The Rain Finally Got Us

Posted on October 29, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We normally have the luck of the Irish when it comes to rain. Even when it’s forecast, we seem to find ourselves in a little dry micro-climate. Today, that luck well and truly ran out…

I half expected nobody to turn up and thought that I would be having a lazy day watching raindrops snaking down my kitchen windows. But no, seven of us decided that rain was a feeble excuse to stay in the comfort of a warm house, and we cracked on.

Ruby, Mark, Steve, Dave, Andrew, David, and Paul battled with the scrub.

Another big tick in the diversity checkbox, thank you very much!!

We switched next week’s workday with this week’s, so we had the bridge for cover, but before long, we were so far down the track that it really didn’t make any difference.

We’re pushing the scrub back so that we have a wildflower-rich grassy margin between the path and where the scrub starts. The challenge that we have is that the trail swings round to an almost north-to-south axis.

This means that one side of the path is in full sun in the morning, and the other side is in full sun in the afternoon. If it went east-to-west, then one side of the path would be in full sun all day long. We can create a wavy, scalloped edge that has little south-facing micro-habitats, but that sort of detail is for another day.

Insects that love full sun will have to move to the other side as the day progresses. Sorry, but that’s life!

What we’re trying to do at the moment is get rid of the dead zones, where no sun is reaching the woodland floor, and get the tree spacing sorted so that everything is growing vertically, rather than diagonally or even horizontally. This will help nature and people to flourish together, and the mental health benefits of sunshine and open green space will really kick in.

Ruby and me set off to litter pick the path to our most southerly point, and then northwards to Berrybanks and back. Not a huge amount, thankfully, because I had run out of the usual blue litter sacks.

But we did notice a few things that need attention at some point, like a huge hole?? A few stumps that need cutting to ground level, benches that need wood stain, and a fallen nesting box.

And someone was asking me last week if there is enough work to keep us all busy!!

The end result made me think that it was worth the effort today.

This is the width that allows everything to work together: nature, humans, cyclists, and walkers.

And lastly, we made a huge brash pile that will slowly rot down over the winter and provide warmth and habitat for a great many visitors.

We are now well into the fungi season, so I thought I might feature a fungus every week. Every day’s an opportunity to learn something new.

Fungi Feature

Our first fungus is jelly ear, which as the name suggests, looks uncannily like an ear! ​​It grows on dead and dying branches and is most often found on elder trees, but can sometimes be encountered on other species such as ash, beech and sycamore. It favours damp, shady spots and often grows in clusters.

Scientific name: Auricularia auricula-judae

How to identify: A gelatinous purplish-brown fungus that grows in cups on branches. As the cups age, they develop lobes and can look like a human ear growing from the wood. The inner surface of the cups is smooth and shiny, whilst the outside is velvety.

Where to spot: Woodland

When to spot: All year

Did you know? Jelly ear can survive freezing weather, thawing out afterwards and continuing to grow!

That’s it for this week.

I have updated the workdays for the next month and a bit, which is somewhere on the right-hand side of the blog, with the bacon batch days highlighted, so come along if you need feeding up. There is always plenty to go around.

Give yourself a pat on the back if you made it this far into my ramblings.

Until next time!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Can We Tick The Diversity Box?

Posted on October 22, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Eight of us wildlife heroes made it this morning. Matt, Steve, Mark, Ian, Martin, Reece, George, and Paul.

It was especially nice to see George, who is off school with it being half-term. Whilst George does a super job with us, his presence also helps with the group diversity, or rather, the extremely obvious lack of diversity.

So thanks, George, in more ways than one.

We carried on with the thinning of the trees. You will see why this is important later on, so just bear with us, and also bear in mind that I spend what seems like all of my awake time studying stuff like this.

139 pages of bedtime reading…

We really don’t want all these whips to come up, and then all start fighting for light and nutrition. It seems harsh, but only the strongest can survive.

This is how it looked afterwards.

