Welcome To Season 15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…

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

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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