Cawston Greenway

It was so cold today….

Posted on November 30, 2016 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

……that my drink froze in its water-bottle!!

But that did not deter Reece, Marcus, John and me.

We started a fire and boy-o-boy did it labour for the first half hour, but eventually the brash started to dry out and burn.

I am not entirely comfortable with burning off what would be fantastic habitat piles so I might have a rethink, moving forwards. At least the fire kept us warm though.

There was so much smoke that it felt like a steam train had just shunted past.

Next week we meet at either The Bear or the Community Hall at 9:30 for our classroom session with Sustrans, and then after a spot of lunch, we get out onto the greenway to practice the new skills that we have learnt, finishing at 2:30.

Well done everyone today. We have cleared the glade and have a lot of open ground that will benefit in the spring and summer when sunlight will start to make new things grow.

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged bees, community, conservation, cycling, nature, outdoors, railway, walking, wildflowers, wildlife | Leave a comment

New Bluebell Glade

Posted on November 23, 2016 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Great day today with five of us turning out, which is pretty good for a weekday. Well done Mick, Carrina, Reece, Marcus and myself.

We have been gifted a couple of bags of English bluebell bulbs, so Marcus, Carrina and me set to work planting them.

We will just need to keep an eye on this area in the spring to make sure the bulbs have a good chance of coming up. Exciting to think how this area might look like in a few years time.

Mick and Reece carried on ripping the scrub out. We are creating a huge glade that will be perfect for butterflies and bees in the summer.

All this scrub needs to go. We are making the path as wide as we can.

As I mentioned today, we have an exciting diary date: Wednesday 7th December the guys from Sustrans are coming down to work with us. The day will begin with a bit of a classroom session teaching us new skills and honing existing ones, then a bit of lunch and then we hit the greenway to practice the skills that we have learnt. This is invaluable because we are going to be taught by professionals – what is not to love about this. The workday will end at 2:30pm.

Thanks to all who made it today, very pleasant company and a good job done.

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged bees, cawston greenway, community, conservation, cycling, embankment, Grizzled Skipper Butterfly, national cycle network 41, nature, outdoors, plants, railway, running, small blue butterfly, walking, wildlife | Leave a comment

Bird-box Clearing

Posted on November 16, 2016 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Good old workday today with Carrina, Reece, Marcus and myself ripping the scrub out.

We have a load of brash to burn off next week. There is simply no room to make habitat piles.

Ideally I would like to remove the scrub around the trees to create a parkland feel.

We have a nice open glade that will attract butterflies and bees in the summer.

Thanks to all who made it today.

All future work south of Potford’s Dam has been suspended for now. Plans are in place to get this section sorted. Just bear with me. The workday scheduled for the second Sunday in December will be in this clearing instead.

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged community, conservation, cycling, embankment, nature, outdoors, railway, running, walking, wildlife | Leave a comment

What a stinker!!

Posted on November 13, 2016 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Eight of us made it today and we started to try and dig channels from the path to the edge, where it drops away, in an attempt to drain all the standing, stagnant, stinky water. It was going nowhere, so we decided to switch to plan B.

There is a narrow ridge of ballast that I assume is from when they took up the railway tracks. This is hard compacted and very dry. It is a sliver of a path through the bog. We worked on this and cleared off a load of ash trees and scrub.

This picture shows how boggy and wet it is.

For now we just need to keep clearing the ridge. It breaks out onto dry ground very quickly, so just another 50 meters or so to go towards the NCN 41 marker.

It is getting harder and harder as we narrow down to the last bit. The A45 to the golf club is so wet but looking at how resourceful we were today, I am sure we will find a way through.

If we can just follow the ad-hoc path on the higher ground and work around the wet bits for now. When we have a clear path through, we can widen it and work out how to drain it at a later date, if we decide that this is what we want to do, or maybe just keep it as wetland habitat and walk or cycle around it.

Thanks to all who made it today. Next three workdays are Wednesdays on the Cawston section, then back to weekend/weekday alternating workdays.

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged bees, butterflies, community, conservation, cycling, Draycote, nature, NCN41, outdoors, path, railway, running, together, walk, walking, water, wildlife | Leave a comment

Fungi Fun

Posted on November 12, 2016 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Here we will attempt to list the fabulous fungi that we are finding.

