Cawston Greenway

We Drained The Lake

Posted on June 12, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

Or rather, Reece and David did.

I just paddled about in my green wellies trying my best to look like I knew what I was doing, which lasted for about five minutes before I was rumbled, and was sent off to do some strimming.

If we get no rain for a few days/weeks/months we might dry out completely.

We can see what is left of the great lake and the bed of the stream that snaked down the path. We’re going to push the left-hand side back by about a metre in the autumn so that we always have the higher ground to walk on, which is packed down with ballast from when it used to be a railway. That should keep us dry. We also need to cut back some of the overhang. Deep joy with that job!!

We got to The Bear bridge, which is only about 300 metres, but it is what it is.

At the half way point we broke for some go-go juice in our all-terrain mugs, and had a deep and meaningful conversation about benches.

We need to stiffen this bench and my rudimentary engineering skills (yes that’s a joke – I couldn’t engineer my way out of a wet paper bag!) seem to suggest legs and a frame under the table top, and something to make the seat leg footprint bigger.

We also agreed to put the three new benches in at The Bear bridge to replace the smashed up picnic bench, so that will be our first job for July.

We then had a visit from Liz and Andrew, who made the Bethel bench, and loads of bird-boxes, amongst other things.

These things are truly built to last – proper engineering!!

Great to see you guys.

And whilst we are on the subject of benches, I got a sticker for the bench that we put in for Mick, who passed away last year.

He would come to this spot to admire the sunset of an evening, and the sunset double meaning kinda makes me, I don’t know, a bit melancholy maybe, but so blooming grateful to have had him as a friend for 14 years.

We also litter-picked the whole two miles of track.

And the Geocaching trail is so much better with proper water-tight containers and there are now 17 caches to be found along the path.

Thank you Andrew (another Andrew) for sorting this out.

We have nice wildflowers in the bit between the path and the scrubby bramble.

We do have a heck of a lot of grass in some of the wildflower clearings. Maybe this will change as it gets warmer?

Loads of people came past today, and everyone looked happy, although nobody wanted to stop and share our coffee. If I saw five random men sitting around a picnic bench, I would probably leg it the other way, so I do get the social anxiety bit, but the offer is always there.

On Friday we’re putting in the benches on the Dunchurch Bridleway, which we connect with and this then joins to the National Cycle Network, so effectively, our umbilical cord to the rest of the world.

Come along and help if you want to get involved.

Until then!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged benches, butterflies, cawston greenway, coffee and cookies, community, conservation, cycling, national cycle network 41, nature, outdoors, picnic benches, running, volunteer work, wildlife | 10 Comments

Welcome To My World…

Posted on June 5, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

…the third rock from the sun.

We had what is called a Parade of Planets this week, where all the planets line up and some can be seen with the naked eye. Quite a sight if you like star-gazing, and another nugget of useless information that might pop up as a pub quiz question somewhere in the Universe.

Back here on Earth we had more pressing matters to deal with. We seem to be in a bit of a race against the rampant growth of everything green.

We started where we finished last week, which was at the Wiggers Bethel bench, which undoubtedly has the best views on the greenway, and ploughed on.

The width is so important if walkers and cyclists are to share the path.

We’re covering decent chunks of ground, with 600 metres done again today, but very soon we need to go back to the start and do it all again. A bit like painting the Forth Bridge.

No… Not that sort of painting, you dummy…

Better.

We have covered 2 kilometres in total and have the Berrybanks bit to do next week, before we go back and start again.

Triad of Benches

We’re replacing the smashed up picnic bench by The Bear bridge, thanks to Rich for his buy-me-a-coffee donation.

Hopefully the triad will last a bit longer than the last bench. People complain that we don’t spend as much of our efforts at this end – Hmm, a little bit of food for thought, right there!

They will go into the ground in this triangle formation and the seat height will be about 45cm.

We also did some running repairs on the bench at Berrybanks.

The design is absolutely awful and we need to build an exoskeleton if it’s going to have any chance of lasting. I need an engineer and I need one fast!!

