Coldest Day So Far

Posted on November 19, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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We knew that it was going to be colder this week, but 2 degrees C (35.6 F) and the needle not budging all morning kept us busy, even if it was just to stay warm.

Amazingly, nine of us turned out. Marcus, Steve, Matt, Reece, Mark, Ian, Dave, Martin, and Paul, with the continued aim of removing some of the hawthorn tree overhang and pushing the scrub back.

Despite the gloomy weather forecast, we actually had periods of lovely crisp sunshine.

The more we push back the scrub, the more we are seeing wildflowers start to pop up in the newly cleared areas.

According to the ID app on my phone, the first photo is Creeping Buttercup and, sorry to go all lavatorial on you, the second photo is Sticky Willy.

There is loads and loads of it. I’m not sure if it will all get wiped out when we start to get frosts. I guess it wouldn’t have come up if it relied on spring weather? Whatever happens, it’s nice to see the rewards of pushing the scrub back. We just have to remember not to strim it all off as we try to keep the path width.

At half-time, I decided that we could do with some hot food to go with our hot coffee.

The bacon seemed to take ages to cook, and I remembered that butane gas is not so good in cold weather. Luckily, I had a spare canister, so I put it under my armpit for ten minutes to warm it up, and then switched them over. Before long, we were back on track and stuffing our faces…

After the break, we made brash piles and Ian did a litter pick.

The more we push the scrub back, the more we are finding old bits of litter.

We also chopped down a load of stumps that I felt were a bit high.

There were loads of them, and there is an argument that they are less of a trip hazard if left high, but when they start to re-shoot, they look really odd and very unnatural.

Matt made a secret doorway to a hidden world.

Again, it’s just trying to make the trail as interesting and enjoyable for everyone, including children.

And the end result…

I think we did about 200 metres or so today, and probably just 100 metres left until we get to the end next week, so we are very much on track.

Next month, we are working on the section from The Bear Bridge to the Underpass. Quite handy because we will be popping into The Bear for our Christmas lunch at some point in December.

Dunchurch Bridleway

Just me and Ian this week, and everything was very wet due to the torrential rain at the back end of the week.

We pushed on, but it was hard going.

Looking forward to the task ahead, my weapons of choice, and looking back. It needs to be a lot wider, but there is always a trade-off between distance and width.

We broke for coffee and some rather nice chocolate-covered ginger biscuits.

And then litter picked and called it a day.

There are just 250 metres to get to the end, and then we rotate back to the start, so we are bang on target. With the second pass, we will be pushing the width out a bit more.

Fungi Feature

Today we are looking at the beautiful oyster mushroom. These shell-shaped fungi grow horizontally in tiers or fabulous clusters on dead or dying wood of deciduous trees, especially beech. Unlike many fungi, these mushrooms are not seasonal and can be found all year round, especially after a cold snap which can trigger the fungus into fruiting.

Oyster mushrooms are a saprobe, which means they live off decaying organic matter, and are specialists in breaking down some of nature’s toughest materials – cellulose and lignin. In the process, they release vital nutrients back into the ecosystem.

Scientific name: Pleurotus ostreatus

How to identify: This fungus starts out a beautiful grey-blue colour with a cap edge that rolls slightly inward, gradually opening out turning grey brown and wavy with age. Look underneath, and you’ll find they have crowded whitish gills that are decurrent – meaning they run right from the cap edge and down the stem. In this case, the stem is rudimentary, a short (often fluffy) number that’s only a few centimetres long.

A handful of other oyster mushrooms exist, but are often much paler in colour. If they’re much smaller, they’re likely to be the oysterling family. A similar, all white version known as angel’s wings is a great find as it’s quite rare, but be warned, it’s poisonous!

Where to spot: Woodlands, towns, parks and gardens

When to spot: All year round

Did you know? These mushrooms are carnivores! In order to obtain the nitrogen they need, oyster mushrooms secrete a powerful toxin that stuns passing microscopic nematode worms, whereupon their sprawling fibres will seek out and enter their mouths and suck out their guts!

And on that delightful note, that’s about it for this week.

Until next time!

Paul

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We Missed A Bit

Posted on November 12, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

What a day today. It has literally not stopped raining all week, proper raining cats-and-dogs weather.

It was so bad first thing, that I was forced to make the executive decision to meet under the Cawston Bridleway bridge, which would provide us with a bit of cover. However, the rain stopped at about 9:55am and started again at about 12:15pm.

How unbelievably amazing is that!

What is even more amazing is that six of us trail-warriors turned out for the workday. Reece, Martin, Andrew, Mark, Ian, and Paul.

We had skipped a bit northbound from this point a couple of weeks ago, and pushed southwards, again because of the rain, so I was quite happy to go back and just kinda get it done.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but that missed bit just plays on my mind, kind of like we’re a bit out of sequence.

You can see how wet it is from these photos.

Not a good day to realise that my shoes are no longer waterproof!

We stacked up the brash and made more habitat piles.

Loads of little nooks and crannies for insects and things to crawl about in. But the main objective is to push the scrub back to allow wildflowers to grow.

