Cawston Greenway

We had a good AGM yesterday and it was nice to reflect on what we started with, and where we are at now. Fantastic progress is a massive understatement.

We talked about what we want to be doing over the summer. We decided that we need to be litter-picking, digging up the bramble roots and nettles, walk the fence line and make it secure and map the path and make a plan for the sections that we divide the path into.

The April workday is Sunday 17th 1pm to 3pm. Raking the ground in the two glades and pulling up nettles and bramble roots.

The mapping day is Thursday 28th 1pm to 3pm (or longer if needed). We will start at one end and literally draw a map of the features and landmarks of the path, and divide it into sections, with a clear work brief for each bit. We need to take care to preserve the existing wildflowers and monitor what changes happen as we do the work.

Hope to see a good crowd on the Sunday!

Paul

A small group of us turned out and we went from the meeting point down to The Bear, litter picking. The weather turned quite wet so I think we were all glad to go home.

Litter pick today.

Ed burned off a bit more brash and also did some work on the section between the new underpass (which Margaret removed the graffiti from today) and The Bear. Loads of work to do on this section and we need to decide how we are going to tackle it. There are some lovely banks and the path is mostly in deep cutting with little scrub. We can open up some really wide glades and maybe either try to repair the brook that is flooding the path at The Bear end, or divert the path onto higher ground and have the water as part of the changing and diverse habitat that exists along the greenway.

Looking down the path towards the new underpass.

Looking up the path towards The Bear pub.

Don’t forget that it is our AGM on Monday 4th April at 6pm at Cawston Grange School. There will be directions to get to the classroom.

Good day today and with the litter removed, even on a soggy day like today the greenway looks really cared for.

See you soon!

Paul

Great day on the greenway today with good weather, a clear work objective and a good crowd of about ten or so of us turning out.

We cleared the north east corner of the second large glade to get it balanced and equal on both sides and moved a picnic bench into it. It looked really good.

Roasting marshmallows on the bonfire.

We had toasted marshmallows at the end of the day, which was a real treat.

The Environment Agency are going to look at the reed-bed at Potford’s Dam tomorrow and give us some clear direction about how to tackle this. This is why we chose not to do any work down that end today.

Last workday is on Wednesday 30th March and is just a walk along to tidy any obvious bits that are going to snag any walkers and cyclists.

Good work today and a big thank-you to everyone who has been involved, for all of our efforts over the last seven months.  I think we can safely say that we made a difference.

Next Sunday workday will be in the latter part of April and workdays will now revert to once a month whilst the nesting season is upon us. We need to keep a check on brambles and nettles in the newly cleared areas, keep the litter in check and record all flora and fauna that we see. We also need to work out how to sort out the drainage problem by The Bear and also plan what we are going to do with the greenway down at that end. 

Lastly, our AGM is on Monday 4th April at 6pm at Cawston Grange School in the Tigers classroom. This is left when you pass reception, through the doors, first right and the second classroom on the left. Feel free to come along and add your input.

Well that’s about it.

Hope to see you on Wednesday and at the AGM.

Paul

This area was a mass of bramble before we started today.

Mike dug up a load of bramble roots and the rest of us gave the ground a good old raking over. This will help any wildflower seeds that have been stuck in the soil to germinate.

We also saw a few early signs that the wildlife is starting to wake up. Mike spotted a Brimstone butterfly and I spotted a Comma. We saw a lovely pair of Buzzards floating above us, loads of bumblebees and a Green Shield Bug.

Comma basking in the sunshine.

Mike suggested that we work on the large glade on the next workday, cutting back trees on the north-east corner and getting it even on both sides. We also need three or four of us to carry one of the picnic benches down to this glade so we can site it.

The mud has all dried away now and it really does look good.

See you on the next one!

Paul

Early start on the greenway today due to me having an action packed day (my birthday) however, good to see that nine or so made it. Sorry about the lack of direction at the start but we are in completely new territory with the reed-bed and need to work out how we tackle it.

