Getting Ready For Easter

Posted on March 26, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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Six of us turned out today. Martin, Steve, Dave, Matt, Marcus, and Paul. We split into pairs and cracked on with jobs that were starting to become slightly overdue.

Martin and Dave seeded the scallops that we created on the most southerly bit with a bee-and-butterfly friendly wildflower mix.

There was also a large bag of seeds that I had collected at the end of last summer, so hopefully we will have a riot of colour and loads of nectar for all the insects.

In the margins elsewhere there is stuff starting to push up.

We need to be really careful not to strim too deep into the scallops when we are trying to keep the path a decent width. It would be such a shame to lose this growth before everything flowers and drops seeds for next year. As long as people can walk two abreast, I am happy.

Steve and Marcus split a load of snowdrops from our secret supply and filled in a load of the gaps on our snowdrop bank.

This will give us the snowdrop carpet eventually.

Matt and Paul opted for the staining of the last four picnic benches.

The worst job because we end up going home looking like Spotted Dick – hold that cake thought for a moment.

One of the benches overlooks our brook…

Here I am, back on the theme of running water…

I’m a Pisces – what do you expect…

We broke for coffee and a delish date-and-walnut cake baked by Matt’s wife (I told you to hold that thought!!).

The cake was to die for, as were the views up, down, and across the countryside.

I found a few pockets of time over the last week so I caught up with bench re-staining for the stragglers up the other end.

Someone had a little fire, which is fine.

We gave up on fires a long time ago. So sick of going home smelling like a smoked kipper.

Hmmm, that actually looks rather tasty…

We also did a litter pick.

It really is the gift that keeps on giving!!

Dunchurch Bridleway

Just me and Ian turned out this week, but because the grass is nice and short, it’s an easy job and a decent 250 metres got strimmed.

Hopefully, you can see how we are trying to leave a wildflower and grassy margin between the tightly strimmed path and the more established shrubby stuff behind it. In September we will cut deeper into the scrub and allow the wildflower margins to be a lot wider. We want to develop the trail so that it’s a series of glades with mature trees in the centre of each clearing.

It’s gonna be fun trying to pull this off!!

We broke for coffee and muggins here forgot the biscuits…

The only upside was for my waistline.

We are about ready for the Easter Holidays and everything is about to burst into life. It’s looking pretty good.

Next week we are at the Jaguar Land-Rover bench sorting out another bit that floods.

Until then!

Paul

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Spring Well and Truly Delivered

Posted on March 19, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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It’s the first day of spring today. Personally, I don’t go by the 1st March date because nothing really seems to happen until about now. Five wildlife heroes donned their capes and made it out today, and three yesterday. Steve, Reece, Martin, Dave, and Paul, today, and Ian, Steve, and Paul, yesterday.

The first of our blossoms came out to greet us. A Cherry-plum, which has rather nice fruit later in the year, so I am told.

Yesterday we did a little bit of work on the last wet bit of Berrybanks.

Water is leaching from somewhere and just puddling up across the entry path.

I tried to build up the level but it just turned into a mudbath.

We found some abandoned pipe and used it to carry the water under the path.

It seems to be working!! We threw a load of brash onto the wet mud to help it all dry out and give the ground a bit of strength. It really is just a trickle, but annoying.

We enjoyed a cuppa and then tidied up the main pond.

We saw freshwater shrimp in the bottom pool, which was a nice treat.

A very rewarding morning.

Today we continued with re-staining the benches.

A very welcome sausage and fried onion roll was had at break-time, along with a good slurp of hot coffee.

Sausages starting to brown up nicely on our camping stove. I forgot to take a photo of them fully cooked because I was way too busy stuffing my face.

We have four benches left to do on this southern end, which will be next week’s job.

We can see how scabby they have become because we missed the stain at the end of last summer.

This brings us nicely onto the To Do List 2024/25

The only thing we didn’t do was re-stain the benches ready for winter. So the To-Do List works and I have started jotting a few things down for 2025/26. Feel free to take a look and let me know your thoughts or indeed, anything that needs to be added.

We also litter-picked the southern end of the path. 4.6 km covered.

That’s 6,000 steps and a lot of bending and reaching…

We saw our first butterfly of the 2025 season as we walked back to the entrance.

A Brimstone. We also had a visit from a big furry red-tailed bumblebee. I have a feeling this year will be a good one for wildlife!