At half-time, we had a welcome coffee and ginger crunch biscuits.

Apparently, this is the last week of it being reasonably warm. 13 degrees C, or 55 degrees F. Reece was saying that next week temperatures will drop to low single digits…

The end result looks like this.

That transition from path to scrub is the absolute “hot zone” for wildlife next spring and summer. What we need to do is not strim right up to the scrub edge, which is quite difficult because it seems like the natural thing to do.

Next week, we have to move southwards, so the canopy will have to come out if the rain persists.

Lastly, I litterpicked the whole of this trail and the Dunchurch trail over the weekend.

Well done to everyone who has made it over these last few weeks. I really expect to turn up and be on my own when it is so wet. I’m absolutely bowled over by you guys.

Fungi Feature

Chicken of the woods is an easy-to-spot bracket fungus due to its distinctive sulphur-yellow colour. It grows high up on the trunks of standing deciduous trees, such as oak but can also be found on beech, chestnut, cherry and even yew. It can often be found growing in tiered clusters in woods, parks and gardens.

Scientific name: Laetiporus sulphureus

How to identify: It is a bright sulphur-yellow fungus comprising several thick, overlapping brackets. The individual brackets are soft and spongy when young and exude a yellow liquid if squeezed. They are fan-shaped with an undulating margin. The upper surface is velvety and yellow-orange with a zoned margin, while the underside is yellow and covered with pores.

Where to spot: Woodlands, towns, parks and gardens

When to spot: June to November

Did you know? It gets its name from the texture of its flesh, which is said to resemble cooked chicken!

That’s about it for this week. Great progress, and everything that we do now is for next spring and summer, so we have to have a huge amount of vision to make it worthwhile turning out in the weather like we are having.

Thanks for reading if you got this far.

Until next time!

Paul

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Back To Dodging The Rain

Posted on November 5, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Seven of us made it this week. Matt, Marcus, Martin, Mark, Andrew, Dave, and Paul, and it was more about going sideways, as well as covering some distance.

The bit that we are working on is our very first wildflower glade, which we made many, many years ago.

Everything needs to go back to ground level so wildflowers won’t be smothered by rampant bramble scrub next spring.

It was remarkably warm at about 16 degrees, and whilst it felt like it was about to rain, the sun shone between the gathering dark clouds. Apparently, it’s going to be even warmer tomorrow, according to my neighbour, Craig. We’ll all be in shorts by the weekend.

We added all the cuttings to the brash pile.

As this slowly rots down, it will generate a little bit of warmth, which will be so welcome for small mammals when the cold finally gets here.

It’s interesting to see the holes appear as wildlife are creating new nests in the pile.

This is the end result.

Personally, I love it. Everything can breathe, including the people who use the path.

We broke for (drum roll….) bacon batches and a slurp of hot coffee.

Everyone likes their bacon crispy, which is a good job, because the cooking stove seems to have two settings. Full on and off!

I was so busy stuffing my face that I forgot to get the usual group photo.

A bloke (that is such an English word) walked past, and he reckoned that he could smell the bacon cooking from about 100 metres away.

Next, we pushed on southward.

Just more of the same, really. Path width and overhang removal to let the sunshine hit the woodland floor.

Everyone can see way ahead of themselves as they use the path, which helps with mental health and anxiety, and also stops any accidents between cyclists and pedestrians.

Dunchurch Bridleway

I desperately needed some time by myself at the back end of last week, just to churn through a head full of thoughts, and kinda catch up with myself.

Today was the moment that delivered those couple of hours of “me-time”.

I managed to cover 280 metres, so good progress. I forgot my saw, so I will have to go back and cut away tree saplings and low branches (edit: I did this on the weekend), but I’ve pushed us on.

We’re trying to get the path to splay out around the big old trees and bring them into play. If I were a kid, I would want to run behind the trees, and that would make the trail more exciting for me.

Looking back, and looking forward. It gets a bit narrow on the next bit, so I decided to pack up here.

Someone has gone to the trouble of putting up a load of nesting boxes on a tree.

Never seen them like this before.

And lastly, I enjoyed a cuppa and ginger bickies at halftime.

Deliciously fiery ginger biscuits, oh yes…

Just 340 metres to go until we get to the end, and then it’s back to the start.

The painting of the Forth Bridge comes to mind…

Fungi Feature

Today we are looking at turkeytail – a very colourful bracket fungus. Its circular caps can be seen growing in tiers on trees and dead wood – mainly hardwood such as beech or oak. It is a very common fungus that grows throughout the year, but is at its best in autumn.

Scientific name: Trametes versicolor

How to identify: A bracket fungus that forms semi-circular caps around tree trunks. The caps are thin and tough, with very clear, velvety, concentric rings of colour. Colours are variable mixes of brown, yellow, grey, purple, green and black, but the outer margin is always pale – either cream or white. The caps are often layered together, forming tiers.

Where to spot: Woodland

When to spot: All year

Did you know? This colourful fungus was once popular as a table decoration; at one time, it was even used to decorate hats!

And that is it for this week.

Thanks for reading, and well done if you got this far.

Until next time!

Paul

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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