Are You The Army…?

Seriously, this was a question a member of the public asked us a while back. We do normally wear green T-shirts and camouflage patterned trousers, but mine are from Sainsbury’s (that’s a huge supermarket chain for my international followers) and definitely not army issue. And we were certainly not on training manoeuvres…

If it’s not the army, it’s Community Service – this is what you get when the courts find you guilty of a crime, but deem it not worthy of a custodial sentence. Instead you are required to do a number of hours of unpaid work in the community. Probably what everyone will now be doing, since the news that all the jails in the UK are full!!

And if people don’t assume the first two things above, they probably think that we are a group of happy-clappy tree-huggers. Whilst we must love nature and being out in it, I don’t really see ourselves like this. We started out focussed on just making the disused railway trail into a usable path. The nature bit sort of grew on us over time, and with our dearly departed friend, Mick, slowly guiding the ship in that general direction, whilst our main thrust was “a path for everyone”.

Before we start on today’s adventure, I just want to share a photo of a similar path up near Walsall. It has a lot of support and guidance from Sustrans (the land owners).

It could very easily be our path, but it isn’t. What it shows is how wide the path ideally needs to be. You can follow their progress at:-

http://www.facebook.com/SupportBackTheTrack.

So without further ado, we set about widening our path to the tree-line. We need it to be wide so walkers and cyclists can use the thing in harmony, and people have a good sight ahead of them so they don’t feel like the Cawston bogeyman is about to jump out.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

This is photos of up and down before we started, mid-point, and at the end. We all agreed that it looks way better.

I did a YouTube of it and what needs doing next week to carry it on.

Once we have the path cleared we can then work on the overhang and also scallop the scrub behind the trees to encourage wildflowers to grow. We can keep any new nettle and bramble growth at bay using the lightweight battery strimmer across the summer next year.

We took advice from the Woodland Trust who said that we need to be ‘halo thinning’ around good quality trees so that we don’t have loads of saplings all competing for the same water, nutrients and light. We also need a varied tree canopy so loads of light gets through to the ground.

After our rather intense morning of work whilst Storm Babet lashed unmercifully around us, we eventually broke-off for coffee and cookies.

• 

• 

• 

We seem to be having storm after storm. Last week a huge branch came down and narrowly missed squishing our Christmas tree by a whisker… One might suggest that an angel was sitting on the top of that tree and willed the falling branch slightly to the left…

We have two new countries tuning in this week. Luxemburg and Albania. I do a lot of work searching for blogs in a specific area, reading the posts and leaving a nice comment if I found the blog interesting. It’s always nice when fellow bloggers reciprocate.

Our flag count is now at 119 out of 195 countries (61%) so very happy with that. Some countries are proving extremely difficult to crack. Mongolia, that bit around Iran, and Central Africa being a bit of a blot on the map, but I keep plugging away.

Amazingly, there are only eight countries left in Europe to capture. Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, Montenegro, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and Holy See.

Holy See is the smallest country in Europe and the World, being the Vatican City and is 0.17 square miles in size. Holy See comes from the Latin “seat”. Thank me later when you win the pub quiz.

Lastly, I litter-picked the whole path over the last weekend.

• 

• 

It’s looking good…

Until next week!

World Mental Health Day

We had World Mental Health Day this week. It was actually yesterday (Tuesday 10th October). Ignore the posting date. That was when I started to thrash out this post as a draft. The blog always comes out on a Wednesday evening.

This is so important for us and one of the reasons that we do what we do.

With blokes there is a huge amount of loneliness and a complete inability to talk about it. This then creates a downward spiral where everything compounds to make matters ten times worse and sadly, depression sets in and that leads to bad things happening.

We are always here on a Wednesday morning, with coffee and biscuits at about 11 o’clock. Wander down and say hello if you need to. There is always a spare mug of coffee going, and we are full of light-hearted banter.

Enough said.

You may recall about a month ago I was wittering on about us being nominated for an award. I didn’t really give it much thought after that. I thought that there are so many other local volunteer groups doing such wonderful things, that nobody will be interested in what we are doing.