Next one is Friday on the Dunchurch trail.

Until then!

Paul

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We Rebuild Our Bridge

Posted on March 12, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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Seven wildlife superheroes turned out this morning. Reece, Marcus, Steve, Dave, Martin, Ian, and Paul. Today was all about the finishing touches to our new pond area.

First was a little bench to sit and view the pond.

It still looks horrendously muddy, but there is new growth of a native plant that is rampant.

Brooklime (Veronica beccabunga). When this bad boy starts, it just doesn’t stop. Soon the whole area will be lush green.

We have our waterfall and our exit as the stream meanders off to the River Avon.

A quick YouTube really just to let you hear the noise of the water.

If it works and the bench doesn’t get vandalised, we can replace it with something a bit better looking and a bit more substantial. I don’t want to be spending money until I know that we get a return, so I butchered an old pallet. Lots of kids play around here and there is a high chance that someone thinks it a good idea to give the bench a hoof…

Birds have been seen splashing about in the water and we have frogs.

How exciting!!

We broke for coffee and flapjack at half-time.

A much-needed sugar-fix ready for the next task.

We rebuilt our bridge. We had drainage issues so it needed changing.

The whole thing now flows with the rest of the path and nobody can fall off the side and get caught in the cavity around the drain. As it settles and moss grows around the drain, it should all start to blend in.

This week’s nightly revision has been all about bees. Apparently, there are many different types of our stripey saviours and most do not produce honey or exist in a colony within a hive, instead leading a solitary life and making a nest in little nooks and crannies. I put my thinking cap on and thought about how we could use some of the bigger bits of timber that we cut back last week.

I came up with this.

I foolishly thought that they would be vertical and just a load of holes drilled into the side of each length of timber. Oh how utterly wrong I was…

The holes need to be between three and four inches deep and between 6mm to 10mm in diameter. We need to attach them to the side of trees with the entrance facing south to get full sun, and then see what happens.

Apparently, the female bee will lay an egg in the depth of the hole, seal the chamber and then lay another egg in the next chamber, and so on. The bees hatch as larvae and eventually emerge from the nest, with the male bees waiting for the female bee to pop out, where she gets impregnated and the whole cycle starts again.

Isn’t nature so totally amazing!!

Next time, I will season the wood before using it. There is no way to get a clean hole drilled when it is so full of moisture. Every day is a learning day!!!

This is another exciting avenue that we have created. If you like bees, or like nature, come along and help. There is always plenty to do.

Martin went off and stained some more of our benches.

Don’t sit down or you will get a stripey bottom!!

I did a litter pick on Monday and Martin went over it again today. Pretty much half of the trail is covered.

Little and often is the way forward.

Lastly, Dave went on a hedge laying course and we agreed that we want to get away from the green tunnel effect that happens in the summer. The farmer cuts the hedges for most of the trail and we think that being able to look out over the countryside is better than a wall of green.

Next week we are staining the benches from the Cawston Bridleway bridge, southward.

Until then!

Paul

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The Bird Nesting Season Starts.

Posted on March 5, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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Five wildlife superheroes turned out today. Matt, Steve, Martin, Marcus, and Paul. It’s been an emotionally and physically exhausting week for me, so it was really good to just kinda get back to my happy place and regroup a little.

I keep banging on about mental well-being and how we provide a safe space, both within the workgroup, and also connecting with nature and just getting out into the countryside. I kid you not, it works.

We had a few tasks to tackle today. The first was a large tree coming down on the embankment and the top of the tree was pushing into the path.

I had this vision of someone walking along scrolling on their phone and getting poked in the head by one of the branches. So we gave it a gentle snip back, and then a bit more, and then some more.

The gentle pushback became quite brutal in the end. Boys will be boys!!

We made a superb habitat pile that will get full sun. It will drop down as it settles and be full of nooks and crannies for all sorts of wildlife.

The thicker bits of timber will be cut into 5-inch lengths and we will drill a load of holes ranging from 3mm to 10mm into them, and attach them to the south-facing side of trees. These will then become fantastic sites for different types of bees to lay eggs.

We might end up with our very own bee colony!

After the tree was despatched we broke for breakfast, or lunch, or brunch??

I had to be reminded to take a photo of the bacon after a couple of rashers had been served up. Yeah, we were hungry. The view here is pretty decent, so we enjoyed it.

Another annoying tree that had fallen across the path was quickly despatched with Ian’s saw.

