A purple stain on the lip, a gritty seed between teeth, the little black orbs rolled around in the mouth releasing the sunshine and rain of summer. But already mush to touch and as if thawed from frozen, blackberries were losing their taste. Although these September fruits were still sweet and shiny, they just didn't have the intensity of flavour the first blackberries had some weeks ago. Now a patch 8ft tall, the brambles covered an acre of pasture that was grazed until about 13 years ago.
This was the relic of a field from way back, once used for the ponies that hauled limestone from quarry faces and pits to limekilns. The lime was taken away by train, down into the Severn Gorge to Coalbrookdale, where it was used to flux iron in a hell of mad furnaces. That world vanished a long time ago. The furnaces became museums, the limestone quarries were draped in silence, and the derelict limekilns buried in the woods; the ghosts of jinnys, mules, donkeys and cobs clip-clopped into shadows of the Edge. In the years since grazing stopped on the field, the brambles reached out from the encircling hedge, their stems took hold in the grass, and their seeds, passing through birds and badgers, pushed the colony into the open.
Year on year the patches merged together and grew taller, wider, thicker, denser, like a fairytale bramble concealing a Sleeping Beauty secret. Perhaps that's true. Perhaps the secret was the history of this place and what remains of it could be experienced by eating the blackberries. With their roots in the past, their leaves filled with the here and now and their fruits for the future, the brambles shared something with another world. A stain on the lips, seeds in the teeth, a taste of sunlight and rain on the tongues of quarry workers and their ponies. Soon to be lost: a moment of sweetness, free and wild.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/06/country-diary-wenlock-edge
Peter Atherton North and Central America Global economy Gabriel Agbonlahor Canary Islands Debit cards
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