However…

We won a thing!! We are so happy about this. So very happy.

Last week we left the area at Berrybanks with a huge pond that is, no doubt, great for wildlife, but totally in the wrong place. Young children play in this area and having open water is just too risky.

• 

• 

We had cleared the drainage channels and agitated the blocked culvert. The water seems to have drained away. We will keep an eye on it, but if it drains like this I need not worry.

Today we were at our most southerly end and started clearing out all the spent wildflowers and encroaching bramble, that just keeps going and going and going… It doesn’t even seem to slow down in the winter.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The Potford Dam wildflower clearing is cleared out. To leave it means all the goodness from the dying wildflowers go into the ground and encourages all the thuggish stuff to grow like nettles, bramble and thistles. The area will eventually turn to scrub and biodiversity it greatly reduced.

Our YouTube of the clearing.

It looks a bit brutal but this is the way it has to be.

The paths between the wildflower clearings need to be wide enough to cater for all the human traffic. Namely, bikes and walkers.

We want to push the path back to the tree-line and let the wildlife live and move around beyond that. If we can pull it off it means the trail is working in so many different ways for so many different things.

We are just going to keep going, working northwards in this way, for the next five months. I just don’t see the point of putting ourselves under loads of time pressure. What gets done will get done. What gets left will get done next year.

That’s about it for this week. One last thing (you knew it was coming!!)…

I got a little bit overexcited when I saw Qatar and Kuwait appear on the daily map stats. When I checked back I noticed that someone from Qatar had viewed back in 2017, so I consoled myself to one new country view this week. However, as I quietly sulked over the weekend, someone from Kosovo had a look and a really good look because they registered five page views. Thank you Kuwait person and Kosovo person. You have taken our country view total to an amazing 117 out of 195 countries in the world, which is 60%. In your mind’s eye, imagine me licking my lips excitedly.

Until next week!

A Good Toilet Time Read

Someone this week suggested that the blog is a great read whilst sitting on the toilet!!

Being British and us lot being a bit (very) prudish when it comes to discussing our bathroom habits, I wasn’t sure how to take this unsolicited feedback. Was it a compliment? Was it a criticism? Was it someone trying to tell me, in a very roundabout way, that the blog is a pile of poo?

As my geeky little brain turned this over and over in my head, I eventually called on the services of google to try and get to the bottom of the matter.

Bathroom reading is the act of reading text while in a bathroom, usually while sitting on the toilet and defecating. The practice has been common throughout history and remains widespread today with both printed material and smartphones.

History

Bathroom reading has been commonplace throughout history. Before the invention of modern toilet paper, Americans in the colonial period often used newspaper or similar printed material to wipe themselves, because newsprint paper is fairly soft and absorbent. Writing in the 18th century, the English statesman Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield reported that he knew “a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the call of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets, in those moments.

The advent of the mobile phone is believed to have significantly increased bathroom reading. A 2009 study conducted in Israel found that a majority of adults read from their cell phones on the toilet, and a 2015 study conducted by Verizon found that 90% of cell phone users admitted to reading from their phones while on the toilet.

So there you are – a potted history of toilet time reading. I’m still none the wiser and there is also a whole load of psychobabble about filling one’s mind through the eyes as one empties oneself at the other end… You can google it if you really want to go there!!

But enough of this lavatorial talk, we had work to do in the form of getting to find out why our culvert is constantly overflowing.

We popped off the covers and straight away we could see a massive head of water with nowhere to go.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The iron drain no longer works, and neither does my back after pulling the heavy cover off, because the ground level has worn down below it so much, and the whole culvert is blocked solid with silt. Whenever it rains the water washes over the top and creates a huge pond which then slithers down the path until it eventually soaks away.

• 

• 

• 

We tried in vain to dislodge the blockage, but it was having none of it. We eventually re-battened down the hatches and had a cup of coffee and a coconut macaroon at our new picnic bench.

Whilst we absolutely hate to concede defeat, This is way beyond us and our tools, which are effectively for home gardening. We will bat it up to the Sustrans HQ (the landowners) and see what comes back.

We did try and clear the path of the water so that the pond could drain a little, but it needs something a bit more permanent.

• 

• 

It seems to have emptied a bit.

In other news, we have had five new countries tuning in.

Puerto Rico, Morocco, Togo, Zambia and Oman. Terrific news and hello new people. Thank you for taking our countries-that-have-looked-at-the-blog to 115.

• 

  Puerto Rico

• 

  Morocco

• 

  Togo

• 

  Zambia

• 

  Oman

Well that’s about it for this week. And whilst I am left with the mental vision of hundreds of people sitting on the loo, reading my blog, I can at least relax with the knowledge that a couple of beers will soften that image and also take away the screaming pain in my lower back.

Until next time!

The Harvest Moon

Our new circular picnic bench survived the pagan rituals of the autumn equinox over the last weekend, so we marched ahead and put in the second bench on this northern part of the path.

This week we witness the Harvest Moon. The name given to the full moon in September because it glows brightly and allows farmers to spend the night bringing the last of the harvest in, when they run out of daylight.

Here is a little-known pub-quiz fact – whilst we are talking about moons and our upcoming Harvest Moon, a Blue Moon is called such because it occurs in the same month as a regular full moon. Effectively there are two full moons in a month and the second one is called a Blue Moon and it only happens once every 33 months, hence the phrase, “once in a blue moon”. You can thank me later when you win the pub trophy.

But enough of the big round thing in the night sky as we turned our attention to the big round thing at our feet – picnic bench number 2…

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Whilst we had the build from last week to draw knowledge from, so felt a lot more confident putting the thing together, we had yet another problem looming over us. Storm Agnes was rolling in at a terrific rate of knots.

The last place any of us wanted to be was surrounded by trees when there’s a 75 mile-per-hour gale blowing in.

But we cracked on and got the thing concreted into the ground and, thankfully, pretty level. Which leads us nicely on to us doing what successive UK Governments have failed to do for decades, or for ever, if you think about it. We have levelled up the north/south divide on the greenway. Many a time people have complained about the lack of picnic tables at the north end and told us that they call it the “poor end”. Well your prayers have been answered with two shiny and new picnic benches for everyone to enjoy.

Rather amusing that we are talking about our little railway line, as HS2 is in the news for all the wrong reasons!

We soon stopped for coffee and coconut macaroons whilst the conversation veered off on every tangent possible.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Our YouTube of the area.

You can see from the last photo how deep the cutting is here. After topping up on our caffeine-rich go-go juice, we set about easing back the tree cover to ensure the bench gets loads of sunlight. It’s gonna be little-and-often to keep the tree-canopy open.

Next week we are back at Berrybanks widening the path and trying to get to the bottom of the culvert that is constantly overflowing. We widened the path from the underpass earlier in the year, so it would be nice to connect to where we left off in January and get the whole section between the underpass and Berrybanks a good three metres wide.

In other news, I have spend a good few hours trawling over the planning documents for the new warehouses up at the Dunchurch Bridleway. I can confirm that the Right-of-Way that runs off the bridleway and connects to the greenway, is staying and is being re-routed between two of the warehouses. I will start clearing out the bridleway ready for when the link is back working again.

And lastly, we have some new graffiti…

I don’t have a clue what it is trying to represent, but I like it, so thanks to whoever did it.

Until next time!

Autumn Equinox

As we hurtle non-stop towards autumn, we can reflect back on the crazy summer of floods, followed by heat-waves, and then more floods and what we thought was going to be a rather pleasant Indian Summer. That was, of course, until Storm Nigel showed up like a petulant child and made the last few days of summer feel like a monsoon in a rain forest.

The autumn equinox represents all things mystical. Druids, witchcraft, high-priests and taboos from heathen times. Someone painted the Star of David on one of our round picnic benches a few years ago and burned a few tea lights on it. Whatever sort of heathenry worship happened that night will be a mystery. We will never know.

• 

• 

Maybe there were pagans, chanting and scantily-clad, dancing around the bench whilst sipping goat’s blood from a golden goblet. That picnic bench holds a lot of secrets, so it does.

Today, in our wisdom, we installed the first of two more round altars, err, I mean picnic benches, towards the northern end of the path.

It started off quite warm and we thought we had copped the 20% of the no chance of rain, rather that the 80% chance of heavy rain.

• 

• 

• 

It was all fun and games in tee-shirts and dry ground, but Storm Nigel rolled in and brought drizzle, which quickly turned into a horrible and continuous downpour.

But we were committed and had to finish what we had started.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

It wasn’t just building the bench. We had to dig holes and fill with concrete and then attach the bench to steel brackets set into the concrete. Amazingly, it was perfectly flat and required zero levelling.

It wasn’t long before we were able to give the bench a baptism with a much needed coffee and coconut macaroon.

As you can see, we are advertising the group to encourage people to find out who we are, and get involved if they want to. If you cast your mind back to the start of the year and remember our three pillars –

A Path For Everyone

A Wildlife Corridor

A Safe Place For Mental Wellbeing

Then this hopefully reinforces these three cornerstones and people can at least get a bit of friendly human contact as they walk past us on a workday, or actually join in on this great adventure.

Sustrans, our lords and masters (the land owners) are highlighting the need for connected habitats for butterflies and invertebrates, so we need to keep working on the grassy and wildflower-rich edges of the trail, before it closes up into scrub and tree canopy. This will be the thrust of workdays in October and November.

In other news… Yes, you knew it was coming – we have a person in another new country checking us out.

Yemen, in the Middle East. Another country torn apart by civil war and massive food shortages, in vast need for humanitarian aid and peace. Thanks person from Yemen for looking and taking our country count to 110.

• 

• 

• 

And that really is that. Hopefully our new picnic bench will make it through the autumn equinox pagan rituals and worship, and be ready for service for years to come.

Until next week!

Start of the Picnic Benches

Thanks to Warwickshire County Council, and Rugby Borough Council, we won a grant for two picnic benches towards the northern end of the path. This means that our end-users on this part of the path can enjoy the same benefits as the end-users down the southern end.

Today was all about creating the spaces for these benches.

• 

• 

As you can see, we have made a little modification to help direct people to the blog and hopefully encourage more people to see what we are up to and join in.

My nerdiness quite likes the fact that people will sit down at the picnic tables, type the greenway address into their phone and read about the very picnic tables that they are sitting at!! Does that sound a bit weird?? Welcome to how my brain works!!

We have two very different sites for the benches.

The first one is south of Berrybanks where everything is reasonably flat, but massively dense scrub.

• 

• 

• 

• 

It’s really important to get the benches positioned in sunlight with no overhanging trees. If branches are overhanging we end up with bird poo all over the things, and they also never get a chance to dry out, so become a mildewy green that puts a horribly damp stripe on people’s bottoms if they sit down.

This one was quite easy to get the sun to work with us.

The second bench is north of The Bear pub and in very deep cutting, so proved a little more challenging.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

We created a clear area up the bank so when the bench goes in, there will be a shaft of sunlight on it. Probably dappled as you can see from the photos, but if we just keep nudging it back, the sunlight will be better and better for the bench.

We also litter-picked a big bag of rubbish whilst we were out and about on the trail today. I would like to think that people have a thought process that goes something like – hmm, this is nice and litter-free. I will take my litter home with me. Sadly, this does not happen…

And that was really that for today. Just a lot of preparation for the next two weeks when the benches actually go in.

However, there is more news to share…

We have another new country tuning-in. Eswatini (previously Swaziland) in Southern Africa.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Quick Facts:

Eswatini, formally the Kingdom of Eswatini and formerly named Swaziland is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its north, west, south, and southeast. At no more than 200 km (120 mi) north to south and 130 km (81 mi) east to west, Eswatini is one of the smallest countries in Africa; despite this, its climate and topography are diverse, ranging from a cool and mountainous highveld to a hot and dry lowveld.

The population is composed primarily of ethnic Swazis. The prevalent language is Swazi. The Swazis established their kingdom in the mid-18th century under the leadership of Ngwane III. The country and the Swazi take their names from Mswati II, the 19th-century king under whose rule the country was expanded and unified; its boundaries were drawn up in 1881 in the midst of the Scramble for Africa. After the Second Boer War, the kingdom, under the name of Swaziland, was a British high commission territory from 1903 until it regained its full independence on 6 September 1968. In April 2018, the official name was changed from Kingdom of Swaziland to Kingdom of Eswatini, mirroring the name commonly used in Swazi.

Somebody got a bit shirty with me for “collecting” countries on the blog readership. I don’t know why. It is challenging to do but also really rewarding to learn about other countries in far away places with radically different cultures and stuff. Go back up and re-read the geek bit and that might help you to understand…

And lastly, We have been nominated for CAVA Award!!!!

How exciting is that!!

Well that is it for this week. Lots of investment going in at the northern end so hopefully people will be happy about that. Do join in if you feel like you want to, or become a Patron to keep us fully stocked up with coffee and biscuits.

It’s gonna be a tough couple of weeks as we hit Autumn, humping heavy stuff up and down the path, but it will be worth it.

Just Call Me Bill Gates

Today was all about windows, windows and windows. I think we’re on Version 11. Our Hawthorn Trail needs as much light coming in as possible. Nothing will grow without sunlight, well maybe mushrooms, but not a lot else. We also need to be able to look out across the wildflower meadow or it becomes horribly enclosed and dark, which means nobody will want to go down there.

So we created windows, and lots of them.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

There is a link in the menu at the top that explains more about this 220 metre diversion. I think we will probably spend a week per month on it. In the summer of next year we want it to be a good hedge with standard trees and really working with the wildflower meadow next door.

In other news, I fixed the smashed up bird-box from last week and put it back up.

I normally use the belt of my trousers to attach the top of the ladder to the tree. Incredibly, the tree had a wider girth than me so it wouldn’t fit around. I am obviously not drinking enough beer!

Trying to reattach the bird-box to the tree with just two hands, so trying to somehow hold on, hold the bird-box, hold the screws, and hold the drill, was an almighty challenge. What should’ve been a 2 minute task took an eternity because I had to keep going back down the ladder to retrieve everything that I kept dropping.

But it’s up and hopefully will stay up and we will have a brood of blue tits from it next spring.

We took a break and enjoyed coffee and coconut macaroons at one of our round benches.

• 

• 

• 

We thought that the angry mob of squirrels were playing tricks on us. Every few minutes there was a kind of plop behind us, but when we turned around there was nothing there. Was this some sort of decoy to lure us into the prickly brambles? Thankfully, it was acorns popping off the mahoosive oak tree that we were sitting under and landing in the undergrowth. It was a bit weird before we worked it out.

The school holidays have mercifully finished so I have freedom for a few months. I decided that I would go hill-walking after the greenway workday, so wore shorts.

A huge mistake, again!! I don’t know what is worse – the instant stab of bramble-thorns or the irritating hours-long tingling and itchiness of nettle stings…

Next week we are clearing the areas for our new round picnic benches. September is going to be humping heavy stuff up and down the path again. Great!!

Lastly, we have two new countries tuning it. We swing back to Africa after our Nordic excursion last week.

Somalia and Malawi took a look this week and the chap (I think it’s a chap) from Somalia messaged me to say hello! He is there helping with the war effort. What on earth makes someone put down their AK47 and search for blogs about railway-paths in Warwickshire is totally beyond me, but thank you so much.

That’s 108 out of 195 countries in the whole world and 22 out of 54 in Africa. I probably need to do work on that bit south of Russia, but it’s looking good so far.

Until next week!

The End Of The Bird-Nesting Season

This just so happens to be the last easy workday, before all hell breaks loose, and the marathon, that quickly turns to a manic 100 metre sprint starts. Welcome to the cutting-back season.

This week we took our trusty mattocks to put the recycled picnic bench back in the ground. It was Mick, our recently departed friend, who introduced us to the mattock. I can remember his words as clear as day, “get a mattock and digging holes/pulling up tree roots is easy”.

Mick was obviously having one of his little jokes. Not in any way, shape, or form, is digging up tree roots easy. It’s back-breaking and blister-inducing at the very best of times. Good one, Mick. I imagine you looking down on us and chuckling away to yourself…

Reece and David got the bench back to where it is supposed to be, and at a seat height that is comfortable for picnics.

Whilst Marcus and myself set about giving our Christmas tree a bit more light, and an obvious space to grow into. Hopefully the tree, which I have named Douglas, will take heed and put on a little bit more that the measly couple of inches that it has managed so far this year.

At this rate it will be my great great grandchildren who decorate it for Christmas.

Sadly, the angry mob of squirrels have had a bit too much fighting juice and smashed a birdbox off a tree.

Good news that it has bedding in it, so was used this year. The chicks have long since fledged so don’t worry about them. And this is only the third one to meet such a fate, out of over 50. If you remember back to last year, it was almost a weekly occurrence.

Strangely, we found ourselves finished by about 11 o’clock, so we sauntered down to a bench called Bethel, to clear the view.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

So, what is Bethel? After much discussion, beard-stroking, head-scratching, and googling, as you do when you have way too much time on your hands, and a cup of coffee to slurp on, we came to this conclusion:

Bethel is first referred to in the Bible as being near the place that Abram pitches his tent. Later, Bethel is mentioned as the location of Jacob dreaming of a ladder leading to heaven, which he therefore names Bethel (“House of God”). The name is further used for a border city located between the territory of the Israelite tribe of Benjamin and that of the tribe of Ephraim, which first belongs to the Benjaminites and is later conquered by the Ephraimites.

After much joking about the Bethel bench being an altar, and making an offering of a coconut macaroon to God, we cracked on and cleared the view.

Madly, it all went rather well and without the usual challenges thrown our way, so we had still more playtime, before we all had to go home.

We back-tracked to the Heath View bench and cleared the view to the west, and the short path to one of the geocaching containers to the east.

• 

• 

After discussing many matters of great importance, our attention once again turned to the benches. A debate followed as to which bench offers the best view. A tough call. A very tough call, indeed.

Lastly, and I know that you’re all sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for this…

You cannot help but see that the elephant in the room has all but disappeared. The 4th continent that they call Greenland, with a population of about 56,000 people, despite being roughly 9 times bigger than the United Kingdom (population 67,330,000), has finally viewed the blog, and more than once.

No longer do I have to look at that huge expanse of white sitting right in the middle of our World map.

Thank-you, Greenlander persons for making Greenland the 106th country to view the blog.

And on that note, time to roll up my sleeves and fix that birdbox.

Until next time!

All About Africa

I’m feeling all Sir Bob Geldof this week.

For those that need a nudge of a reminder – Bob Geldof did this thing called Band Aid where loads of bands got together to raise money for food, for Africa. It was in 1984 and the song called “Do They Know It’s Christmas” got to Number One everywhere, and raised $150,000,000 worldwide for the Ethiopia famine (that’s $440,000,000 in today’s money). It was incredible to witness and just as incredible to remember it today. It actually brought a little tear to my eye, watching the YouTube…

You might remember me jesting in June that I was disappointed that only 11 African countries had read this blog. I guess it’s quite low on your list of priorities when, in some cases you’re in the middle of a civil war, struggling to feed your family, and water is horribly scarce. But surprisingly, people in Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Cameroon, Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Egypt have read the blog and keep coming back to read further updates. What is even more surprising is new people from new countries have tuned in since June. These being Benin, Sudan, Tanzania, Namibia, Ghana, Cape Verde, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso. Incredibly, they keep coming back every time there is a blog update.

It’s pretty blooming mind-blowing! But thank-you, people from Africa. I feel incredibly blessed to have you tuning in. When I started this blog I thought that the only people who would read it would be my gran and her friend, who she plays Scrabble with, on a Thursday afternoon.

