We had to say “goodbye” to Big Will today. But more of that, later…
The greenway is all things to all people – a path for everyone. So I took my family at the weekend and planted some trees. Note the word, “family”.
We bolstered the hedges at various places so wildlife has a hedge-habitat when the trees have grown and integrated with the existing edge.
So… back to that word, “family”.
I don’t really want to be the one explaining to my seven year old daughter what the symbols and words on the bridge mean. So they had to go!
Aaah, that’s better.
We also did a litter-pick from the bird-feeder glade to the underpass, finished our temporary path, to create an alternative to the treacherous “nutcracker” slope down the side of the bridge, and enjoyed a cuppa and cookie using our new mugs.
That’s about it!! Next week we are at the snowdrop bench working northwards staining all the benches, and snipping back anything growing into the path.
Join in, but if you can’t do that, visit the shop and buy a mug, or even better, become a Patron for £2 per month. A little shiver of goodness will go down your spine and a little shiver of appreciation will go down ours.
We start seeding the wildflower clearings after the last frost, so mid to late April. After that, I promise, you are gonna be wowed!!
I decided that we needed something new to drink our coffee out of. What better way to introduce our branded enamel mugs…
I love ’em. Everybody loves ’em. And these bad-boys are not for sale in our shop… yet!!
Let me know what you think?
We had to leave planting our tree pack due to children joining us and we would have been too spread out to keep an eye on everyone. I will pop them in over the weekend at some point.
So we marched ahead with our snowdrop splitting and transplanting from our secret supply.
This bank is going to look amazing in a couple of years. Literally a carpet of white.
David and Reece worked on the transition to the new temporary path. It’s not quite there, but will be after next week.
There’s a pretty decent hedge forming at the top of the bank so this will be fantastically useful for wildlife.
And lastly, our butterfly bank on the other side of the bridleway bridge.
We want a pedestal bench about a third of the way up the slope, so people can sit and enjoy the butterflies and bees in the spring and summer. I’m working on the funding for it. We can seed it with a wildflower and grassland mix after the last frost, so roughly late April time.
So what have we got on our two-mile nature walk? 15 bench areas, some pedestal, some picnic, some in clusters, some stand alone. This means that there is a bench every 200 metres, on average. five wildflower glades that break up the scrubby bramble. 50+ bird nesting boxes of varying types, and 5 bat boxes. Eight access/exit points that are safe to use. Our birdfeeder glade and lovely murals on our underpass and bridges. We also have our Geocaching Trail and Dino Trail for you to enjoy.
Finally, we are happy, and now we will work to maintain it as it is.
If you want to join in, read our “joining in” guide in the tab menu above, and if you bring biscuits we will love you forever.
Support us by buying some merchandise or becoming a patron. If 40 people sign up for just £2 a month we can keep the good stuff happening.
Please don’t use the slope that runs between the Cawston Bridleway and the greenway. It’s like a Val-d’Isere ski run.
Some poor bloke came off his pushbike trying to cycle down it a couple of weeks ago. The wail of pain could be heard in Dunchurch as his nether regions smashed into his crossbar!
There are plans afoot to get a proper wooden flight of steps put in, but these things, as I am sure we all know, take forever to organise. I just have a horrible fear that in the meantime, someone is going to slip and crack their spine on the protruding rocks. It’s just not worth the risk.
What we have done is made a temporary path along the top of the cutting, and it gently pushes people out where the drop is far more sedentary and manageable.
We as a group, cannot build steps or any other physical structure where people might trip over and hurt themselves, so hopefully this is a halfway measure to allow people to get on and off without having to scale the Alps.
Did I mention that it was snowing today?
It was nice to get under the bridge and enjoy a hot coffee and a coconut cookie.
Still a little bit of work to do with the transition from the greenway to the start of the rise upwards. We will tackle this next week to make it as seamless as possible.
We also litter-picked two bags of grot. Beer cans and bottles, and dog poo bags, mainly.
Next week we have a “tree pack” from the Woodland Trust to plant into our hedge along the Hawthorn Walk, we also need to split a load of the snowdrops further down the path and replant them in the clearing here to fill in some of the gaps. And the little bit of work on the path transition.
I think we may split into small groups but meet here and see how the Arctic weather influences our morning workday.
Support us by looking at all the different ways on the right. Buy a unique mug or fridge-magnet, or sign-up to be a Patron. It will send a little tingle down your spine and make you feel all warm and fuzzy.
Well that’s it for this week, I’m trudging off to buy some snow-shoes…
But before we get into it, you might have noticed a new tab on the menu bar named “Join In”.
