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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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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