Pools of sunlight, decent forward vision (40+ metres is the recommended minimum, so people don’t feel anxious), and the tree canopy broken up.

We have one more week on this section, and hopefully, we can push the scrub out a bit to allow a wildflower-rich grassy margin to grow.

We also did a bit of bird nesting-box maintenance.

The open robin box had come away completely, and the closed box was hanging on for dear life!

With Andrew joining us recently, I wanted to give a shout-out for the fantastic geocaching trail that he has put together for us.

The triangle is the creation of Andrew and is a good 7-mile walk, so hours of fun searching for the treasures. The yellow faces are the ones that I have found. The zoomed-out picture shows how popular geocaching is in the wider area. It is like this on a worldwide basis and is incredibly addictive.

Go to geocaching.com and give it a go!

A quick YouTube to try and share the vision.

And lastly, a naughty fungi photo to make you smile.

Dunchurch Bridleway

Three of us turned out last Friday morning. Ian, Dave, and Paul, and we got the first 1,000 metres finished.

The trees here are ancient because the bridleway has probably existed for centuries. What we are trying to do is ease the scrub back and make it so that the path sort of splays to bring the trees into the trail.

For me, I want the trees to stand majestic and proud, and for kids and dogs to investigate behind them to make walking or cycling on the trail more interesting.

This is why we are thinning the trees so much on the Cawston bit. If we can get big trees down there, it just makes it so much more interesting.

We broke for coffee and Halloween biscuits…

I’m such a big kid.

And then I noticed all the wildflowers coming up in the area where we ripped out the scrub a few weeks ago.

This is going to be such a nice place to sit and just relax with a coffee and a bit of a pack-up. It’s south-facing, so it will do really well, and it looked really messy a few weeks ago. Give nature a chance and look what happens.

Lastly, the usual litter pick.

And that is it.

Until next time!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Record Numbers

Posted on October 15, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We almost had the perfect storm today, where nearly everyone on the team was available.

Eleven superheroes turned out this morning, and the autumnal season is really starting to kick in. There was a definite mild chill to the air, and the leaves are turning beautiful golden yellows, browns, ochres, and reds.

Steve, Marcus, Mark, Dave, Ian, Reece, David, Matt, Martin, Andrew, and Paul gathered to work on this difficult bit, due to it being so close to local housing.

The tasks today were to keep the path 3+ metres wide, remove some of the overhanging branches to allow sunlight to get onto the trail and into the understory, and move a bench.

We have a load of self-seeded trees growing on the left-hand side, and we will need to thin out as the stronger ones are allowed to get established. A dense mesh of straggly trunks is not what we want. Thick trunks that can absorb noise from the road, and grow to a decent height, is what we are looking for.

After everyone had chosen their weapon of choice and made their way up to where we got to last week, a few of us tackled the bench move.

Somebody rather rudely made off with the bench that was here previously, so we pulled this one back 100 metres to replace it. I don’t think anyone will want to take this one; however, it does hold huge sentimental value to me personally, and I guess to the members of the team who have rebuilt it so many times over.

A lot of the work today was with pole saws. That is a saw on the end of a pole, and it makes you discover muscles that you never knew you had, and not in a good way.

We also strimmed the grass margin to the sides of the path. The three metre width is the absolute minimum for a mixed-use path and allows everyone, such as walkers, cyclists, mobility scooters, and pushchairs, to get past each other without any problem.

We covered about 500 metres strimming and about 400 metres in overhang removal, so about 300 metres left and two workdays to do it. Super progress.

This is how it now looks.

Loads more light is working its way in and getting rid of the tunnel feeling. People need to be able to see a good 40 metres ahead of themselves to not feel anxious when walking on trails. I think we have got this about right.

Still a bit of scrubby stuff to tidy up on some of the edges, but the main path is kinda there. This scrub removal will become the wildflower-rich grassy strip that we want.

A quick YouTube to show it in real-time.

I had to take this numerous times because of the sheer volume of people walking up and down the trail. They must have thought that I was mad, walking with my phone held out in front of me!!