We will be putting in a funding application in May for more of these saws. They go through branches like a hot knife through butter.

We also set about giving some of our benches a fresh coat of wood stain.

There are plenty more to do so it will take a month or so to get them all re-stained and looking fresh. The last thing that we want is to be offering manky seating and tables to our end users, who might want to use them for a rest or a picnic.

If I was having a picnic I would hope that it would look something like this…

Yes, one is allowed to dream now and again. The grim reality is that it would be a coffee from my flask and a bacon roll, probably.

It was nice to see the path starting to dry out, and loads of dappled sunlight, on the section from the underpass to Berrybanks.

We’re in a deep cutting here, so when this starts to dry, we kinda know that the transition from winter to spring is happening.

This is what we get when we clear back a line up the bank of the cutting, so shafts of sunlight hit the ground. I’m hoping that I remember this in September and we can do some coordinated thinning-out. When it greens up the cover will become a lot more dense.

Lastly, I was lucky enough to see a beautiful red sky from Mick’s sunset bench in the last week.

Mick would come down to this spot just to catch the sunset most evenings.

A good old boy who we all miss dearly.

That’s it for this week. Next week we are back at Berrybanks just doing a final tidy-up, and sticking a bench in, so people can sit and listen to the water as it flows into the drain and meanders its way to the River Avon.

Until then!

Paul

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Last Cutting Back Session

Posted on February 26, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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Today was very wet. So wet that we thought it best not to get the battery-powered tools out and cut back the last bit of scrub at our most southerly point. Instead, we litter-picked all the way to The Bear bridge.

It was a decent haul and it did at least stop raining towards the end. It was a good 4 km there and back. We dumped the bags at The Bear end and annoyingly spotted a few bits of litter that we had missed, on the way back to where our kit was. Next time we need to remember to take a spare bag for the return trip.

We admired our snowdrop clearing as we passed it.

When they have gone over we will fill in some more of the gaps from our secret supply. The term “in the green” is used when they are still active but not flowering and apparently, this is the best time to split clumps and move them around. Hopefully, we will get the carpet effect at some point soon.

My obsession with running water continues…

This is a collective effort but Reece and Ian have really driven the project forward, and today showed it coping really well.

There’s still work to do on the bridge drainage and we need to tidy up around the drain area. I have a small bench that I made out of an abandoned pallet, to put in, so people can sit and enjoy the sound of the water and hopefully, enjoy the greenery that will explode in a month or two.

That really was about it for today. A bit of a damp squib in terms of cutting back, but great conversations and stuff.

Over the next month or so we can busy ourselves with jobs like staining the benches and generally keeping it all tidy, before it suddenly goes mad and everything goes boom!!

Dunchurch Bridleway

Three wildlife superheroes turned out last Friday. Ian, Ruby and Paul. We swapped the bitter cold of last time, for the raging wind. It was the sort of wind that we had to put our heads down and really fight against.

But we got a good 100 metres nicely strimmed back all the way up to the third bench.

We have tractors going up and down at the moment because it’s a bridleway, and in the middle of farmland. We can just keep the path cut back and keep our little slither open and walkable.

There seems to be a muddy patch where our picnic bench is, so we opened up the side a bit. People now have the option of not having to walk through it.

This area will become a large glade later in the year so the muddy bit will dry out. Another job for September when the bird nesting season is over.

We also litter-picked up to the pair of benches where the Solstice Coffee Shop path runs off to the south.

Mostly just plastic and stuff from the building site that is the warehousing.

I got papped…

Definitely a Z-lister…

But the highlight of the morning was bacon rolls cooked by Ruby.

It was tough going because the gale-force wind seemed to be blowing in every direction, but she got there in the end and served up a cracking breakfast to go with our coffee.

The next one is in March, and being the first workday of the month means… more bacon!!

Until next time!

Paul

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Mad Rush Before The Bird Nesting Season Starts…

Posted on February 19, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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We feel like we are really up against it at the moment. Literally nine days before the bird nesting season starts, when we flip from cutting back, to just managing the path width and doing all the spring jobs like re-staining the benches and fixing anything that is broken.

The first job is to make sure our “estate” of 55 bird-nesting boxes are all secure and ready for the birds to do their thing.

Quite a few had worked loose and a few had come down and needed a rebuild. It’s all fun and games as we get ready for spring!!

