style | life


‘We can all enjoy a little more dirt under our fingernails and the pleasure that comes from claiming a piece of autumn’s abundance from our local soil .’


I started looking, my mental foraging map just grew.


Looking up, there’s enough low-hanging fruit to keep the laziest of foragers happy: a rambling fig tree, the seedy pavement below testament to its crisis of abundance; the old mulberry tree, its red fruit gradually turning black, ready to cover any unsuspecting picker in its inky juices. The crabapple trees by the creek safely beyond the reach of anyone without wings or a ladder.


Looking down, there is just as much to claim amongst the beach pebbles and weeds. A friend brought me handfuls of samphire from the beach the other day, its super salty raw taste giving me a hankering for vinegar and fresh fish. We found mushrooms on the clifftop path and (after rousing an expert neighbour to check we weren’t about to poison ourselves) fried them up for breakfast, dripping in butter with a side of bacon. Earlier in the year, you couldn’t pass a woodland path without being knocked over by the scent of wild garlic, a smell which will forever remind me of Walk the Wight. This was also the first year that I noticed the elderflower, after someone kindly pointed out that it was not just ‘cow parsley shrub’. There’s still plenty of room for improvement in my botanical knowledge.


As the days shorten, we’ll be packing our shelves with blackberry whisky and sloe gin. There is sweet satisfaction in offering up a bottle of your own booze to a winter crowd, with memories of milder days spent reaching up on tiptoes past gnarly twigs and cobwebs, fruit hard-earned by scratched fingers, snagged sleeves and muddy jeans. We can all enjoy a little more dirt under our fingernails and the pleasure that comes from claiming a piece of autumn’s abundance from our local soil.


See more of Bryony’s favourite spots on her blog.


rustyrambles.com September/October 2015 107


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