We strimmed a section of ivy to see if anything else starts to grow. We have way too much of the stuff, and it is suffocating the wildflowers.

Remember, it’s all about balance and biodiversity, and not having a few dominant species take over.

We broke for coffee and flapjack at half-time.

A super team with no big egos and everyone just getting on. Perfect!

We tracked back to the section where we were a couple of weeks ago and dealt with a tree that had tilted onto the path

I don’t really understand how this happened because the prevailing wind comes from the opposite direction, but sorted and cleared.

We also did the usual litter pick.

This is the whole two miles of the trail, there and back.

Lastly, I visited a wood just 2 minutes from where I live, and managed by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust. The experts are saying that in a woodland, trees need to be 2.5 to 3 metres spaced, and be at different ages and types, so that there is not just a huge block of canopy and no sunlight and wildlife underneath.

I’m pretty comfortable that we are on the right path.

We are on the Dunchurch Bridleway this Friday, and pushing further onwards next week.

Until then!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

A Bit of Good (bench) News

Posted on October 8, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Six of us turned out today in what must be the last throes of summer. Ian, Martin, Dave, Marcus, Andrew, and Paul.

Andrew rescued our Geocaching trail last year, and details can be found in the side menu. Terrific fun for people and families. The trail runs the whole length of the greenway, and the Dunchurch Bridleway, too. A good 5-mile circular route to blow away the cobwebs.

Firstly, we are quite into our “Connecting Communities” tag-line. I just want to explain what that means.

This is the 3.5-mile trail that we have created. It connects the Admirals part of Bilton, Cawston, Dunchurch, and Thurlaston (with a bit of a stretch). It’s all off-road and is designed for walking and cycling. There is a Public Right of Way back through the woods to make the 5-mile circular walk.

Today we met at the Bethal Bench and worked northwards to where we got to last week.

It’s all very narrow and unhealthy ash trees that are growing way too densely.

Nothing is going to mature into a decent tree with good girth when the only way to grow is upwards. We hope that what is left will slow down in the race to the sky and put on decent width.

The section south of the Bethal Bench is where we don’t cut back any trees, so we can hang up our saws for a week. The reason is the adjacent housing.

The dense tree cover provides a noise buffer for the road. We will be clearing some of the ivy and low brambles to encourage wildflowers, but the trees have never been cut back on this section by us.

We broke for coffee and a good old chat.

It’s nice that we can chat and have a laugh, but not in that masculine “banter” way, that is so braggy, bullsh*ty, and competitive. It’s the way forward, trust me.

The rewards of our labour of love.

So many people are using the path, and everyone is so happy with the light and airiness of it. We have so much footfall that we have made warning signs at each end of where we are working.

I don’t think people really took that much notice, though!

A quick YouTube of part of the first 300 metres of this section.

I like it. People can walk two or three abreast and not feel like they are in a big green tunnel.

We also did a bit of strimming around the benches on the southern end.

Nobody wants an insect going up their trouser leg looking for a warm place to hibernate.

And a very kind person is filling up our bird-feeders.

We had a bench given to us by a lovely lady called Jacquie and sadly in got ransacked, twice.

A friend of Jacquie saw it dumped down the bank, recovered it, and fixed it up for a fourth time.

It’s so nice that people care so much about stuff like this.

Not all heroes wear capes – thank you, G, for doing this.

Dunchurch Bridleway

A wet morning brought just me and Dave out. We had a “shall we bother” moment, but we cracked on…

We ended up covering a fair old distance, spurred on with hot coffee and custard cream biscuits.

I think just 200-metres left on this bit, before tackling the 600-metres on the most westerly end.

It’s all fun, fun, fun!!

Until next time!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

New Month – New Section

Posted on October 1, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We made a start on our longest section today. Steve, Ian, Matt, and Paul turned out armed with way too much gear. However, because I knew that we were going to be a bit light on numbers today, I did a bit on Monday to get us off to a good start.

