Hedgerow Bounty

I feel the touches of Autumn in the air today. This could be because it is damp and overcast, or it could be that nature is in advance of itself this year.

As part of the walk pattern for Rosie, one route takes us down Church lane which peters out in farmland and a bridleway which leads over to the next community.

Along the first part of the pathway is a mixed hedgerow that contains all sorts of fruits, flowers and trees.
Elder, which yields two bounties, the elderflower in late spring and just now, the elderberries.

There are stone fruits such as wild plum and most years a few hop vines have worked their way in amongst the trees and bushes but I have not seen any this year.

Blackberries/bramble berries are just ripening now and sloe berries are turning a purplish blush colour. These last two and maybe the elderberries will be used to make bramble jelly, sloe gin or sloe vodka and the elderberries may end up as juice, a flavouring for gin or vodka or fermented in to wine.

If we proceed a bit further up the path, there is an opening in the hedgerow that leads along a short path to the edge of the river Lark. (Rosie likes to splash in the shallows, but does not like to swim!)
Here, on a bend in the river, schoolchildren used to bathe in times past as part of the school day, and grain was transported upriver to be offloaded here to take to the Malting along the same dog walk path, which although over grown now, still shows traces of its former track width.

There are all sorts of wild creatures about this area, swans, ducks, moorhens on the river, lapwings, skylarks, swifts swallows and house martins and the usual more common birds flying about. A Red Kite was spotted a few months back, and Rosie and I bumped in to a Monkjac deer one day- they are small deer , usually timid, and have an unfortunate habit of dashing across the road without looking, which causes a few near accidents with cars- this one ran off at a rate of knots.

A few weeks ago I was visiting Cambridge and used the Newmarket road Park and Ride site to catch a bus in to the centre. Around the perimeter of the car park is what looks like an ancient hedgerow as it  contains a mixture of trees, shrubs and bushes, but this was planted when the car park was constructed not that long ago, and here there are sloes aplenty (blackthorn bushes) so I might foray there at some time for sloes as well.