Saturday, 31 August 2013

Blackberrying.

We went blackberrying today on the Fallowfield loop. The Fallowfield loop is an old train track that has been covered over and made into a brilliant cycle route. It's about 6 or 7 miles long and you can go from Debdale to Chorlton and if you can find it again, you can go straight into Manchester and only having to navigate the smallest sections of road. When Mum cycled into Chorlton the other day she noticed loads of blackberries ripe for picking and seeing as we both weren't working today, I cycled down and Mum drove Granny and we picked as many as we could. Unfortunately a lot of people had got there before us on other days and there wasn't much to get where we could reach, but I thought if we had a ladder we could rest it on the brambles and reach the plentiful supply higher up. So mum drove back to the house to fetch the ladder! We got at least 3 yogurt pots full, maybe a little more and I only got stung by nettles 5 or 6 times and the brambles only ripped my legs a few times (for some reason, I seemed to think that shorts were a good idea for shimmying up ladders set in bramble patches). There was one slightly terrifying moment where I thought I was going to fall straight through the bush: The ladder was resting on the knotted bramble branches and the actual ground was at least a meter below what the rungs were resting on and all of a sudden without me moving things began cracking and splintering, so I tried my very hardest not to fall down to the bottom of the ladder in my haste to get off!

But needless to say we got a good haul, my hands were good and stained and several people commented on our idea of bringing a ladder!

UPDATE: There's quite a lot of graffiti on the bridges and such on the loop, but all of what we saw was greatly child-friendly! "Only people who are ---------- don't put their dogs on leads" was seen (the ---- was where someone had spray-painted over a swearword) along with "so and so is a muppet" no word of a lie! We were wondering if people deliberately tried to keep it child friendly or whether someone had gone along and edited it. I love the idea of a sinister, threatening looking teenager walking down with a can of paint "oh no, that's not right that. You can't be putting swear words on the wall in front of the little kids" and painting over them. Or maybe a parent sneaking down to protect their kid, making sure there's nothing that might ruin their innocence!


Trying very hard not to fall!

Proud...either of the ladder or the berries...
Lovely juicy fingers!

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