I had promised sausages on the camping stove but the rain, and the amount of distance that we needed to cover, kinda put paid to that. It will happen though.

I’ve been madly trying to take out the height of the scrub so that we have bramble hedges.

It needs to be cut short and hedge-like with occasional trees along it.

I know the view ain’t great, but it’s better than feeling hemmed in. When it greens up it’s like being in a green tunnel.

What we kinda want is a hedgerow with individual trees that are allowed to mature and act as staging posts for wildlife to jump across from one to the other, and high roosts for owls, buzzards and hawks to look across the fields in their hunt for prey.

The scrub is mostly aged bramble that is never going to fruit up again. It needs to be cut right back and then cut on a rotational basis every three years, whilst the trees and shrubs that will form a more permanent hedge are allowed to flourish.

Andrew has made the Geocaching trail along the Dunchurch Bridleway. This will bring a lot of much needed footfall.

This will be such fun in the spring and summer. Thank you, Andrew.

Today eight wildlife superheroes braved the cold. Marcus, Reece, Dave, Ian, Steve, George, Martin, and Paul. We wanted to make our triangular bench set a bit of a suntrap so we set about creating openings to allow shafts of sunlight to hit the benches.

Whilst we had sunshine first thing today, it clouded over before the sun came round. I look forward to sitting here and basking in full sun in the next month or two with a flask of coffee and bacon cooking on the stove.

We also got rid of a few trees that had fallen and got snagged with upright ones.

The trees that are curving into the path will have to go at some point. Because the area behind them has not been kept clear and they have grown where the light is. Such a shame but this is what happens when woodland is left unmanaged.

We also made habitat piles for insects and small mammals with all the cuttings.

This is going to be so good for wildlife. Plenty of timber to burrow into or under and make a home.

We enjoyed coffee and biscuits on our break, and a good laugh was had.

It’s that bonding, and friendship, and stuff, that is so important for all of our mental wellbeing.

It’s becoming such an issue that someone has made a parody of it here…

Whilst it’s obviously a joke, there is some truth to it. If you feel that maybe you are lacking in male friendships, do something about it.

My obsession with flowing water seems to be following me around now. We stopped the flooding but a weird drain has started flowing onto the path.

Slightly annoying but hopefully it will stop as quickly as it started.

Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT to create a picture of the greenway.

If we look like this in the summer we will be very happy…

Lastly, we have a new tool!!

Tool Talk Wednesday

This beast allows us to reach across or up, and get the bits that we cannot normally clear.

It’s a bit unwieldy and works the arm and shoulder muscles very well, especially when fully extended. I had a free half-hour this afternoon so went back and lopped off some of the higher stuff.

That’s about it for this week.

Next one is on Friday at Dunchurch and then next week is our last session cutting back for this season.

Until then!

Paul

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Race Against Time As Cutting-Back Season Ends.

Posted on February 12, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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Seven wildlife heroes rolled out today. Marcus, Reece, Ian, Steve, Martin, Dave, and Paul, and we felt that a stretch on the southern end of the path was just a little too tight.

There is that fine balance where we want the wildlife and nature to thrive, but we also want people to be able to use the path and connect with the natural surroundings to improve their outlook and general mental wellbeing, as well as the exercise that walking and cycling provides.

It was a gradual push out and lots of habitat piles created for insects and small mammals. It just makes it feel a bit more welcoming and a little less oppressive and kinda, on top of you. I would like to take the height out of the scrub so it’s about 5 feet, but we have run out of time. The bird nesting season starts in literally two weeks’ time. A job for September if we remember.

It’s getting people, the countryside, and nature meshing together. If the people part of it feels uncomfortable because they cannot see ahead or to the sides, then it’s not really working as it should.

We broke off for a much-needed caffeine kick and biscuits at half-time.

It’s a bit of a come-down from the bacon rolls of last week!! But it did the job and enjoyable banter was had by all.

I snuck off and did a litter-pick for just over 2 km of the path.

Little and often is the best way here. Hopefully, if people subconsciously think how litter-free it is, they might be less likely to discard their rubbish.

Something that warmed my heart was a den that I came across.

This is the sort of thing that I did as a kid, playing out in the countryside letting my imagination run wild. It also reinforces one of our three main pillars of what we do and why we do it.

A Path For Everyone.

We want as many people from all walks of life to be able to enjoy the path. This makes me feel that we are on the right track.