If you want to join in, it needs to be with us, under a designated workday. This is for insurance purposes and also stops people saying, “can I do ABC” and ending up doing XYZ!!
If you are doing unauthorised stuff on the greenway and something happens, either to you or to a member of public, you are not insured and do not have permission from the landowner to be doing any activity except traversing it.
On your head be it!!
Today we started to tackle all the self-seeded tree whips… There are loads and loads. If we leave the scrub the path becomes bramble and then the bramble gives way to woodland that becomes a dense fight for light, so tree stems become straggly and leggy, all rubbing against each other and causing all sorts of problems.
I can see this area becoming an unplanned wildflower clearing, it will probably be full of nettles but that is not a totally bad thing for butterflies.
The Woodland Trust suggests that trees need to be between 1.5 metres and 2 metres apart to reach their full potential and maturity.
What I am going to do is work out some sort of rotational clearing regime for tree saplings and bramble scrub. This will help loads with biodiversity because it stops one thing becoming dominant.
Our snowdrop bank is looking good for its first year.
I am going to get more clumps and fill in the gaps. Our goal is a white carpet of snowdrops eventually.
We start to seed our newly made clearings with a wildflower seed mix in April. This month is just about getting as much sunlight onto the ground as possible.
Due to the teacher strike I had my young assistant helping…
We litter picked between the birdfeeder bench and the underpass. She then took charge of our coffee and cookie break…
There are a few Cawston Greenway mugs left and a couple of fridge magnets. If you fancy a unique gift for someone or yourself, be quick… It keeps us stocked up with coffee and cookies. Head over to the stuff on the right for ways to support us. Everything helps.
Firstly let’s talk about this bench. We inherited the frames from Rugby Borough Council in February 2011. They were surplus to requirements so they asked us if we would like to recycle them. The fact that they are made out of recycled car tyres means they were on their third journey with us, back then.
The bench went missing in 2013 and was later discovered down the bank and in a den made by the then youths. It had become quite rickety so moving it back up the bank seemed more trouble than it was worth.
Twelve years later, the bench is restored and now on its fourth incarnation.
Decent views across Lawford Heath, bird nesting boxes can be spotted from it, and good views up and down the path as well. The seats are a little “springy” so we might beef them up slightly. It depends on how we feel about throwing a tiny bit more money at it.
But all-in-all, we are very happy with it.
So that segways us nicely onto nesting boxes.
This season I decided to recycle all the old nesting boxes. Most are on the edges of the path and are out of view, and most have been ravaged by woodpeckers around the holes and are not very securely attached. I sorted the last five out this week.
We have 25mm holes for blue tits, 28mm holes for great tits and open boxes for robins. In total across the 2-miles of the path, there are over 50 nesting boxes. It’s going to be a ruckus in Spring!!
I have also mapped all the nesting boxes with what3words.com so we can monitor them when it greens up again and can no longer spot the boxes from the path.
Next, we have Charlie doing his DofE Silver Award. Charlie is creating a wildflower clearing by the Heath View bench and it’s coming on very well.
It’s just another area where the scrub opens up to wildflower-rich grassland and enhances biodiversity massively. Super job so far, Charlie.
Next we go to geocaching. I really thought this was a complete gimmick when I set it up in January last year… How wrong I was!
We have had people coming from as far at Nottingham and even Cork in Ireland to do the Dino Trail. How amazing is that!! I have cleaned out all the caches and put new logs in them ready for the 2023 season. How many times do you think they have been discovered over the last year? Over 1,500 times!! And I thought it was just a gimmick!!
Lastly (was that a collective “phew” I just heard), support us by buying a mug or fridge-magnet, become a Patron or buy-me-a-coffee.
Every last penny helps and keeps us happy with biscuits and coffee. But seriously, a dull green corridor is not my idea of fun and we have always aimed at trying to make the greenway a little bit more than this.
Our YouTube of the area.
Well that’s about it for this week. We have a really good piece coming on “joining in” so watch this space.
Recycling our old picnic bench A-frames, which are made out of recycled car tyres (double win)
Each wooden strip cost less than £3, so total cost is slightly over £30
We got to play with power-tools
We had to use our collective engineering skills to make it strong enough
It will have superb views over Lawford Heath and is surrounded by bird nesting boxes
We need to attach the table top next week and dig the legs into the track so that the seat height is about 45cm from the ground. We also need to stain the wood so it all blends together a bit better.
Some fots of the area where it’s going, plus the snowdrops where the Cawston Bridleway bridge crosses the greenway.
We’re really happy with this. It means people can enjoy a picnic without having to walk too far. The thing weighs a ton, and aesthetically, I don’t think anyone would want to carry it off and stick it in their back garden…
A good morning’s work.
