Eight wildlife warriors (Reece, Marcus, Steve, Martin, Ian, Dave, Matt, and Paul) turned out today for our last workday before Christmas and the New Year.
What a wonderful year we have had. We have seen the team get bigger, the path get wider, and we have overcome our many challenges with all of our collective input to solve problems.
One of the highlights for me, and there are many, is the camaraderie and friendship that we have all developed.
Thank you to the many businesses and individuals who have supported us over the last year and indeed, the last fifteen years. It’s been a real pleasure to see the trust and commitment that everyone has had in us to deliver a real asset to the local community.
We finished today with lunch at The Bear, which I can highly recommend, and I think we can all look forward to a bit of a rest before we start again in 2025.
And lastly, thank you to all the people who tune in to the blog every Wednesday and read my ramblings of our great adventure.
Six wildlife heroes turned out today (Reece, Marcus, Steve, Matt, Martin and Paul) and we cracked on with pushing out the scallop pockets and creating windows on the other side of the path to let shafts of sunlight into the pockets.
We trimmed back all the way to the edge and cut out an opening, and then made a habitat pile with all the cuttings. The more varied the path is, hopefully, the more wildlife will find it, and it will also be an interesting place to walk or cycle.
There is a huge amount of new vegetation coming up in the new pockets so it’s going to be fantastic to see what we get in the spring. The scallop pockets at the southern most bit of the path have yet to wake up, so we dragged the rake over the ground to try to disturb it a bit.
The more the ground is disturbed the better the chance that seeds decide to germinate.
We also did some work on the edges. We’re trying to keep the scrub about 1 metre high so people can enjoy the views and not feel quite so enclosed.
It all looks a bit bleak at the moment, but it’s a good time to get everything ready for spring next year.
We enjoyed Christmas mince pies with our coffee at the break.
The path looking up and down has a pretty good feel about it.
And our brook has gone back to normal.
No more rivers of chocolate sauce!
Our YouTube of a bit of today.
It just gives people a taste of what it looks like.
The next one is this Friday on the Dunchurch Bridleway, and then the last one before Christmas and the New Year will be next Wednesday, with the following Wednesday being Christmas Day.
Yes, the idea did cross my mind of the portable stove and a saucepan on Christmas Day…
But I think I would find said saucepan wrapped around my head…
Only joking of course. I’m really looking forward to having a bit of a break over Christmas and the New Year, and then we can tackle the Hawthorn Trail and the flooding at Berrybanks in the last two months of the cutting-back season.
At kick-off, we realised that we had a lot of injuries to the team, and other team members on international duties so there were literally just three of us.
However, we pushed on as best we could. The first thing that we came across was the brook at our Brook View Bench.
It has turned a lovely chocolatey brown. If you’re a chocolate lover then this is what Willy Wonka dreams are made of.
We then noticed a load of wildflowers coming up in a lot of the pockets.
Bedstraws and creeping buttercup, amongst other things, according to the ID thing on my phone. Creating these pockets really is against the run of play. If it was just left unmanaged then it would be dense scrub and nothing else.
At half-time, we enjoyed a cuppa and some stem ginger cookies from Waitrose.
Despite us being down on numbers they were polished off pretty quickly.
In the second-half we tried to open up down the sides and create a sunlight shot right into the back of the scallop nets.
We need to get up the bank and really open up the last line of defence. It’s just poking through to create a clear shot on goal into the scallop.
We also made the willow trees look a bit more tree-like and a lot less bush-like.
We made a decent defensive line with the cuttings. This will be superb for wildlife.
We swept out from our half and pushed forward.
Plenty of open spaces created up the field.
I’ve managed to create another loop for the couch-2-10k thing that I’m putting together.
This one is about 5k and the next three take the route all the way to 10k. If you want to start on the first circular trail and build up, it’s all there for you, and a decent pub welcome awaits at the end.
Luckily we had a substitution this week and we were happy to see that someone had tried to build a den.
We also litter-picked to keep it looking good.
It wasn’t long before the final whistle blew and it was time to head back. We could’ve done with a bit of Fergie Time but we do it all again next week.
Dunchurch Bridleway
We started where Solstice Coffee Shop is and worked our way up the field.
It’s a decent 2k circular trek with a good coffee stop halfway around.
Loads of people are loving this in the village and because we make our paths wide enough for people to walk together two-abreast, rather than Indian-style single-file, it encourages conversation and stuff.
If you are reading from the WordPress viewer, I would suggest clicking on www.cawstongreenway.co.uk for a better viewing experience.
