A foraging first

The change in climate means the seasons are less predictable. 

This Autumn is a 'mast year' where beech trees produced a super-crop. Other trees have joined them and nuts, seeds acorns and haws crunch beneath our hiking boots when we are out and about.

There are differing explanations for this abundance. Optimistics say the spring weather was ideal for setting fruit and nuts.

Pessimists say rising temperatures are stressing the trees and they feel themselves to be in danger, so attempt to perpetuate their genes by reproducing. 

Whichever it is, Nigel and I have benefited, at least in the short term. 

We noticed that squirrels, instead of burying merely the usual acorns and conkers in our garden were this year bringing us walnuts.

Then our friend Carys showed us a bowl of beautiful walnuts she had foraged near Oxford. 

We were eager to find some.

Finally, when out on a walk with Pascoe, we came upon a walnut tree and added handfuls of the delicious nuts to our pockets, already bulging with sweet chestnuts.

So for the first time we have a bowl of local walnuts. 

I only wish our pockets had been bigger.

And I hope the trees get a chance to rest and recover over winter.

Ghostly Breathing

A couple of times a year, Nigel and I meet up with our old friends David and Carolyn who live in the North East. We walk, pub and sightsee. 

 This time we tried a new halfway meeting point - the Lincolnshire wolds. 

It would have been great if this had been the only new element of the weekend but there was another novel experience. 

On our first evening Storm Amy cut the electricity and we had a game of hunt the candles in the Airbnb in the dark. We found one set of fake candles which nevertheless looked like someone had set fire to them, and two real ones. But no matches whatsoever. We decided to pass the time by listening to ghost stories on David's phone. 

We were listening to Shirley Henderson reading a spooky tale. Shirley Henderson has a high-pitched uncanny voice and the special effects department had added to the atmosphere with very realistic ghostly breathing in the background. 

Eventually, the tale drew to its chilling climax. However when the story finished, and Shirley Henderson fallen silent, the ghostly breathing continued. 

I raised my phone torch. The rest of us might have been on the edge of our seats, but after a long and exciting day, David was catching forty winks.

A Sliding Doors Moment

 

On Friday, I was out walking with two friends.  It was a five mile country ramble which we know well.

Being women of a certain age, we have noted the most discreet place to visit the bushes should the need arise. On this particular walk, there’s only really one opportunity - where the footpath skirts a wood, there’s a gap in the hedge, and a private path into the wood.  This has provided us with a useful convenience many times in the past. 

On Friday, as we approached the wood, however, there was already something there.  Parked just in front of our gap was a tractor.  Behind the tractor was a substantial trailer. Sitting on hay bales in the trailer were the children of a nursery school, accompanied by an almost equal number of adults.

As we watched, the farmer let down the flap at the back of the trailer and the people climbed down and made their way into the wood, by the very path we would normally take. 

‘They must be doing a nature trail!’

‘Just think though, what if it had happened in the other order?’

‘You mean if we’d got there first?’

‘…and were having a wee when an entire class of children arrived?’

‘Can you imagine? – “Mummy, what’s that lady doing???”’

We concluded that it would have still been an educational experience for them, just in a very different way.