life | style


I


rambles rusty


Bryony Rust: mini-adventurer. Full of fresh air and covered in dirt, is an Islander in search of adventure amongst the small corners and hidden stretches of our coastal county.


Photography by Tom Pratt 106 www.styleofwight.co.uk


have a confession to make. Secretly, I’ve been looking forward to autumn since the middle of July. The evenings with a hint of a cool breeze or particularly golden low light have me dreaming of falling leaves. Rare rainy days have me glancing at the woodburner, dreaming of a chill that would warrant lighting the touch paper. There’s so much to love about this season. It’s the one with perfect timing, drifting in gently after you’ve had enough of sun-tired skin and sandy towels. It comes bearing gifts, baskets overflowing with food and smelling of cinnamon.


With so much of our fresh produce available year-round, shipped in from far-flung fields, we lose sight of the excitement of gathering our own food. When I was a kid, harvest festival just meant weirdly shaped bread and wilted vegetables displayed around the church for our school assembly. I never really registered what a huge celebration this must have been in days gone by, to have succeeded in stocking up for the long winter. So, some foraging on home turf feels like a small modern-day reminder of the gifts of the season.


All summer I’ve been watching the greenery grow, quietly thriving in neglected corners of town or reaching the sky with wild abandon over country paths. I’ve been keeping a mental map of places worthy of a return trip, to claim some bounty for myself before the birds. As the vicious brambles scratched my legs to pieces on forest runs in the height of summer I would plot my fruity revenge, knowing that soon it would be payback time. Once


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