Nine wildlife warriors (Marcus, Reece, Dave, Ian, Matt, Steve, Nathan, Martin, and Paul) turned out today in what looked like a potential washout.
I’m thinking that we have somehow upset the god of the weather, Zeus, by not offering up enough bacon, but despite it being incredibly wet underfoot, and the path full of puddles, thanks to Storm Bert lashing the UK since the weekend, it didn’t rain on us.
We took protective measures just in case.
But we got off scot-free! Thanks, Zeus for smiling down on us yet again.
We cleared the Cawston Bridleway bridge for easy access before descending onto the greenway.
Looking down from the bridge, we can see the puddles and the slightly higher path on the ground to the left. We cleared this back a bit further just to let the air get to it and dry it out.
Whilst it looks like The Somme at the moment, it will pay dividends when it gets a bit drier, if the sun ever comes out again.
We broke at 11am for the last of the bacon from The Butcher’s of Bilton. We cannot thank them enough for their generous donation. I think we have had four sessions with it.
It’s been an experience learning how to use our new stove. We had issues with the temperatures again today at 3 degrees C, so had to keep swapping out the butane canister with a warmer one, but we got there in the end and everyone had a full belly.
Last week we showed the map of the whole 10k loop. What I am trying to do is create eight loops up to and including the 10k, in baby-step increments, so anyone who is not used to walking can start at the smallest circular trail and build up over time.
I have managed to do the first four trails. The first loop is 1k, the second one is 1.5k, the third one is 1.8k and the fourth one is 3.3k. They all start and finish at The Bear Pub so parking, food, and drinks are available to make it a truly awesome experience.
I kid you not, the pub was a very welcome sight after walking around in continuous loops in the middle of Storm Bert for what seemed like an eternity.
I will try to get the fifth (4.2k), sixth (5.2k), seventh (7.5k) and eighth (10k) loops mapped out on alltrails.com over the next week and then I feel that we have given people the vehicle to help their mental wellbeing by getting out and getting a decent dose of the green stuff.
We are on the Dunchurch Bridleway this Friday. I would suggest parking on the Coventry Road and we can start knocking back the path that goes from Solstice Coffee Shop to the Bridleway, and then work in a westerly direction once we get on the actual bridleway path.
Thinking ahead, we have January and February to clear up and down around Berrybanks, deal with the stream that starts at Berrybanks, and also clear the alternative path called Hawthorn Trail and make it a bit more accessible and obvious.
I feel that we are ready to put up this six-mile walk. There are loads of ways to track back for much shorter loops, or go further into Dunchurch, but this is the basic backbone of the walk. It starts and finishes at The Bear Pub, so food and drink are available if required.
There are plenty of picnic benches along the path and smaller pedestal benches to rest at and enjoy the countryside views. This is what “Active Travel” is all about. An hour or so connecting with wildlife and nature, and getting your daily dose of the green stuff.
Today, five wildlife warriors cracked on (Marcus, Reece, Ian, Matt and Paul) and we started in the blistering cold. We had heavy snow yesterday and today was bitter. Not the type of weather to be standing around in, so we all got busy making scallop pockets and getting around the back of trees.
It feels good and the view from George’s bench is brilliant.
This view of the heath makes it all worthwhile.
I looked into a scallop and saw some good stuff.
Sunlight, bare earth, decaying wood, and lichen. As soon as the wildflowers start to pop up it will be a microcosm of wildlife.
We broke for a much-needed cup of hot coffee in our all-terrain mugs.
And fried up some more bacon. It really is the gift that keeps on giving from The Butchers of Bilton. Please check them out and visit them for delicious food.
Here is a useful thing to know – as you can see in the first photo, the bacon is not cooking. The butane canister was really cold because it had been in my garden shed. Butane will not burn properly because it will not vaporise when cold. We swapped the canister out for a warmer one and you can see in the second photo, the bacon started sizzling….
The amount of people coming past with envious looks in their eyes was loads. The smell of bacon wafting down the path reminded me of the old Bisto adverts.
Oops, there’s me showing my age!!
The whole path is looking good and getting loads of use. This tells us that we are on the right track.
Tool Talk Wednesday
We have a new canvas bag to help carry our kit about.
But it’s getting a bit ridiculous humping so much stuff up and down the path, so I might invest in a folding trolly like this below.
I have clicked on it on temu.com so it’s now just a case of waiting for a deal to drop into my lap!
Our YouTube of today for people who like to see it in video format.
The sun is harsh, but hopefully it shows where we are at.
Dunchurch Bridleway
We are slowly catching up with the Cawston path in terms of getting the “look” that we want.
Slowly the width will happen and then it’s just a case of maintaining it.
