Post:    This was a fine wet day, if I may use the phrase, but it enabled our hero to have a gentle ride, in his own time, of 85 miles to collect that autumn special, blackberries, in order to build himself up after his one month lay off from work due to his bad foot.  Speaking personally, I quite like blackberries as well, so I think his day was well spent and not to be criticised.

Wednesday, August 26                                    A Blackberry Potter

 I decided last Sunday that I would make a special visit into Cheshire and consult a few blackberry bushes, so I started this morning at 9.20, armed with a very large cardboard box and plenty of brown paper, and sheltering inside my cape.  The cape came off and on many times before I reached Warburton, where a close survey of a track hedged with bushes revealed only one blackberry.  Anyway, it was a start!  I had better luck on the High Legh-Budworth road, where I gathered a paper bag full, but on pulling the bag out of my pocket, the bottom came out and my pocket received them.  It is surprising how much juice is contained in a handful of these berries.

A track on the Arley Green path, proved a gold – that is, blackberry mine, but also proved something else which made me beat a hasty retreat.  A mass meeting of wasps was being held, so not liking to intrude on their business, I retired.  Anyway, I discovered plenty more, so that in an hour I had collected several pounds.  I had lunch at Mrs Lambert’s at Arley, then crossed through the park and stumbled across another series of bushes which enabled me to fill my box, wrap it up, and put it away in the saddlebag.  Thereafter I made a tour of the bylanes, through farmyards, etc, to Lymm, where a rainstorm drove me into the cape.  For a change, I pursued the footpath through that long sylvan glen, the Dingle, and came out on the Warrington-Knutsford road near Poplar Farm, where I stopped for tea.

I returned to Lymm via Cheddar Lane after tea, then again inside my cape made my way across the Budworth road, by High Legh Hall, and thus down to Millington and Warburton in a downpour.  As usual I made my way home via Chat Moss, Glazebury and Atherton.

The Blackberries?  Oh, they got home alright, though they had come through the box and discoloured my saddlebag, still it was a ‘fine wet day’ out – and blackberry pie is very good!                                          85 miles