Forever Foraging
To Granny’s Bench! [blimey] came the shout on a slow, smouldering Sunday afternoon as @AnnaJCowen and I tried to forget about the freezer full of pizza and went out foraging for food instead.
Stick two fingers up to THE MAN ‘n all that, with a hyperlocal approach to satisfying the nutrient needs of our bellies. We got bored before we reached Papa’s Chip Shop, and rather predictably ended up with double large chips and saveloys all round.
Only joking.
Our North Essex estuary arrival during the fag end of the Indian Summer last year was just slightly too late in the season to benefit from all the rural delights that scavenging for berries can bring. It wasn’t that the blackberries, sloes and rosehips had all over-ripened, simply that some other buggers had got there before us.
Share and share alike, Comrades, but we weren’t going to make the same mistake some twelve months on. With the blackberries still bruising in a multi-layered colour of green, red and um, black, it is certainly a hit and miss time for any hyperlocal penny pinching produce pincher.
Taking the roughly the same route that we rather fortunately stumbled upon last summer, our Sunday afternoon stroll took us past the Sailing Club, along the water and up towards Granny’s Bench, and then back along the old gravel track and down past Ballast Quay House.
We almost didn’t get past the Sailing Club during the late summer of 2010 - the abundance of hedgerows and bushes by the water satisfied our scavenging needs. Not so this year with the sea wall vandalism of the Environment Agency leading to an absence of anything growing up along the banks.
The Wivenhoe Vegetable Garden is now starting to serve us well, but after a plate of Courgette Surprise - the surprise being that there is nothing else but corgettes - you need something slightly sweeter to set you up for the evening.
Have blackberry tupperware, will travel…
We deviated left of the river and along the stepping stones heading up towards Granny’s Bench, finding pockets of blackberry bushes, not yet quite blushing or blessed with the fruitful zing that one requires to start salivating.
Still - best get them now before the other buggers do.
We encountered some sloes en route and made a mental note to return in a few weeks to repeat the sloe gin experiment. The rosehips weren’t quite ready - and neither is my palette to be honest. The syrup of last year has left a nasty taste in the mouth, not to mention a few medical complications elsewhere.
A new addition for this year was the discovery of both elderberries and a steady supply of crab apples. It was around this point in the afternoon of picking that the conversation turned slightly fruity after I suggested a fruit fight with the girl.
I was alarmed to hear “look at these little tiddlers” and “prick” in the same conversation. I got slightly bored to be honest, and floated the idea of returning with the secateurs, hacking off the hedgerows and then picking off the blackberries at our leisure back at base whilst watching Eastenders.
You can take the boy out of South London, blah blah blah…
With bloodied blackberry stained fingers being displayed as a badge of honour, we walked along the Alresford Road and weaved our way down to Ballast Quay.
And so what next?
To quite the GREAT Lorraine Bowen, everybody’s good at cooking something, and I’m good at cooking crumble. Well, I can prick the blackberries and let the girl do the rest. It will be served up a treat with a pound of cheapo imported value ice cream, delivered especially via the online food order as Mr Supermarket burns up the food miles and makes his way through the back streets of Wivenhoe.
Ah - the Good Life.
Plus: don’t forget the plug for the most excellent Country Diary, via George Mac and Radio Wivenhoe.
Full flickr feed over here.