Again, we have some sort of bedstraw wildflower growing in the cleared edges, and an interesting fungus that I couldn’t identify.
It’s a good place to be because it is so deep into the countryside.
I have my eye on a bit of timber to make a couple of pedestal benches early next year. That will happen one way or another. We like to have a bench every 100 metres or so.
Lastly, Twitter or X as it is now called seems to have gone all political. I have opened an account on the platform called bluesky. Feel free to follow our progress at cawstongreenway.bsky.social if you like.
We have a new country tuning in – it’s been a while!! Welcome Barbados…
It’s so nice when this happens. I don’t know how people find the blog but it does go out on quite a few platforms and stuff. It’s quite weird when random local people come up to me like they know me and start chatting. It’s nice, but I probably need to work out a way of politely asking who these people are, rather than having a rabbit-in-the-headlights look about me…
Anyway, 129 countries have tuned in, to date. I have my eye on Svalbard. I’ve left loads of comments on blogs and left our blog link, over the last year or so, but no nibbles yet. It took me months to get Greenland, Iceland and other northern countries. People just don’t seem to engage in blog “small talk” the further north I go on my virtual travels…
Today we widened the path and created scallops south of the underpass, bringing in majestic trees where we can.
It was a very misty and cold start. Here is the view across the heath.
The sun eventually chased away the fog, so we could see the view. We also started stripping off our outer layers as it warmed up.
It was useful to see where the sunshine was hitting the scallops. It doesn’t feel like it, but the path is starting to turn to the east so we get more sun on the southern side.
We’re gonna be so full of nectar-rich wildflowers next summer.
We had a break at the halfway point and had another go at the bacon from the butchers in Bilton Village.
Six of us feasted on bacon rolls and coffee. There’s still loads left so we’ll just keep going until it’s all gone. Please go to the butchers. You will not be disappointed.
This is the hedge that we laid last year. It’s coming on nicely.
It’s so good for wildlife, but I don’t think we’ll be winning any hedge-laying awards for it. There are certain styles for the various different parts of the country. Sussex Style, Cotswold Style, West Country Style. I think we will just call this Harty Style…
Our YouTube of the scallops just to give people a better idea of how it looks.
We’re happy because people can walk two or three abreast and actually have a conversation. In today’s world, this is so good.
Tool Talk Wednesday
Nathan did the honours this week with a spare battery for all of our gear.
I kid you not, you can never have enough batteries. Thank you, Nathan.
I also litter-picked just about the whole 2-mile length. 8,300 steps, so my watch thing was telling me.
It’s not the steps that get you, it’s carrying the bag of litter when it gets heavy.
An interesting development! I have been reliably informed that a foot/cycle bridge is going in where the spine road cuts across the path south of Potford Dam. This is great news and will keep us connected.
These connections are so important and just getting away from the hustle and bustle of daily life really is a godsend.
The WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) are saying that 20 minutes a day on a path like ours will do so much for mental wellbeing.
Next one is on the Dunchurch Bridleway on Friday, and then back at the JLR bench next Wednesday for more bacon!
Eight wildlife warriors made it today (Marcus, Reece, Dave, Ian, Steve, Nathan, Martin and Paul) and we thought we might try something a bit different on the first workday of each month.
We’re a pretty well-bonded group, but we thought we might like to get even more bonded and share some greenway brunch once a month.
I put out the call for help in the local village, and The Butcher’s of Bilton came to our rescue.
They gave us a huge pack of bacon. To be honest I have never seen so much of the stuff.
It was a beautiful moment. The bacon was cooked in batches and tasted so good. It was such a brilliant thing to do. Please click on The Butcher’s of Bilton to see their facebook page. They do some amazing hot food, breakfasts and of course, meat. Please try the bacon – it’s out of this world for flavour.
Once again, thank you so much for keeping the troops fed.
We cracked on with the scalloped pockets between the bench and the bridge. We have made them really deep to maximise the shelter for wildlife and get as much sunshine as possible.
We raked up the brash to give the seeds in the ground a chance to germinate. It’s already happening in the scallops that we created a few weeks ago.
My wildflower identifier is saying it’s Fragrant Bedstraw. We will see when it eventually flowers, but good to see that we now have “path – grassy edge – wildflower rich margin – scrub”. We just need to be really careful not to strim into the scallops.
The views up and down are lovely with the autumn colours.
Even on a dull day like today, it’s just a great place to be.
Here is our YouTube showing the scallops and progress.
When it all greens up it will simply blend together perfectly.
I did a bit earlier in the week and also started putting up our new bird nesting boxes.