Velvet Shank

Velvet Shank

Scurfy Twiglet

Jelly Ear

Stags Horn

Jelly Ear

Roundspored Oysterling or Variable Oysterling

Posted in Newsreel | 1 Comment

Scrub Clearance

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Good day today with Aaron, Reece and myself chopping a load of this scrub out.

We thought it would be a nice feature in the summer, last season, and tried to create a path around the back of it. However, it didn’t really work out. So it has to go. We want the clearings in the cuttings to be a haven for butterflies and bees. The bits of the path that are are on embankment are full of trees and will be good for birds and mammals.

Thanks to all who made it today. Cold and wet but so worth it.

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged cawston, cawston greenway, community, conservation, cycling, nature, NCN41, outdoors, railway, railway paths, running, walking, wildlife | 1 Comment

Pushing It Back

Posted on November 5, 2016 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Good turn-out with Linda, Anna, Wayne, Mick and myself. We had two brush-cutters on the go and really pushed back the summer growth and scrub.

We burnt off all the brash as Mick and Wayne cut it back. We just need to keep clearing all the way up to the bridge that goes over the greenway.

Last year we left scrub, but this year, we have decided to rip it all out.

This is the nice open glade that we will want in sections that are in cutting.

We will keep the trees and the scrub around them, and can see what comes up in the cleared bits in the spring.

We have started to mow a strip each side of the dirt path. This will make it easier for walkers and cyclists to access the path.

I walked down past Potford’s Dam and towards Dunchurch Station by the A45. This area is pretty clear and very dry. I will do the management plan for this section in the week and we can crack on with it.

Thanks to all who made it today.

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged butterflies, community, conservation, cycling, mountain bikers, nature, outdoors, railway, running, volunteer work, wildflowers, wildlife | Leave a comment

Back in the Bird-Box Clearing

Posted on October 26, 2016 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Marcus, Mick and me made it today. Reece somehow missed us, and Wayne got there after we had all gone, so did a bit of widening just south of Potford’s Dam

We started back in the Bird-Box clearing and found it easy to pull up the growth from the summer. We are going to work off this point for now and just clear the whole cutting out up and down the path.

We just need to rip all the bramble, nettles and dead growth out. If we can get the roots of the brambles out, then their growth will be much slowed next summer.

Good start today and after a good old look around, we just need to clear out as much bramble as possible.

Dates for November:

Saturday 5th 1:30pm

Wednesday 9th 9:30am

Sunday 13th 1:30pm (Potford’s Dam to Draycote end)

Wednesday 16th 9:30am

Wednesday 23rd 9:30am

Wednesday 30th 9:30am

If you need me to jig the dates in future months so that it fits in with anyone’s work schedule, just let me know. Wednesday workdays are 9:30 to 11:30. Weekenders are 1:30 to 4:00.

Thanks all who made it today, and to those that we missed, sorry, poor communication.

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged community, cycling, nature, NCN41, outdoors, railway, running, wildlife | Leave a comment

Berrybanks is done for now.

Posted on October 22, 2016 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

A great turn-out today with seven of us. Mick, Aaron, Tim, Sophia, Peter, Janet and me. Basically we just had a mad tidy-up of all the brash from previous workdays, when it was too wet, or time was short, for a really good bonfire.

We also cut a lot of stumps to ground-level.

Personally, I am pretty much done with this section for the time being. It just feels like it is sucking up so much of our time. We still need to remove a couple of stumps and sow our meadow-mix seeds, but for now I just want to move on for a bit.

Loads of brash to untangle and burn off. Not the best of jobs, but we got through it eventually.

Starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Please remind me never to let the brash build up so much.

We built a big south-facing log pile.

This will be a great habitat for sun-loving insects in the summer, and will be really damp on the other side and as it rots it will be valuable habitat for stag beetles, centipedes, woodlice and hedgehogs, and plants including species of moss, fungi and liverwort are just a small number of the animals and plants dependent in some way upon dead wood.

We are starting to get a fair bit of fungi growing in all the rotting wood. It is going to be difficult to work around these areas, but well worth keeping.

Good clear-up day today. Next workday is Wednesday down the line at the bird-box clearing. We just need to push down on the last bit of this clearing that is in cutting.

Workday dates for the month are on the blog’s main page. Our Potford’s Dam to Draycote workday is the second Sunday of November and we are allowed to work on this area, but we are not allowed to use power-tools yet. David, the Ecologist from Sustrans has given us the go-ahead.

Thanks to all who made it today. We really made a difference.

Paul