Basically, I think we need to create a series of dams in the stream so that the reed-bed once again floods. The problem that we have is that we don’t want to flood the road that runs  past the reedbed and under the bridge. The bank needs to either have a zig-zag path cut into it, or steps cut with boards and pegs, to allow access. I have asked the Environment Agency for help and advice and as soon as I get this, we will be clearer on what we need to do. It will be a massively diverse wildlife area if we get it right.

At the bottom of the bank is a reed-bed. We need to dam the stream to get the water to flood it.

We did well to clear the bank and as we work there more often, we will start to understand what we need to do.

The grassy area on the embankment needs the bramble to be taken back completely. This will allow grasses and wildflowers to grow and is going to be a very butterfly rich area. Mike from Butterfly Conservation has some Wild Strawberry plants for us and this will help to attract the Grizzled Skipper butterfly, which is an endangered species.

Cutting back the bramble on the embankment.

I will bring the brush-cutter tomorrow and really crack on with the rest of the bramble. I don’t like to use it when we are all working quite close together, and we didn’t really have a clear plan today and it’s a pain to lug all the gear down, just to lug it back again.

I think we can do a lot in this area in the next ten days. Thanks to all who made it today, and thanks for persevering with plan A, then plan B, then plan C…!!!!

Next one is tomorrow, Monday.

PS: All hotmail addresses seem to get bounced back from my email, so subscribe or miss it.

PPS: Mike from Butterfly Conservation is willing to teach us how to do Transect Recording. This is all part of the monitoring to see if we have improved the area for butterflies and other flora and fauna. As the years roll on, it will be nice to see how we have improved the greenway for wildlife. If you want to learn how to do this, let me know and I can arrange a training day with Mike. However, it’s not just about the wildlife. It’s also about creating a great green space for people to use and enjoy. Remember that Sustrans are eventually going to link up the section from Potford’s Dam to Draycote, and Marton to Offchurch Greenway, so we will have a clear greenway all the way to Leamington Spa.

Paul

A few of us turned out today and burnt off a load of bramble on one of the banks. Mike from Butterfly Conservation dropped in and gave us some good advice about the reed-bed at the Potford’s Dam end.

Good news – I managed to get to the end of the greenway with the brush-cutter. This means that we now just need to walk down the path and cut back any obvious bits. We also spotted quite a few wild flowers growing in the cleared areas.

Finally got to the end with my brush-cutter!

I positioned one of the picnic benches under the bridge and it looked pretty good.

One of our picnic benches.

It was really good to see a cyclist having a rest on the bench, when I looked down from where we were working on the bramble. This made me feel quite chuffed with our efforts.

If you look really closely, there is a person sitting at the picnic bench.

The rest of our efforts on the next workdays have to be on the reed-bed and the bank down to it. This will be a fantastic asset to the greenway.

Thanks all who turned out today.

See you on the next one!

Paul

Twelve or so of us turned out today and really pushed on with the second big glade. We are creating a huge open space that will hopefully be full of interesting grasses, flowers, insects, birds and mammals. we had glorious sunshine and everyone was stripping back to tee-shirts. It was good to see insects waking up and wild flowers starting to shoot up in the areas that we have cleared.

We also did a bit more dead-hedging on the top of the cutting and it looks pretty good. We are going to learn how to lay a living hedge and do this in the autumn.

Second large glade.

Work here is pretty much finished now and we probably need to push on down the path to the reed-bed at the end.

Digging out the roots of brambles!

Next workday is Wednesday 16th March 11am to 1pm. Working on the last stretch at Potford’s Dam and deciding what we are going to do to get the best out of it. We also need to site the picnic benches that have been made by Adam’s Dad. They look fantastic and just need to be sunk into the ground by a few inches to stop people trying to move them.

Sunday 20th is an early workday 10am to 12 noon at the reed-bed. 

