

One is called Fragrant Funnel and the other looks like something that you would find in the fruit and veg department of a supermarket!

Until next week!

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Remember, Remember, The 5th of November…

Posted on November 8, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

These historic events are coming thick and fast at the moment. Last week we had Halloween, this week we had Bonfire Night which gives me the chance to show off the lovely village where I live.

Dunchurch (in England for my International followers) is famous for The Gunpowder Plot in 1605.

Guy Fawkes tried to blow-up Parliament with two-and-a-half tons of gunpowder and his co-conspirators waited for news of the plot at an inn right here in the village.

Here are a few snaps of the inn, which is now a private residence, and a few more of the village.

Possibly a little self-indulgent, but it is what it is. The Dunchurch railway station is the first stop along the old railway-line that runs from Rugby to Leamington Spa and part of it is now the nature trail that this blog is all about.

Dunchurch

We are still on the path-widening mission and once it is done, we are going to try to keep it this wide through the spring and summer, and push the wildflower-rich grassy edge outwards before the bramble scrub starts. We’re just wasting so much time going over the same ground each year.

This is what I did before today to keep us on track.

The weather took a squally turn for the worst today and quite a few times I felt a trickle of rain snaking down my spine. But we cracked on and made a start on the next 150 metre chunk of path.

What we are trying to do is release the raised ballast path that runs alongside the muddy strip. It just gives people the option of walking on dry ground, rather than in the muddy puddles.

There’s still a bit of work to do on this bit, but rather than get totally bogged down here for weeks on end, I will get it finished before next Wednesday.

After my various excursions around Woodland Trust managed woods over the last week, and watching reel upon reel of YouTube vids, the general consensus of a healthy woodland is lots of biodiversity and a lot of different areas for wildlife to move in and out of. Basically, lots of lichen, moss, fungi, grassland, wildflowers, decaying wood, scrub, and healthy well spaced-out trees. The wildlife will thrive if these things are present.

I did a quick audit of what was right in front of my nose and this is what I found…

We are pretty happy with this little snap-shot.

In other news, Martyn the Land Manager is going to look at the flooding problem at Berrybanks and work out what the best way to deal with it is. Watch this space.

And lastly, a new country has tuned in. Someone from Mauritius, which is a little island off the east coast of Africa.

Thank you Mauritian person for taking the time to look, from what looks like an absolutely divine place to live.

This puts us on 121 countries out of 195 in the whole World. Pretty humbling.

Think of my arms, back and legs as I get this bit of the path looking as good as the rest.

Until next week!

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A Spooky Week

Posted on November 1, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We had Halloween to contend with this week. The eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows. It begins the observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. In popular culture, the day has become a celebration of horror, being associated with the macabre and supernatural.

Thank me later when it comes up in the spooky pub quiz.

We carried on with the path widening and at first, I thought muggins here had miscalculated the distance between the benches. We did about 150 metres but it was hard going. We haven’t trimmed back this part for a while so the scrub was pretty dense, rather than just growth from this summer. I can let myself off a bit of self-flagellation, which I normally end up doing when I am way too optimistic about how much we can do each week.

Before and after photos and despite removing a load of scrub, it looks like we didn’t do much at all!! We still have the right-hand side to do, which puts us behind plan, but I will probably catch us up over the next day or so, to keep us on track.

Work in progress and a bit of tree release.

When we finish the path widening we’re going to come back and work behind the trees to create more of a woodland feel to the trail. We are not getting rid of all the scrub, before everyone starts hyper-ventilating with horror-stricken palpitations, we are just knocking it back to get a permanently wide path, a good wildflower-rich grassy verge, and then a scrubby understory.

Behind the scrub are a lot of eerie and dead trees. It does look very spooky, creepy and dark. Dead wood is great but for the whole area to be baron is not so good, so we need to do some thinning to let some sunlight in.

Here is our YouTube from where we left off last week, bench-to-bench.

We were working southwards today, but the overall progress is northwards, as is the video.

I visited three woodlands managed by the Woodland Trust this week, just to make sure that we are on the right track, and to kinda confirm in my own head that what I think we are working towards is actually attainable.

Here they are:

I got there before all of the leaf-peepers. That’s a term for all the people who flock to the woods to see the leaves turning golden brown, bright red and deep amber, as autumn shuffles towards winter.

Pretty impressive and worth us slowly transitioning towards. We don’t want to do it too quickly or the existing wildlife will not be able to gradually adapt. The things that stand out for me are the path widths, tree spacing, and woodland floor. It just feels so much more open.

Lastly, we enjoyed a festive mince pie and a warming coffee, in our all-terrain mugs.

Hopefully I can pull us back on track ready for next week and we can stay roughly where we need to be.

With all the recent rain, and I am expecting some sort of backlash from Storm Ciaran tomorrow, we still have the troublesome drainage problem at Berrybanks. I’m waiting for Martyn, the Sustrans Land Manager, to get back to us with ideas, but if anyone can think of a way to get the water into the drain, or some other way of dealing with it, please let me know. At the moment it’s spilling out of the input drain and flowing down the centre of the path for about 800 metres.

Just pop any ideas in the comments below.

Until next week!

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The Hunter’s Moon

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

This week we blast towards the Hunter’s Moon, so called because October is the month where humans and animals alike, stock up for winter. Squirrels hide their nuts, deer fatten up for the long cold months ahead and humans hunt for their woolly jumpers from their bottom drawer. In ancient times it would be the humans hunting the deer and storing that meat by covering it in salt and wrapping it up, or placing it in barrels full of water to create a brine. Vegetables were pickled in brine or vinegar to preserve them for a season or two. It must have been a very salty diet, indeed.