The recycled bench had a bit of a battering from the naughty squirrels, again.

I found a bit of wood in my shed and repaired it, but at some point we will need to replace the table part with the same timber as the seats, which will cost us just £10. This bench has been with us for such a long time and has terrific sentimental value. Because of that, I would like to keep it in use.

Me, a long, long time ago!!

It will always puzzle me when the very thing that you want to sit at becomes a target for destruction. Is there not a thought process that kicks in and says, “hang on, if we break this we will have nowhere to sit.” Bizarre how that connection is seemingly so difficult to make.

Geocaching Dino Trail Relaunch

We now have a chap called Andrew who has taken control of the geocaching trial. It was never a good match for me with my ridiculously-short attention span. The last time I looked it had something like 2,500 finds along the 12 cache trail, so it’ll be good to see this back up and running, and properly maintained. Thank you Andrew.

Please give it a go. It’s a good six mile there-and-back trek and great for kids and grandkids.

Dunchurch Bridleway

We are hopefully putting a couple of really decent benches in next Friday at 10am. I am slowly getting myself organised with this trail and will be doing work on it every other Friday, to keep it cut back and connected to the Cawston trail. If you want to help just keep an eye out for some dates to appear on the right.

Lastly, I topped up the bird feeders to keep everyone happy.

Next week we are down at Berrybanks trying to impersonate Mosses and get the water to go down the drain. Wellies optional, a good sense of humour absolutely essential.

Until then!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged butterflies, cawston greenway, community, conservation, cycling, nature, outdoors, picnic benches, running, volunteer work, wildlife | 20 Comments

We Have A New Toy…

Posted on May 29, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

It’s something that is tremendously exciting and tells us if the birds are happy, sort of.

It’s an app on my phone that cleverly recognises birdsong and tells us what we have. This is super-important because we can kind of judge how much wildlife we have and tells us that we are on the right track in terms of creating a wildlife corridor, which is one of our three main pillars of why we do what we do.

The good news is, we have loads and loads of different birds identified, and now the automatic photo carousel thing is working again, we can sit back and see what they are.

Robin
Blackcap
Great Tit
Blackbird
Chiffchaff
Goldfinch
Song Thrush
Greenfinch
Bullfinch
Goldcrest
Blue Tit
Chaffinch
Dunnock
Magpie
Wood Pigeon
Willow Warbler
Sparrow
Redstart
Jay
Wren

It’s super exciting to think that we are creating an environment that balances the needs of nature with the needs of humans.

And with that in mind, we carried on with maintaining the path width so the humans can enjoy walking side-by-side whilst having a conversation, which is really good for mental health, another one of our three main pillars of why we do what we do.

As you can see, we keep the entrances nice and wide, too. And also create a good buffer around the benches so nobody gets stung on the bum whilst sitting at them.

We’re starting to get a decent margin between the path and the scrub, but we do need to manage the tree canopy to allow the understory to really come alive. What we need is really healthy ground flora under the trees, which means getting sunlight onto the ground.

We got as far as “Wiggers” bench which is called Bethel, which was about 400 metres, so about 200 metres left until we get to the underpass.

This is a photo of the wildflower meadows outside of the railway path.

If we can get more of that inside, and we are doing in parts, it will look really good. But not having the usual vegetation flopping into the path is making it feel so much better already.

The way I am visualising it, is path – six to 12 inch short-cut margin – a metre or so of wildflower rich grass – scrub – edge. I’m not sure how this will pan out in September when we start to cut it all back, but looking at it this year, compared to previous years, I cannot see any pitfalls.

We filled up the bird feeding station with my young assistant (school holidays).

So that should keep everyone happy, and we also litter picked all the way to the furthest northern point.

Lastly, we have a few things in the pipeline for the benches. I have taken the pedestal benches off the map and just have the picnic benches on there. You will have to wait and see why. We have very subtle railway stickers for all but one of the pedestal benches. All will be revealed in a couple of weeks.