Monday 21st 11am to 1pm carry on with work on the reed-bed.

Sunday 27th 2pm to 4pm ditto.

Wednesday 30th – 11am to 1pm – As mentioned in my last blog, just walk along and tidy any piles of brash and cut back any obvious bits that will snag walkers and cyclists.

After this the bird-nesting season starts so we need to stop all cutting and start to record what flora and fauna we see over the summer. We will need to keep a check on brambles and nettles in the newly cleared bits and probably do a litter-pick at some point.

Thanks to all who turned out today. Good work.

See you on the next one!

Paul

Good workday today with more pushing back on the second big clearing.

The clearing is getting bigger.

Hopefully we will get some really nice wildflowers coming up on the raked-back ground.

The raking up the brash and burning it just seems to go on forever!

Eventually we will need to decide if we are going to get rid of all the trees in the cuttings and let the ground become grassed over and full of wildflowers. We can probably keep the trees on the edges and either dead-hedge or create a living-hedge along the edges of the greenway.

John creating a dead-hedge on the edge of the greenway.

We will keep the wooded feel on the embankments and this will attract insects, fungi and wildlife that like the damp shaded habitat, but in the cuttings we can hopefully open the habitat up to a much more diverse and different type of wildlife.

Our dead-hedge will be a really great home for all sorts of wildlife.

Next workday is on Sunday 13th March 2pm to 4pm and we need to cut back the bramble on the north-east corner of the new clearing. This clearing will then be complete.

I will brush-cut the rest of the path down to the Potford’s Dam end and rake back the brash. We then need to walk the whole length of the greenway from the Cawston underpass, south-bound, and cut back any bits that are obviously going to hamper walkers in the summer, and also site our new picnic benches.

Next midweek workday will be Wednesday 16th March 11am to 1pm to just finish off any jobs that are obvious, like trees that have come down or piles of brash that have been left. After this we need to do a bit of work on the reed-bed at the Potford’s Dam end, and the bank that leads down to it. Time is short but we can do what we can.

Thanks all who turned out today.

Until next time!

Paul

A very pleasant workday on the greenway today. We looked at a section on embankment and played about with trying to clear the recent Ash tree growth without losing the mature trees on the outer edges of the greenway, which act as a screen between the Western Relief Road and the houses and green spaces in Cawston. Happily we found that we could push back the growth and make a really wide path that had a woodland ride feel to it.

The path after a bit of clearing. Still plenty of scope to push back the trees on the left.

The wider the path, the more chance that sunlight will get to the edges of it and this will be full of all sorts of wildlife. As we have seen in the glades, when the trees are too close together they become very spindly and nothing grows under the canopy. We are lucky that the greenway runs north to south, so the mature trees on the edges are not too much of a problem, especially if they are at or near the bottom of the embankment. It also means that there is more path for the various users such as walkers, joggers, cyclists and horse-riders, so hopefully it won’t get so churned up in the future.

Next workday is Wednesday 9th March and back on the bit that we were on today. It is just down from the new underpass, where the path comes out of cutting and onto high embankment.

Our 2011 AGM is being organised as we speak and this will be at Cawston Grange School. I will blog and email when I have a date. Talking of emails, it is still very unreliable and I get a lot returned undeliverable. It is best to subscribe to the blog so that you don’t miss anything.

Until next time!

Paul

Six or so of us turned out today in very soggy weather. We pushed on down with the path widening.

Light at the end of the path.

We are so close to getting to the end, just in time too. The path widening will make a huge difference in summer.

Widened path.

No workday next Sunday but midweekers in the following week. Tue 8th March 11am to 1pm, Wed 9th March 11am  to 1pm and then Sunday 13th March 2pm to 4pm. Basically lopping back the bigger branches that the brush cutter cannot cut.

Thanks to all who braved the weather today. Loads done.

See you on the next one.

Paul