We continued with our path widening and young tree removal. We need light to get to the floor to create ground-cover for birds and small mammals to forage and hunt. I have gone over my old notes that I made with David, the Ecologist from Sustrans (the land owners) and he suggests coppicing 10% of the mature trees every year, on a rotational basis. This is not killing the trees, they will grow back over time. What it does though, is it keeps the tree canopy at different heights and stages, and helps the remaining trees to reach their full potential and allows the woodland floor to develop properly for greater biodiversity.

We’ve got about 500 metres left before the path naturally widens and sort of takes care of itself. We then have the bit between the underpass, through to Berrybanks and on to the Bear pub bridge, which is about 550 metres. With a fair wind behind us, we should have all the path widening done before Christmas. We can then spend January and February creating scallops so we have micro-habitats along the trail.

Here are a couple of YouTube vids showing our progress over the last three weeks.

We are kinda on plan, even though I tend to be wildly over-optimistic about how much we can get done each week, and somehow we need to re-stain the benches before winter, so that is quietly gnawing away at the back of my mind…

My feeling is that we need to bust-a-gut trying to keep the path at this width over the spring and summer of next year. At the moment it really feels like groundhog day and we never seem to have time to do the coppicing and other stuff, because half of the cutting back season is spend going over the same ground every year.

Anyhow, we broke off for a pick-me-up coffee in our all-terrain mugs and this week, I thought I would mix up the biscuit offering with some ginger crunch cookies. They went down a little too well.

We also strimmed around the benches with the less powerful electric strimmer and did a litter-pick up to the Cawston Bridleway bridge.

We need to be able to move on with nothing outstanding on the path behind us. Just keep ploughing forwards.

In other news, we had a person from a new country in Africa viewing the blog. Mauritania, which is totally new to me, is on the western side of Africa and is kinda south of the Sahara Desert.

Hello, person from Mauritania and thank-you for taking the time to read the blog.

Well that’s about it for this week. Next week we are at the birdfeeder clearing working south to pick up where we got to today, and then pushing northwards clearing off the higher ballast ridge, before the rain starts and the middle of the path turns into a mud-bath.

Until then!

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Are You The Army…?

Posted on October 18, 2023 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Seriously, this was a question a member of the public asked us a while back. We do normally wear green T-shirts and camouflage patterned trousers, but mine are from Sainsbury’s (that’s a huge supermarket chain for my international followers) and definitely not army issue. And we were certainly not on training manoeuvres…

If it’s not the army, it’s Community Service – this is what you get when the courts find you guilty of a crime, but deem it not worthy of a custodial sentence. Instead you are required to do a number of hours of unpaid work in the community. Probably what everyone will now be doing, since the news that all the jails in the UK are full!!

And if people don’t assume the first two things above, they probably think that we are a group of happy-clappy tree-huggers. Whilst we must love nature and being out in it, I don’t really see ourselves like this. We started out focussed on just making the disused railway trail into a usable path. The nature bit sort of grew on us over time, and with our dearly departed friend, Mick, slowly guiding the ship in that general direction, whilst our main thrust was “a path for everyone”.

Before we start on today’s adventure, I just want to share a photo of a similar path up near Walsall. It has a lot of support and guidance from Sustrans (the land owners).

It could very easily be our path, but it isn’t. What it shows is how wide the path ideally needs to be. You can follow their progress at:-

http://www.facebook.com/SupportBackTheTrack.

So without further ado, we set about widening our path to the tree-line. We need it to be wide so walkers and cyclists can use the thing in harmony, and people have a good sight ahead of them so they don’t feel like the Cawston bogeyman is about to jump out.

This is photos of up and down before we started, mid-point, and at the end. We all agreed that it looks way better.

I did a YouTube of it and what needs doing next week to carry it on.

Once we have the path cleared we can then work on the overhang and also scallop the scrub behind the trees to encourage wildflowers to grow. We can keep any new nettle and bramble growth at bay using the lightweight battery strimmer across the summer next year.

We took advice from the Woodland Trust who said that we need to be ‘halo thinning’ around good quality trees so that we don’t have loads of saplings all competing for the same water, nutrients and light. We also need a varied tree canopy so loads of light gets through to the ground.

After our rather intense morning of work whilst Storm Babet lashed unmercifully around us, we eventually broke-off for coffee and cookies.

We seem to be having storm after storm. Last week a huge branch came down and narrowly missed squishing our Christmas tree by a whisker… One might suggest that an angel was sitting on the top of that tree and willed the falling branch slightly to the left…

We have two new countries tuning in this week. Luxemburg and Albania. I do a lot of work searching for blogs in a specific area, reading the posts and leaving a nice comment if I found the blog interesting. It’s always nice when fellow bloggers reciprocate.

Our flag count is now at 119 out of 195 countries (61%) so very happy with that. Some countries are proving extremely difficult to crack. Mongolia, that bit around Iran, and Central Africa being a bit of a blot on the map, but I keep plugging away.

Amazingly, there are only eight countries left in Europe to capture. Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, Montenegro, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and Holy See.

Holy See is the smallest country in Europe and the World, being the Vatican City and is 0.17 square miles in size. Holy See comes from the Latin “seat”. Thank me later when you win the pub quiz.

Lastly, I litter-picked the whole path over the last weekend.

It’s looking good…

Until next week!

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