The other two pillars are:

A Wildlife Corridor.

A Safe Place For Mental Wellbeing.

That was about it for this week. I need to shin up my ladder and re-attach a few bird boxes that look a bit wobbly, but that might be a job for the weekend, other than that we are looking pretty fit and ready for the nesting season. I’m so looking forward to seeing it dry out a bit and see if what has been in my mind’s eye unfolds into reality over the spring and summer.

Dunchurch Bridleway

We (Ian, Steve and Paul) had a good session on this. The first task was to drain some of the standing water into the drainage channels or ditches, which I assume eventually work their way into rivers? The big river around here is the River Avon so I guess everything works its way to that.

Hopefully, it dries out and the ground gains some ability to absorb normal rainfall, rather than constantly puddling up.

We also knocked back about 200 metres of the path. We need it short so that when spring is here we are just strimming back new green shoots, rather than old and gnarly coarse grass that snags the strimmers and makes it really hard going.

We enjoyed coffee and biscuits at half-time on one of our benches. I wished that I had brought soup because it was bitterly cold.

But it was enough to warm us up and keep us going.

I seem to be developing an obsession with the sound of running water…

Our YouTube (I use YouTube because uploading videos to the blog requires me to “upgrade” to the next level, which costs even more in the monthly subscription!!)

It’s just nice to listen to the water doing its thing… I’m a Pisces so maybe something to do with that??

Or maybe I’m just a bit of a weirdo…

All-in-all, a good day and I like how we are improving this path and gradually getting it to our standard, which is wide enough for people to walk two abreast and plenty of benches for end-users to sit, have a conversation, picnic, contemplate life (which I have done an awful lot of over the last couple of weeks), or just connect with nature and enjoy the sound of the birds and views across the open countryside.

The next one is at the northerly part of Cawston just letting a bit of sunlight in to brighten it up and encourage wildflowers to pop up.

Until next time!

Paul

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This Week We Became Lumberjacks

Posted on February 5, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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Seven of us (Marcus, Reece, Ian, Martin, Steve, Matt, and Paul) turned out this sunny morning and swapped our wildlife hero cloaks for checked shirts.

We’ve had a few trees come down, and of course, there is never a clean fall. They get tangled up in other trees and have that look of “if so much as a butterfly lands on me, I’m gonna drop!” about them.

Crazy people still walk under them, so we have to roll up our sleeves and pretend to be lumberjacks. Which is great fun at the start but soon becomes incredibly hard work.

The good thing about there being so many of us is that if we each do five minutes on the saw, then that equates to 35 minutes of constant sawing.

We eventually made the dangling trees safe and pushed what timber we could into the margins to keep the path clear, and allow the cut wood to slowly become host to literally hundreds of thousands of insects, as it slowly rots down over the next ten years or so.

Is this the start of an assault course? When the roots rot off, we might be able to swing it around by 90 degrees. Today was not the day to try and shift it.

After all of that exercise, we broke off for a decent pick-me-up of coffee, bacon rolls, and good company.

It’s the first workday of the month, so we rolled out the portable stove, and got the bacon sizzling away as we set up camp at one of our triangles of benches, that are designed for people to sit at and have a relaxed conversation.

The bacon did brown up a bit more than in the photo, but I was too busy stuffing my face and slurping my coffee to bother about taking pictures.

We also tried to create shafts of sunlight down the bank.

It’s getting to the top of the cutting and knocking back anything that is going to block out the sunshine. It creates dappled pools of light on the opposite side of the path so wildflowers will grow and we just have a bit of variety.

We did a litter pick here and also on the westerly end of the Dunchurch Bridleway.

The Dunchurch Bridleway has a lot of litter blowing about from the building site next to it. Cawston not so much.

Our YouTube of the bridge.

Our Geocaching Trail on the Dunchurch bit has been taken over by Andrew so I look forward to seeing that restored back to a decent bit of fun for friends and families to enjoy.

We have completed our 8 circular routes starting at 1 km and finishing at 10 km, all from The Bear Pub, so please go in and enjoy a pint or bite to eat if you can.

All of these trails can be found by clicking on the AllTrails tab on the menu above.

It’s so good to get out and connect with nature.

Next week, we are at the Potford Dam end, and the week after we are at the most northerly end trying to let a lot of light in and get it a bit drier.

And that is about it as we trudged back up the steps and reconnected with the real world.