The last two photos are before and after shots.

This section is 900 metres long and we have 5 workdays, so 180 metres per workday.

Amazingly, we managed to do 240 metres, so we are ahead of ourselves.

What we as a group have decided is that we want people to be able to walk side-by-side, and not get bothered if someone on a bicycle comes past.

We also want pools of sunlight to hit the woodland floor.

We also want a wildflower-rich grassy margin between the path and the scrub.

It’s a lot to ask, but the first thing is thinning out the trees so that what is left can thrive and put on some girth.

This is ridiculously overcrowded, and none of the trees are going to do well.

So we set about taking out the stragglers.

Why every man, woman, and their dogs decided to walk up and down the path as we are bringing down 20-metre trees is beyond me? Thankfully, we have a clear view in both directions, so the only people in danger of getting squished are us.

We added to the log piles.

Super habitat for all sorts of wildlife.

At half-time, we had some quality sausages and red onion batches.

My bushcraft skills are improving; a good slurp of coffee and a decent brunch gave us the energy to push on.

At the end of the workday, the path looked like this.

Loads of sunlight getting in and a good width to the trail.

Here is a YouTube video from someone who walked the path a few months ago.

Interesting to see the path from someone else’s perspective, and nice that they have a decent camera.

Lastly, a litter pick on the southern end.

Back to normal levels, thank goodness!

Until next time!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Section One – DONE

Posted on September 24, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Seven of us turned out today for our weekly dopamine hit. Marcus, Reece, Mark, Ian, Martin, Matt, and Paul, and we had just today to finish the work on this first section (see September Jobs tab).

600 metres of 3,500 metres in total. It has all been about thinning the trees and breaking up the canopy to get dappled sunlight into the understory.

We, quite literally, have absolute pools of glorious sunlight hitting the floor. This is going to add so much biodiversity next year with grass and wildflowers popping up all over.

I have to admit, it’s been a tough first four weeks of the cutting-back season. This section has been left because it sort of looked after itself, and we never really had the manpower to justify spending too much time down here.

We have had a noticeable uptick in traffic and loads of comments about how wide, open, bright, and nice it now is.

A definite pat on the back earned for all of us.

We lugged a huge tree trunk to the side of the path before enjoying coffee and biscuits.

This will take years and years to slowly rot down, and provide habitat for so many insects, and small mammals that will burrow underneath it.

Next week we jump to the next section. A 900 metre stretch from the Underpass to the Cawston Bridleway Bridge. We have five Wednesdays in the month of October, so we need to be doing 180 metres per session. However, we have done a lot of work here at the back end of the last cutting-back season, so it’s not quite as intimidating as it sounds.

The main thing is to cut away the overhanging branches.

We don’t want to be cutting trees down, just removing a few branches. We need to be especially thoughtful where the housing gets close to the path and the tree cover acts as a buffer to the road noise.

We finished off with a litter-pick. Mostly aged rubbish that we found under the scrub as we pushed it back.

And lastly, I found this rather splendid fungus.

Apparently, it’s called Dryad’s Saddle and is edible, but Google is saying that it doesn’t taste very nice. I wasn’t feeling particularly peckish anyway…

Dunchurch Bridleway

We have 1,260 metres of the 1,600 metres of bridleway that we need to push out to a decent width. That’s 90 metres per session, with 14 sessions across the cutting-back season.

Ian, Dave, Steve, and Paul turned out armed with saws and hedge-trimmers. Steve and Ian pushed on with creating the path width, whilst Dave and Paul worked on the scrub and scrappy trees that are getting tangled up with the mature ones.

Before we started, it looked like this.

We can slowly get rid of it and let the grass and wildflowers grow on the ground between the bigger trees.

We are trying to get the path to splay around the trees so that it all feels like it is working together, rather than a narrow path through a load of aged scrub.

We broke for coffee at halftime.

And you know when you have that feeling that you have forgotten something, but cannot quite put your finger on what it is….

I realised that I had forgotten to change my shoes.