We have the triangle of benches to put in near The Bear pub, thanks to the buy-me-a-coffee donation from Rich. We also have the two benches to put in on Dunchurch Bridleway, thanks to the support from The Kitchens Inc.

Probably before that happens, we need some rain-free weeks so everything can dry out and the ground can regain the ability to absorb water.

Next week we meet at Wiggers Bethel bench and push onwards towards the nightmare that is Berrybanks!!

Here is our YouTube of a bit of today.

Join us for coffee at 11am or just join in on the workdays. It really is good fun!

Until next week!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged benches, butterflies, cawston greenway, picnic benches, wild birds UK, wildflower glades | 19 Comments

Flower Moon

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

This week we have another full moon to contend with. It’s called the Flower Moon because it coincides with an abundance of flowers finally bursting into life as we see out the last few weeks of spring, and welcome summer.

However, somebody up there in the clouds obviously didn’t get the memo.

It just rained, and rained, and rained. It was that horribly wet rain that seeps into every space that it can find. It was getting down my neck and soaking my back, into my shoes and soaking my feet, and brushing past the overgrown path drenched my trousers.

But four of us intrepid explorers made it today and battled on.

The first task was to cut back the annoying path that gave my trousers a soaking.

This is the Cawston Bridleway and not even part of our trail, but I thought a good deed was in order.

We covered about 500 metres today and it really is just taking 6 or so inches off the edge of the path to stop all the vegetation making a mad dash for the open space. It’s easy work because everything is new growth so there are no hardened woody stems on anything. However, the constant vibration from the strimmers is quite tiring on the arms and hands.

Just look how wet it is.

And here we can see how the narrow path just opens up a bit.

We had shelter under the Bridleway bridge for a well needed caffeine-boost in our all-terrain mugs, but no bench.

So we improvised with an umbrella from one of our sponsors. We went back to the small flask because I was sure that nobody was going to join us today. Indeed, only one person came past, in the whole time that we were down there.

Luckily, I took some photos on Monday, of what we did last week.

We can see the path.

The short-grass buffer.

The wildflower zone.

And the interesting grasses that are starting to flourish.

There are some lovely grass names including Crested Dogstail, Tall Fescue, Creeping Bent, Meadow Foxtail, Timothy, and Yorkshire Fog.

I look forward to getting on my hands and knees to identify what we have, but overall I hope you can see the method in our madness in terms of path – short edge – wildflower-rich grass – scrub and trees.

I still feel that we need to push the scrub back even further by creating deep scallops into it. It’s all about getting a balance for people to share the path, wildlife to thrive, and for it to look pleasing on the eye. By having the scrub right up to the edge of the path means we lose this wildflower bit and it becomes very mono-green.

Here is our YouTube of most of the work today.

Welcome to British weather. I hate to think what is happening at the Berrybanks end!!

Lastly, we litter-picked from the middle-point, all the way to the southern end.

Next week we are at the Jaguar Land Rover bench pushing on. Please feel free to join us for coffee at 11am if you need a bit of human interaction, or are simply interested in what we are doing.

The benches for the Dunchurch Bridleway are almost ready and we have the buy-me-a-coffee donation from Rich for the replacement bench set-up near The Bear bridge. Hopefully we are looking at early June for installation of both of these.

That’s it for this week!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged benches, butterflies, cawston greenway, community, conservation, cycling, grasses, nature, volunteer work, wildflowers, wildlife | 13 Comments

Northern Lights

Posted on May 15, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We had the Northern Lights to admire this week.

Thankfully there is no light pollution on our northern side and the view was magnificent.

We met at the most southerly part today and strimmed back the path edge just 6 inches of so, on both sides. This will stop the track feeling tight in the summer as everything sort of droops into the middle.

It feels a bit brutal but it really will pay dividends in a couple of weeks. Already we were able to walk up and down the path side-by-side and have a conversation, rather than the silent single-file column that we normally have to do.

The flooding at Berrybanks is now starting to dry out and is looking a lot more hopeful.

It’s still very muddy, but at least there is no longer a lake in the middle of the path.