Hanging off a ladder with a nesting box in one hand and an electric screwdriver in the other is probably not the best look, but coffee and biscuits made it worthwhile.
Dunchurch Bridleway
We had our Friday workday on the Dunchurch bit and covered about 200 metres.
We’re doing our best to bring as many of the mature trees into play as we can. It just makes it so much more interesting and a real pleasure to walk or cycle along.
I’m liking this bit very much as it starts to shape up and the path breaking out into wider glades before meandering onwards.
Winvic, the contractor doing the construction work have cleared the connecting path.
The two paths that we look after are now connected, via public right-of-ways and permissive paths.
This is such good news and what we have been waiting for. People can now walk or cycle between Cawston and Dunchurch on a completely safe off-road route. This is what “Connecting Communities” and “Active Travel” actually mean on the ground.
I’m really happy that the link is working again between the two paths.
Five wildlife warriors made it today and lugged the heavy bags of Postcrete to get our triangle of benches back in the ground.
No matter which way we look at it, there is absolutely no pleasure in carrying the 20 kg bags of the stuff – they are just awkward, dusty and heavy.
But we persevered up and down the path numerous times, to eventually be able to actually crack on with the job-in-hand.
As you can see, it was all hands to the pump. Luckily there is a livestock water trough in the cow field next door so we had a ready supply of water. I, of course, had the very important job of taking all the photos. Oh, how my thumb ached towards the end of the morning.
The triangle is back in place.
Whilst the benches are for everyone to enjoy, our main thought process is for small groups of youth to have somewhere to go, sit, drink a beer and have a smoke, without having to hang around the local park or shops and create friction with other local people.
Please bear that in mind before trying to knock them over!
Whilst we might have enjoyed a beer at the halfway point, we had to settle for coffee.
We had a bit of a French theme this week. Don’t ask me why? It was one of those “ooh la la they look nice” moments in the supermarket the day before. They did indeed go down a treat.
Here are the up and down photos.
Here is a Halloween bench-to-bench walk.
Come on down and energise your body and clear your mind! We are helping to protect peaceful walks where wildlife, nature and people thrive. It really is all about helping to create healthy habitats for people and wildlife.
I think we have the balance between the two about right.
Loads of people coming past today, both walkers and cyclists, which gives us a nice fuzzy feeling inside because just knowing that what we are doing, is used and appreciated by local people.
Tool Talk Wednesday
We had a bag with all the batteries in for the strimmers and hedge-trimmers. It really was the bag of doom that everyone avoided like the plague because it was so heavy and uncomfortable. I replaced it with a duffel bag.
It’s so much better for all of our kit. Still weighs a ton though!
We also have a few more bird nesting boxes that John Lewis (the department store) offered to us at an amazing discount.
We will get them up in the next week or so.
And lastly, our good friend Andrew “biscuited” my car.
Hopefully, my children will not discover them and we can enjoy them on next week’s adventure. Thank you, Andrew, for your kindness.
That’s about it for today. On Friday we are on the Dunchurch bit and next week we are back at the other end just finishing off the wildflower glade and scalloped wildlife pockets.
To finish, here is a nice quote that I got from somewhere…
“Support your local greenway and rediscover the pleasures of walking and cycling, whilst knowing that you are doing something really positive for the planet.”
Nine wildlife warriors turned out today (Kerrie, Marcus, Reece, Dave, Matt, George, Steve, Martin and Paul) and cleared off the last wildflower glade.
If we don’t rip it all out it becomes scrub, and the scrub will eventually give way to trees as it becomes dense unmanaged woodland. We are giving it yet another year of wildflower glade to keep the biodiversity as varied as possible.
We rebuilt our habitat stack made out of an old pallet and then covered it over.
It’s too much of a temptation for naughty squirrels if we leave it as a visible stack, and I’m sure the wildlife won’t mind an extra layer of warmly decomposing brash as a roof.
The phrase “Active Travel” is thrown about quite a bit at the moment. What it means is travelling from one location to another in an active way, like walking or cycling. Obviously, this only works if there is kinda somewhere to travel to, and is massively useful if the routes are traffic-free.
Here is a map that shows where we are, and the bits that we look after (in yellow) and the connecting Public Rights of Ways and Permissive Paths (in red) that connect Cawston with Dunchurch.
I’m not sure if this is helpful, but it kinda shows the bigger picture. We are about 300 metres away from connecting the two yellow bits up, thanks to people simply walking and cycling on the paths to keep them open and usable. Watch this space.