Health and Safety would have a blooming field day!!

To make up for my foolishness, I made myself do a litter-pick along the whole bridleway.

That’s about it for this week. Thanks for reading if you got this far.

Until next time!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

How Difficult Can It Be…

Posted on September 17, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

How difficult is it to predict the weather just 12 hours ahead?

The forecast was telling us that we were going to have a total washout. We changed our plans, yet again, and surprise, surprise, not a drop of rain came down…

Mr Weatherman – you have but one job!!

Anyhow, a double-digit turnout today with Marcus, Reece, Dave, Matt, Steve, David, Martin, Ian, Mark, and Paul. We hunkered down under the Bear pub bridge in an effort to have some protection from the torrential downpour that never came, and carried on trying to break up the tree canopy to get the sunlight in, so more wildflowers and grasses can grow on the path floor.

It’s the flat-bottomed V (\_/) that we’re looking for, and with mature trees lining the path to really emphasise the woodland aspect, and considering the number of people coming past, it’s getting a lot of use, despite the Berrybanks flood defence pond overflowing in the night.

At halftime, we enjoyed birthday cake and coffee – Happy Birthday, Matt. We hope you had a super day.

The views up and down from our stronghold.

It’s going the right way.

Martin and Steve went off on a mission to locate posts that are called mile markers and would have been used when the railway was operational as a way of identifying a certain point on the line.

Due to some rather amazing mapping work, Martin worked out the exact location of these marker posts, and we actually found some of them.

The plan is to replicate them in wood and replace them. We will probably need to measure the size of the numbers and get some replacements made up with a 3D printer. The posts would have been every quarter of a mile.

Here are a couple from the Leamington end that have been discovered and painted.

It’s just a nod to the heritage of the path as a working railway for 130 years, before being closed in the 1980s.

Super sleuthing, Martin and Steve.

Ian and Marcus headed to the darkest northern part of the path and started to slowly widen it.

We have one more week on this first 600 metre section, so we will all be working on the last 200 metre part of the path, and that will be it for this cutting-back season. What doesn’t get done this year will be at the top of the list for next year.

In October, we jump to a 900 metre section which is from the Underpass to the Cawston Bridleway bridge. It’s a 5-week month, and we have done a lot of work on it at the end of last year’s cutting-back season, so it should be relatively easy.

We did our customary litter pick. Not a lot, so it feels like things are getting back to normal now that all the naughty squirrels are back at squirrel school.

And yes, you guessed it – no broken benches to distract us from our quest.

Even this one, which has been built, smashed, and rebuilt so many times, and from so many randomly different parts, that I now call it the Frankenstein bench. It was formally the Berrybanks picnic bench.

Lastly, in an effort to project ourselves in a logo, I’m thinking of this…

Let me know what you think?

Thanks for reading if you got this far.

Until next time!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Lumberjacking – Week 2

Posted on September 10, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

When I woke up and looked out of the window this morning, I uttered a curse or two. It was raining, and the forecast for the morning looked pretty awful.

I sent out a WhatsApp message to the group to meet under the Bear Pub bridge. At least our kit would stay dry, even if we did not.

Somehow, the rain never came! In fact, we had sunshine dappling through the trees. A little miracle, because at about 2pm, it came down by the bucketful and hasn’t stopped since!

We had a bumper work party of nine. Marcus, Steve, Ian, Dave, Matt, Reece, David, Martin, and Paul. We shifted more trees that are growing at funny angles and are just generally overcrowded.

We eventually want trees that are growing straight upwards and have the room to put on decent girth. The cut-down ones will make fantastic habitat for all sorts of insects as they slowly rot down.

We broke for coffee and flapjack at half-time.

I’m not sure about everyone else, but I was desperate for an energy boost at this point. This really is hard going, but the difference as the sunlight floods in is pretty amazing to see. We had a huge number of people passing by, so word is out about this section becoming a nice place to walk.