Our radio interview from last week is on air.

Just click on the picture to listen.

How amazing!!

We also did some running repairs to the picnic benches. The naughty squirrels had a hedonistic party at the bird feeder clearing so a quick repair was in order.

We also splashed a load of wood stain about to keep everything looking fresh at this one, and the Potford Dam picnic bench.

It only rained a bit, and most of the stain had soaked in by then.

After topping up the bird feeders with fat balls.

We enjoyed coffee and cookies along with the sort of chit-chat that keeps us all sane.

It was a really good day today. We covered about 600 metres, which fills me with confidence that we can keep on top of the path width throughout summer.

Here is our YouTube for the week to give you a feeling of being there.

I’m gonna jump on my bike soon and do a video of the whole path.

Lastly, a few more wildflowers are popping up and butterflies are appearing.

The Dunchurch Bridleway is slowly opening up.

The public right-of-way across the field still needs to be reinstated.

But it is getting the attention that it needs.

This is the map showing the greenway in red, the public right of way and Dunchurch Bridleway in orange, and the diversion whilst the building work is happening, in blue.

It’s a lovely walk when it is all working and a delightful coffee can be had at Solstice Coffee Shop.

Next week we are at the bird feeder clearing. Please do come along for a coffee if you just need a bit of social contact. 11am as always, and there is always some going spare.

Until then!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged BBC, BBC CWR, BBC RADIO, butterflies, cawston greenway, community, conservation, cycling, mental well being, nature, outdoors, running, volunteer work, wildlife | 4 Comments

Green Explosion

Posted on May 8, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

This is the week where it goes absolutely mad.

It really does feel like it would become a jungle if we just left it, which is no good for anybody except the David Bellamy types.

The thought of all those bugs going up my trousers and down my top gets my spine tingling, and not in a good way. Which is why we need the path cut back to about two to three metres.

Wildflowers are popping up everywhere.

It has finally started to dry out and some good news with the blocked culvert.

After months and months of wringing our hands and wondering what to do, we finally managed to get the water to go into the drain on the western side and carry on along the brook where it is supposed to go.

This means that the bog will finally drain and the 800 metres of water that goes down the path can now go three metres across the path and be gone.

Hopefully, no more of this.

This really works against one of our three core values – A Path For Everyone. As I am sure you can imagine, anyone on a mobility scooter, a pushchair user, or someone not particularly steady on their feet is going to struggle massively here.

What we really need is the culvert under the ground being replaced with a 60 cm tube, but for now hopefully the inconvenience of all the water going down the path has stopped..

We also litter picked from Berrybanks to the bird feeder bench.

Loads of empty cans and stuff around a picnic bench tells me someone is having a good time!!

Lastly, we had a visit from Dan from the BBC. He was keen to interview us and get a little bit of our back-story.

It’s all very exciting, but I’m going to hold back until the thing drops and then kinda blog the whole event.

Here’s our YouTube of the section pushed back today.

Next week we are back at Potford Dam doing the same.

Until then!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged butterflies, cawston greenway, community, conservation, cycling, nature, outdoors, running, volunteer work, wildlife | 8 Comments

May Day

Posted on May 1, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

This week, in fact, today, we celebrate May Day.

The time of the year where young ladies and Morris Men dance around Maypoles up and down the villages of the UK, a May Queen is chosen, and green men lurk about doing something or another.

Here is the maypole from the village where I live.

May Day is also a celebration of worker’s rights, a shorter working week and bank holidays. I didn’t actually know that and I’m pleased that I did a bit of research.

Bench Shuffle

The Council had a word in our ear about the new JLR bench. It was very polite and friendly, basically they suggested that it was a little too close to residential houses and if there is a problem with raucous noise from hedonistic squirrels, late at night, we are setting ourselves up for a lot of problems.

They suggested a shuffle, so shuffle we did.

We also took the opportunity to stain the bench, and not the usual poo brown colour. So basically we shuffled the JLR bench to where the recycled bench is, and shuffled the recycled bench down the path. It works well and keeps the Council happy.

