Last chance to pick bountiful blackas

Kitty Scully takes a ramble through some fruit-heavy brambles.

The glorious sunshine of September has enhanced and extended the harvest season of many crops including hedgerow fruits and if you have not yet picked some blackberries, get out therenow — as this is possibly the last week of the year that’s safe to do so.

Superstitions around the picking berries after the middle of October say they are to be left for the fairies and in English folklore it is said that after then, the devil has spat on them. This coincides with the fact that berries tend to go mouldy by that stage and are quite unappetising .