We had a dilemma… Someone had smashed the seats off our Berrybanks picnic bench. I was going to rebuild it and place it somewhere else, but then I thought that it’s just going to get dragged back, and whoever is getting upset that the youth have a little den will probably smash the seats off again.

When I pulled it out, I was pretty horrified at what I saw, but I got to work and made it sort of usable again. I placed it in the middle of one of our friendship triangles. Nobody is smashing these seats up!!

Lastly, a quick litter pick, and our day was done.

Dunchurch Bridleway

Four of us turned out on a sunny Friday morning with the idea of making a bit of a glade around our picnic bench. Dave, Ian, David, and Paul. This is south-facing, so absolutely prime for wildlife.

We want the area to grass up and be full of wildflowers. A lot of the trees were dead for some odd reason, and as you can see, massively overcrowded.

The path needs to be a little wider so people can walk two abreast.

This will be our focus across the winter. It’s not massively opening it up, but just pushing it out gently.

We had a coffee and cookie break before the really backbreaking task of removing the stumps.

If we leave them, we never kinda get back to them, so we need them gone.

When the grass starts to grow, you will never know that they were there!

Lastly, a log-pile for insects to make a home.

Cursing that I got my shadow in the picture, but the sun is so bright and I cannot see the phone screen!! Well, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

Tritax Corporate Volunteer Workday

We had the lovely people from Tritax helping us out last week, too. 15 eager volunteers helped push back the scrub, cut trees, and really let the light in on the section that we are working on at the moment.

This is so helpful and gets us ahead of the game a bit. The session was led by Marcus and Steve, and was super successful.

Marcus and Steve have made the corporate days into something really good. I simply couldn’t do this because I am just not a people person. I am glad that I can identify my limitations, and we have enough strength and depth in the squad to still make the magic happen.

Lastly, the Tritax crew did a litter pick, so we are looking good for autumn walks.

Thank you, Tritax!

Next week, we are at the furthest north friendship triangle benches, where we need some of us to go southwards, and some into the deepest north. The week after, we are all northbound, just easing the trees back and letting the sunlight in.

Until then!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Lumberjacks For The Next Six Months

Posted on September 3, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Seven of us turned out on a soggy morning. Reece, Ian, Steve, Dave, Martin, Marcus, and Paul. Rain was threatening and the forecast didn’t look good, but the only actual drops of rain were from what was held in the tree canopy as we started to shake it.

We set up camp fully prepared for a good old soaking.

Thankfully, the rain didn’t come, well, it did, but just a little later than the forecast. This allowed us to go into proper lumberjack mode and start to thin the trees out.

We want every tree to have a distance of between 2 to 2.5 metres between its neighbouring trees. This allows so much more light to get into the understory, and allows the trees to stop fighting for the light by rushing upwards, or growing at funny angles, and just slowly put on girth and become decent upright specimens. And it allows for everything to just breathe a bit, rather than being so tightly knotted and dense.

We have been advised by the Forestry Commission to cut the trees as low to the ground as possible. By break time we were all feeling it in our arms, shoulders, and backs.

Being the first workday of the month, bacon batches were the order of the day. The lads say they like their bacon crispy…

I think our little stove delivered, and thank-you to an anonymous buy-me-a-coffee donator who sponsored our brunch.

We carried on chopping and cutting.

And the sunlight started to stream in. You can see how the trees are growing at odd angles here. They will need to come out, sadly.

With about half an hour to go, we realised that we had a bit of a problem. In our haste to cut all the trees down, we had blocked the path and had to quickly clear it.

Thankfully, we just about managed it. A lesson for next week, maybe. We cleared about 200 metres, which is 50 metres more than we had planned, however, there are bits that we need to go back to.

It tells me that the plan is doable, which left me with a good feeling.

Afterwards I had to dart up to the park bench that Jacquie had kindly given us. A rather naughty squirrel had decided to wrench in from the concrete fixings and throw it down the bank.