We then had a protracted conversation about the shade of brown and came up with some, err, creative ideas. Somehow vindaloo came into the conversation. I cannot think how!!

Anyway, let me steer this back on track with pictures of the views, up, down, and across the heath.

Dunchurch Bridleway

We have started working on the Dunchurch Bridleway, which connects to this path via a public right of way.

It’s important to me to make this connection for a couple of reasons. The bridleway connects to the National Cycle Network, so opens up the path to the larger local area. The National Cycle Network goes past the bottom of the road where I live, so I can literally hop on my bike and cycle to workdays. It also allows me to give something back to the village where I live, which is a pretty good feeling.

We have some really exciting news to share about this trail in a week or two, so watch this space.

Cawston Guides Bench

I stuck the Girl Guide sticker on the Cawston Guides bench and it just gives it a bit of an identity.

I quite like it.

Buy Me A Coffee

We had a wonderfully generous donation from a chap called Rich who bought us five coffees. This is very welcome and will go towards a bench formation towards the northern end.

Thank you so much for your support and we look forward to you joining us on workdays when you can.

Next Week

We are at Berrybanks next week just easing the path back a little. It is still incredibly muddy and all the rain over the weekend has set back the drying-out a bit.

As usual, pop along if you fancy a chat and a coffee. We seriously have some going spare and we really are a light-hearted bunch.

Helping each other to look after our mental wellbeing has always been a big part of why we do this. Go back to the start of the year blog post (actually it’s the second one of January) and look at our three core values – A Path For Everyone, A Wildlife Corridor, and A Safe Place for Mental Wellbeing.

And I know that walking up to five blokes sitting at a picnic bench swigging coffee and laughing about random stuff might appear to be a little bit weird and a little bit intimidating, but if you bring biscuits to help break the ice, you will probably find that you become our most favourite person for the day and we will love you forever.

Until next time!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged butterflies, cawston greenway, community, conservation, cycling, Dunchurch Bridleway, national cycle network 41, nature, outdoors, running, volunteer work, wildlife | 9 Comments

Pink Moon

Posted on April 24, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

It was a toss up between the moon, which seems to be full again (they come round so blooming quickly) or Saint George and a dragon, this week.

I stuck with our moon theme whilst we are on a bit of a roll with them.

The Pink Moon is called so, because it’s associated with the first spring blooms of April, which are generally pink.

For once it actually seems to be doing what it says on the tin.

A chap in my local pub was saying that the moon is actually more useful than the sun, since the moon gives us light at night when it’s dark. The sun only gives us light during the day, when it’s already bright.

It took me a few minutes to untangle this in my head and even longer to try to explain it back. Such is life after a few pints of beer…

We did three things this week.

We replaced the Cawston Girl Guides bench. This time it has much stronger and longer screws so should be able to withstand any squirrel attack.

I have ordered a sticker to go onto the support beam so we remember which bench it is.

I do hope that this is the correct emblem. It looks like it is.

This bench looks onto a butterfly bank that we created at the start of 2023 and we have left it to do a full year cycle (summer to summer) to see what happens.

It’s full of stinging nettles, which was a bit of a disappointment at first, but so much insect life, including four species of butterfly, rely on nettles to survive, so hopefully we will be rewarded in the summer. If not, it’s nettle soup, nettle tea, and nettle beer – you have been warned!!

We also carried on with the transition from path to short grass to longer grass to scrub.

It feels a bit brutal to be doing this but it really is just a narrow strip and in a couple of weeks it will make such a difference.

Our bench-to-bench of today on YouTube for those who enjoy seeing our progress on video.

We also litter picked from the Potford Dam end right the way to about 50 metres north of the Bear bridge and back.

Nothing much of interest except an unopened bottle of beer. And no, I wasn’t tempted to open it and have a little tasting session, not after the grubby squirrels have had their dirty little paws all over it.

Whilst I was at the Potford Dam end I ventured down to where a public right of way connects us to Dunchurch Bridleway.