As the adventure ended for another week, we couldn’t help but admire the habitat pile made by the guys from Jaguar Landrover on their corporate volunteering day.

Friday is on the Dunchurch Bridleway back at the easterly end.

Thanks for reading if you got this far.

Until next time!

Paul

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Battling With The Floods

Posted on January 29, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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A bit of a tough one for me this week. I’ve had really bad news, that I don’t really want to go into on here. The good thing is that I’ve had the group to drag me out and stop me wallowing in my thoughts alone. It’s that mental health element of doing what we do.

Thanks guys.

If you’re feeling alone, or just need that human contact, do something about it. Please don’t struggle through life thinking that nobody cares about you.

Today was Martin’s birthday and we had a unicorn cake. It was very tasty indeed.

Stupidly I didn’t attach the lid to the flask properly and about half of the coffee leaked out all over my car on the way to the workday. Good job I like the aroma. So it felt like half measures, but there was just enough.

Happy Birthday, Martin!

No actual unicorns were harmed in the making of this blog.

The storm came and went and somehow the rainwater found its way back down the path. Seven of us (Reece, Steve, Martin, Dave, Marcus, Ian, and Paul) turned out to try to do a Mosses and get the water to do what we wanted.

We increased the size of the dam and the bottom holding pond, and pushed the path wider so that there is a higher area to walk on when it does flood. Reece got the flow working a lot better from the top pond.

We’re going to put a little bench here so people can sit and enjoy the sound of the flowing water and enjoy the pond when it all greens up.

We have Brooklime already sprouting in the muddy banks.

This is pretty rampant so should cover the mud really quickly in the spring.

Our YouTube of the pond.

It all looks like a forlorn mess at the moment but I can see it looking good in the spring and summer.

I also litter-picked up and down the northern end.

Dunchurch Bridleway

We finally got the new benches in, set at 90 degrees to each other to encourage conversations, but not be too intense, like they would be if parallel.

They work really well.

We also litter-picked the area.

It just keeps it pleasant and nice to walk and cycle along the path.

I’ve updated two more circular routes on AllTrails.

Just one more to go!!

That’s it for this week.

Until next time!

Paul

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Hawthorn Trail

Posted on January 22, 2025 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

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Seven wildlife warriors made it today. Matt, Reece, Dave, Steve, Ian, Martin, and Paul, and we pushed on with our alternative path that runs for about 220 metres between two benches.

Next to the path on the easterly side is a huge swathe of grassland that is encouraged to grow as a wildflower meadow every summer. We want to create windows in the scrappy edges of our trail so people can enjoy views of the wildflowers and bring a load of sunlight onto our path.

We called it the Hawthorn Trail because most of the trees along it are hawthorn, so we will get a lot of early white blossom in spring.

But today was not for admiring the blossom or greenery. We set about opening up the edge.

It started out quite misty and foggy but soon cleared. As you can see, there are houses in the background. On our eastern side is a housing development and to our western side is the countryside.

Here is our YouTube of the path.

What I love about winter is that we can see the bare bones of everything. We can shape the path and do stuff while thinking about how it might look when it all greens up.

I think we might need to signpost this path so more people use it. For me, it’s a bit of an adventure, a little bit secret and somewhere that I can go and lose myself safe in the knowledge that I will not be interrupted. But it needs the footfall to wear the path flat. Some of it is at a slight slope.

Matt summed it up perfectly today. Kids can go down there and let their imaginations run wild, whilst parents can amble along the top path and meet them as they pop out at the other end.

We broke for our pick-me-up juice and had to settle for rather run-of-the-mill custard cream biscuits.

But they were good to share and gave us the energy to carry on.

We also made habitat piles with the wood that we were cutting back.

It all helps nature to find a home and be happy.

We have Snowdrops starting to push up so that gives us a good feeling that warmer weather is on the way.

However, between now and spring we have a problem. Or maybe we should call it a test.

There is this thing called a “weather bomb” that hits the UK on Friday.

Lots and lots of rain. This is going to test our plumbing at Berrybanks to the max!!

You can see how dry it has become now that the water goes where it is supposed to.

Please let us not return to the huge lake that stops so many people using the path!!

There is a mixture of excitement and worry coursing through my veins at the moment!!

On Friday we are putting in a couple of really decent benches along the Dunchurch part if the weather is not too bad.

I will share our exploits next week.

Until then!

Paul

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