We broke for coffee and ginger crunch cookies at 11 o’clock. If you want to get involved but are not sure how to approach a bunch of, in some cases, tall and burly blokes (not me…) just get over the anxiety and come down with biscuits. We’re a nice group and just rub along.
Reece did the honours with the coffee…
And if it was me and I saw a large group of people standing around slurping coffee and scoffing cookies, I would probably leg it, so I get how it might feel intimidating, but honestly, we are not going to hold you upside-down by your ankles and shake you until the biscuits fall out of your pockets.
After filling our faces, we finished off and made it ready for winter.
It’s going to be full of wildflowers again next summer. As the brambles start to shoot up we will dig the roots out with our mattocks. The more we disturb the ground, the better.
Our YouTube just showing our progress is here.
Notice the path edge nicely greening up.
The wildflower meadows next to us have been cleared and really churned up. This will be so good next year and maybe we need to open up more windows in the path edge.
See how everything is interconnected with different groups adding to the mosaic of biodiverse habitat.
Tool Talk Wednesday
We actually managed to clean down our tools today (thanks to Steve for the suggestion) with our new brush. Our new tool for this week is a third hedge-trimmer, so we are able to really get into the scrubby bramble and release more trees.
And lastly, I put up a few of the bird nesting boxes that had come down.
And moved a box that our good friend, Andrew, made for us. It’s a robin nesting box, but for some odd reason that didn’t register with my tiny brain last year.
Robin nesting boxes need to be about 2 metres high and hidden with ivy and other vegetation.
Dunchurch Bridleway
We re-worked about 120 metres on the Dunchurch bit. We probably could’ve done a lot more, but we were too busy chatting when we had coffee.
Who cares, it’s all good and it will get done on our next session. The whole point is all about having a laugh, chatting, and just enjoying the moment.
One before and two after photos. We will keep pushing the width as we go.
These are the views as soon as the farmer cuts the hedge.
Next week we are down past The Bear pub putting our triangle of benches back in. A naughty squirrel somehow managed to kick them over despite them being set in concrete. I hope your squirrel foot has recovered!!
I have been banging on about “scallops” for ages now. I revisited my woodland management guides and when they talk about scallops along a path edge, they are talking about 50 metres in length and 15 metres deep.
I think what we are doing is making pockets, or bays, which is still good because it creates a wavy edge to the path which is great for wildlife, but maybe we need to move away from the term “scallop” or actually make some bigger scalloped areas where clearing out is done on a rotational basis?
These images are from the Butterfly Conservation website which can be seen here.
So it’s all a bit confusing and a bit contradictory with wildflower glades needing to be cleared off every year, scallops cleared every eight years and bramble cleared every third year!!! No wonder my head hurts!
Today we cleared out the huge wildflower glade that is the centrepiece of the whole greenway.
Me being an utter clot forgot to take photos after we had finished. I will get them tomorrow when I’m putting up the birdboxes that have fallen.
[Photos of clearing added in – hard to believe that this is full of wildflowers in the summer]
We can now see the grass margin on each side of the centre path. What we need to do is add a zone between the short grass and the scrub, which is longer grass and full of wildflowers. The good news is that we have a whole heap of time to create this, and in some areas we already have. We just need to remember not to strim right up to the scrub edge in the spring and summer next year.
The coffee and cookie break was very welcome this week. Raking all the cuttings is the worst job ever.
For me, this is one of the best bits. We chat about stuff and it’s just that simple human interaction without egos, targets or any sort of hierarchy getting in the way. Just a bunch of folk rubbing along and having a laugh. So simple yet so good.
Our base camp is starting to get a bit overloaded but I kid you not, there is a load of other stuff that I would like to bring, but we don’t have the capacity.
Which leads us nicely into Tool Talk Wednesday – Everyone gets a bit irritated with me not cleaning the strimmers down after each workday, so I bought a brush.
To be honest, there is nothing worse than the smell of cut grass after it has gone past that euphoric freshly-cut smell. The wretch-inducing odour is awful, so I will gladly brush off our strimmers with our new “tool” and not be heaving and gagging, as the clumps of wet grass fall off the strimmers and take up residence in my car.
Here is a YouTube of the bit we did last week.
In my mind we need to get behind a few of those trees and bring them into play along the path.
We also did a litter-pick on the southern third and I was really pleased to see hardly any litter.
The path is a pleasure to walk and I really enjoyed wandering up and down. The width is really making a huge difference.
We have some incredibly exciting news hopefully in a week or two, and a curveball or three, so watch this space. Next week we’re at Potford Dam clearing out the wildflower glade and this Friday we are trying to connect the Right of Way through the woods to create circular routes. It should all come together next week.
Cawston Greenway 