Hmmm, not really what I was expecting to see. We have some exciting news regarding Dunchurch Bridleway in the next week or so, Because of this I really need the two paths connected.

I have a workday there on Friday this week (10 to 12) so will do some digging around. A question that I will ask, would you want me to add those workdays to this blog (one a month) or do a separate blog for them? Please let me know in the comments.

Lastly, we have a new country tuning into the blog. It’s been such a long time since we had a new one and I think we have now been read by people in just shy of 130 countries in the world.

Nice to make your acquaintance person from El Salvador. Thanks for reading.

Until next week!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged butterflies, cawston greenway, community, conservation, country walks, cycling, Dunchurch Bridleway, nature, outdoors, Pink Moon, running, volunteer work, wildflowers, wildlife | 7 Comments

Jaguar Land Rover Take Over

Posted on April 17, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We hosted a group from Jaguar Land Rover this week. They very kindly installed a new picnic bench in a clearing with super views.

A great day was had and the JLR team also picked up two bags of litter.

I did suggest that if they had a spare Land Rover knocking about, then we would be very happy to look after it. After explaining how we are really enthusiastic about them and would be hugely grateful even with an older model.

However, I think I might have put slightly too much emphasis on the word “model”…

A fantastic day and the bench will be hugely popular with that view. Thanks guys. We really appreciate your generosity.

In other news, we got the rest of the little benches stained on Monday.

And then we met today at Trigger’s Bench and carried on northwards with the shaping of the path edge.

This really is the width that we want to maintain over the summer. Normally the path gets really narrow and tight, and it becomes quite uncomfortable brushing past stinging nettles and bramble all the time. It also means people have to walk in single-file which makes conversations difficult. The nettles also droop into the path when it rains or towards the end of the summer, so we really need to avoid this happening.

Here is our YouTube of our progress today.

We covered about 400 metres last week and the same this week. Some parts of the path are naturally wide and will not need any work, so I am hoping we have enough time to really keep on top of it.

My thoughts are that we get up to the recycled bench next week and then jump forward to the underpass. The underpass to Berrybanks/The Bear needs to be kept wide. The rest sort of looks after itself. So that’s about 1,500 metres out of the whole 3 km that we need to keep down. Hmm… It’s going to be a challenge.

Next week we meet at the recycled picnic bench and work backwards to where we got to today. We also need to put the Cawston Guides bench back in, after a scurry of naughty squirrels had too much fighting juice and decided to wrestle it out of the ground!

Whilst the bench is back in the workshop it does give me the chance to stencil “Cawston Guides” on to it. Something which I have been meaning to do for ages.

Well that’s about it for this week. Thanks again to JLR, and onwards we go next week!

Paul

Posted in Newsreel | Tagged corporate day out volunteering, Jaguar Land Rover, mountain biking, nature, picnic benches, railway paths, rambling, trail running, volunteering, walking | 18 Comments

Everything Went Dark

Posted on April 10, 2024 by Paul - Cawston Greenway

We had a solar eclipse this week. That’s when the moon blocks out the sun and it feels like all of Nostradamus’s prophecies are being rained down on us in one terrifyingly frightful moment.

Everything pauses. Birds stop chirping, sheep and cattle stand in their fields in bewildered silence, humans look at each other with fear in their eyes as they realise that this is what will happen when the sun finally stops burning brightly in the sky.

And on that cheery note, we carried on with our wiggly path. Good news, our strimmers have multiplied, and so have our battery packs.

This was made possible with the donations from our lovely patrons. If you would like to support us with a small monetary donation every month, please check out the link on the right. It helps so much with things like this, food for the birds, public liability insurance and web hosting costs.

So on we cracked and the wiggle is starting to take shape. Because we are starting at the get-go, we are not letting any wildlife set up habitat on the path bit. There is plenty of vegetation, nectar sources and other stuff that will make terrific habitat in the margins, so don’t panic.

This time next month the edges will have grown and the path will be really defined.

We also worked with George who is doing his Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award, and stained benches up to the underpass, so that’s the bulk of them sorted.