Thankfully, a friend of Jacquie, who walks his dog along the path and is called Geoff, could not bear for Jacquie to see what had become of her generous donation, so he is going to recover the bench, rebuild it, and put it somewhere where people might appreciate it.

Thank you, Geoff. Proper super-hero.

Whilst I was down that end, I did a quick bit of work on one of our picnic benches. Someone has tried to move it, or just wear-and-tear.. But it needed quick action before bits started to go missing.

The bench gets to live another day.

You might be thinking that my day ended here, with a warm glow in my heart. It didn’t. The rain that was forecast at 10 am and made us put up our gazebo cover thingy…

…suddenly started, and boy-oh-boy, it just didn’t stop!!

Our Berrybanks pond filled up and then overflowed!!

Because we improved the drainage, the overflow will be gone in no time. Beforehand it would have flooded the path for weeks.

Here is a little YouTube of the pond doing its thing.

That’s about it for this week. Lots of stuff happening over the rest of this week, and the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Until next time!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Last Session of the 2025 Nesting Season.

Posted on August 27, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We were back up to our normal numbers this week. Eight of us turned out. Steve, Mark, Martin, Ian, Dave, Reece, David, and Paul. Five of us went southwards to keep the connector between the Cawston path and the Dunchurch path open.

Loads of people coming past so it is getting the use that we hoped for. It’s all about people having a safe traffic-free environment to enjoy, whilst connecting the communities of Cawston and Dunchurch.

The remaining three of us did a bit of bench maintenance. It had become a bit too wobbly so we battened it down.

It was pretty solid after we had put in about 60 screws!!

We also cut back a load of bramble.

This stuff just never gives up. We can see where we cut it back last time, and it just throws out more shoots, almost in defiance. Our old mate, Mick, would take ages kinda weaving his way back along the stem all the way to the root and hit it there. It would take him ages, but I am starting to see that there was a method in what seemed like madness.

We broke for brunch and enjoyed sausage and red onion batches, and a good old slurp of hot coffee. The views here across the heath are good. I could quite easily bring the stove, a good book, a decent bit of scran, and just while away a few hours doing absolutely nothing…

Very nice…

If someone would like to sponsor our bacon batch brunch next week, just smash the buy-me-a-coffee link and we will love you forever. If you do, please leave your first name so we can give you a shout out on the blog next week.

I visited a reserve north of Rugby later in the day to give us a bit of an idea of what we eventually want to look like in the cuttings.

I acknowledge that we need to be careful with the tree cover acting as a buffer for the road noise, so don’t panic if you think that we are going to start chopping all the trees down. We are just trying to create the zone between the path and the scrub and trees that is wildflower-rich and attracts butterflies and bees.

I also visited the other end of our railway path. We are on the disused Rugby to Leamington Spa railway line and a lot of work has happened at the other end.

At some point it will connect with us at Potford Dam, our most southerly bit. The bridge spans the line of the HS2 (High Speed Railway) that is being built, and the mounds of gravel are the foundations for the cycle bridge to get across the Fosse Way, an old Roman road. We can see how the path is raised slightly to get over the flooded bits, with ponds on either side so wildlife can thrive.

It’s all good stuff!!

Dunchurch Bridleway

Ian, Ruby, and Paul turned out last Friday and kept pushing the path back so people are able to see where they are going and feel safe using it. Apparently, if people cannot see a good 100 metres ahead of themselves on a country path, they start to feel a bit unsettled and anxious. This is why we aim to push our paths out to about three metres in width, eventually. And it’s all about cyclists and pedestrians having space to share without bugging each other.

There is plenty to do on this bit, but I think this is our second year, so it feels like we are slowly making progress, and again, plenty of people walking past, so it is getting used.

The real work starts next week. We need to get rid of the overhanging trees so that sunlight can get to the path edges to allow flora and wildlife to thrive.

I have been chomping-at-the-bit to get going so really looking forward to us getting on with it. You can get an idea of what we need to do here – September Jobs.

Well that’s about it for this week. Thanks for reading.

Until next time!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment