Sunday 20th July 2025 - Path Moved, Rain and Thorny

The works, rerouting the path from Pauls Lane car park towards the beach, started on Thursday (see photo taken Friday morning, at the end of this blog).  Back at the end of May, the Parish Council, posted a message from NNDC which advised they would start ‘as early as this week’.  Not a lot you can say, as I’ve already said, the message was the end of May and we are now just over halfway through July before the works have started!  On Thursday a route was cut through the picnic area and this has been filled with gravel which, with no proper edging, is already spilling onto the grassed area.  Nothing was done on Friday, but barricades are in place ready for the closure of the original path, which due to slumps was causing concerns because of its close proximity to the edge of the cliff.

At last, after weeks of dry weather, we’ve had a decent amount of rainfall which has benefited our garden - our grass no longer crunches when we walk across it.  But what a shame the rain arrived for Rockstock, which was held as usual on the sports field.  The change in weather, must have been quite galling for the organisers.  Fortunately, most of the rain fell in the morning and it was just showers when the bands were playing, during the afternoon and evening.  Some of the marquees will remain in situ while others partially deconstructed and moved to the perimeter to facilitate next Saturday’s cricket match, after which they will be re-erected Saturday evening ahead of Sunday’s Village Fair.

We have just the one gooseberry bush.  This is a leveller, a desert gooseberry, whose fruits, when left to ripen on the bush are almost sweet.  I picked some last Sunday and made a crumble, but decided to leave the rest a little longer before stripping the bush and freezing them.  I started to pick them yesterday and it was a good job I didn’t leave them any longer because unbeknown to me, the hoverflies and wasps had started to eat them.  A thorny bush, I carefully picked the fruits, (thankfully, I didn’t get stung by a wasp) dropping on the ground, those fruits which had already been partly eaten.  I’ve left these as food for the hoverflies and wasps as both are good pollinators and the latter eat the destructive caterpillars, hatched from eggs laid by cabbage white caterpillars.