Today we started at the underpass and worked northwards snipping back the bramble and picking up the litter. We lost Reece somehow, which is quite a hard thing to do on a straight path. We will work out what happened next week.

We had our litter-picking squad…

• 

• 

And it looks lovely on both the southern bit and the northern bit, both a mile out and a mile back, from the centre, so a lot of ground travelled. Well done, kids.

• 

• 

Kieran took charge of the coffee break today and did a sterling job.

• 

• 

• 

We also got our geocaching trail back at 100%. We have almost 2,000 finds so it is getting used.

• 

• 

I have changed next week’s workday to re-setting the refurbished picnic bench in the ground (this is how is should look).

It looks like the mob of angry squirrels have tried to dig it up and move it, but realising that it weighs a ton, just left it skewed and off-centre.

We have 104 countries tuning in to read the blog, plus the “thing” from outer space making it 105 in total.

Pretty humbled at this point.

Until next week!

Two Weeks To Go…

Yep, two more weeks of the Bird Nesting Season. Two more weeks of twiddling our thumbs doing not a lot. Just snipping back bramble runners that try and invade the open space that is the path, fixing benches and picking up the litter from the hoi polloi who seem utterly unable to take their rubbish home with them.

I suppose we could go all David Bellamy and start creeping through the undergrowth doing insect and plant identification and recording, but to be honest, it takes a special kind of person to be doing this. Someone with oodles of time and the patience of a saint.

Sadly, none of us are like this. Well I say sadly but I don’t really mean it. I am not sad about it because I could not bear to be into such tediously slow stuff. But hats off to people like David, and all the others, who can spend hours and hours studying these things.

So today we started at the underpass and worked southwards and back. That’s 1-mile out and 1-mile back again.

We litter-picked a bin-liner of rubbish. Beer cans, plastic bottles, food containers and the like. It wasn’t that bad considering it’s the school summer holidays, so we shouldn’t complain too much.

We also snipped back bramble to keep the path wide and the views open.

• 

• 

• 

And we strimmed under all the benches.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

If the grass is long, I guarantee that there are gonna be critters in there who will shoot up your trouser leg and start munching on your calf, or your thigh, or worse, as quick as anything. Obviously, we want our end-users to have a brilliant time when they visit the greenway, so we try to make it as pleasant as possible. If you are susceptible to insect bites, you might like to tuck your trouser bottoms into your socks.

We need to re-stain the benches but I am holding off whilst I have children in tow. It’s all fun and games until someone gets a bit over-enthusiastic and starts splattering everyone else with poo-brown coloured wood-stain.

Which leads us nicely onto the bench maintenance. The rectangle picnic benches need some attention.

• 

• 

• 

The wood, whist obviously rotting in places where the damp has got in, seems relatively strong and pretty sound. Rather that replacing the slats, I might go for a plastic wood-filler and see it we can get a few more years out of what we have. I don’t know. I can work out what the lesser cost will be and decide then.

Our wildflower glades are absolutely alive with bees, butterflies, hoverflies and the like. It’s a joy to behold and you cannot help but admire the insects diligently working away, like they have done for thousands and thousands of years, and just keeping nature on a constant and continuous cycle.

• 

• 

Well that’s about it for this week. Next week we are doing the same as this week, starting at the same place, but working northwards, and the week after that we are at Potford Dam doing the same again. And then the fun really starts. We want to do loads of work on the Hawthorn Trail and really get the hedge working for wildlife, but also make it really obvious that it’s an alternative, and just as good, path.

As I mentioned last week, we have a grant from Warwickshire County Council for two round picnic benches on the Bilton end of the path. I need to line up all the ducks to get this to happen as seamlessly as possible. As I am sure you can imagine, there is a lot of humping of heavy stuff and a lot of stuff that needs to happen in a sequence that goes like this – concrete in ground, steel lugs set in concrete, legs of benches attached to lugs with security bolts that can never be undone, and everything flat and level. It’s my worst nightmare, to be honest!!

Next week we will be working out the two areas for these benches.

Until then!