For the railway buffs, here are some pictures of the three railway stations between Rugby and Leamington Spa, when the line was fully operational.
Dunchurch
Birdingbury
Marton
That’s about it for this week. Buy a mug or become a Patron if you want to support us.
Everything helps the cause, and it will send a little shiver of goodness down your spine and a little shiver of appreciation down ours.
The schedule was telling us to re-stain our picnic benches ready for the spring. The hoar frost told us different!!
So we extended our wildflower meadow slightly, and made it a bit more even on both sides of the path.
The path in general needs to be about 3 metres wide for cyclists and walkers to be able to share it without compromising each other. This is advice from Sustrans, so don’t go shooting the messenger!!
We also repaired our woodpecker ravaged bird-boxes and put up the ones that needed repair from last season.
Contrary to popular belief, the shiny metal plates do not scare or deter the birds using the nesting boxes.
We have more Cawston Greenway mugs available, modelled by our wonderful Head of Retail, Ruby.
Just head to the shop if you would like one. More exciting merchandise is on the way so keep your eyes peeled.
A quick YouTube of the area before we started today. Wonderful views as always.
Well that’s about it for this week, and a few bits from last week added in. Keep the faith – it’s going to look amazing from April onwards.
If you want to get involved pop along and see if it’s for you, or PATRON PATRON PATRON if you want to help the project financially. Just £2 a month multiplied by 40 or so people means we can keep delivering the good stuff. At the moment our costs are outstripping our income, but we really don’t want to be just another green path with nettles and bramble scrub dominating the edges.
Next week we are at the snowdrop area trying to rebuild the bench on the A-frame that Rugby Borough Council gave us about 12 or so years ago. There is a sad story attached to this, so it’s a bit close to my heart and maybe if I can find the right words, I will share it.
We enlarged the Potford Dam wildflower mini-meadow and doubled it in size.
The before foto, the work, and the after foto…
Thanks to Charlie, who is getting some Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award hours under his belt, for the photos. Some rare ones of me for a change.
Cutting back the bramble scrub needs to be done on some sort of rotational basis, according to the Wildlife Trust. If it’s just left it becomes horribly leggy and the understory is shaded out and it loses its thicket qualities, which decreases usefulness and biodiversity.
We can grub out the bramble roots when we overseed with a wildflower meadow seed mix in March.
What we are looking for is a mosaic of wildflower-rich grassland, scrub at various ages of maturity, and then the closed canopy woodland on the edges.
Some good news in the area where we had to rip out a load of Spanish bluebells that we inadvertently planted. We have our native English snowdrops coming up, and lots of them!!
A fantastic recovery and hopefully we will have a carpet of snowdrops as they thicken up.
A couple of fungi finds along the new Hawthorn Walk path.
Bracket Fungus
Velvet Foot Fungus
And lastly our YouTube showing the new clearing.
Well that’s about it for this week. We are putting up bird-boxes on Wednesday and I will update the rest of the month activities in a bit. I have put in a bulk order for our mugs, a totally unique gift. Just visit the shop on the right if you want one.
Looking forward to life at the end of the ladder next time…
We will probably restart from the Berrybanks end in March, and work towards where we got to today. It’s just gonna have to be “little and often” or we’re going to be stuck here forever.
Just the three of us today and not a single passer-by came past. Probably for the first time ever!!
Our YouTube for people who like to see it in video format.
The goal here is to make the path wide enough so it dries out and a mobility buggy or pushchair can be used without any difficulty. We also need to get huge amounts of sunlight onto the left-hand side for wildflowers, butterflies and bees.
We have our weekender this Saturday down at the Potford Dam wildflower clearing, and then next Wednesday we are putting up birdboxes, meeting at the snowdrop bench and working northwards.
That sinking feeling when we realise that we’ve bitten off far more than we can chew!!
South of Berrybanks or north of the underpass, it feels like we are gonna be camped here for a long time…
The before foto, the work, and the after foto… It needs to be a flat bottomed V like this \_/ and everything is in such a tangle. It’s gonna be a long process to get rid of the sun-blocking overhang.
My new pole-saw broke almost immediately.
Next week I will bring a ladder so we can get up amongst it.
Here is our YouTube of the after…
We have some new graffiti in the underpass. This is what Kai, one of our volunteers, felt about it…
An interesting and thoughtful perspective.
We are gonna have to dig in and get this bit done. The ladder will help, I’m sure. It’s all about creating areas of sunlight on the southerly facing bank to encourage wildflowers and butterflies.
Which nicely moves us to our assistant showing our new book.
This will help us loads in getting the habitat right.
Cawston Greenway 