Another day, another bike ride

[fivemack]

It was a lovely Sunday, so I got back on my bike. I couldn't figure out a friendly route to Huntingdon, and all routes to Huntingdon have the problem that you're in Huntingdon at the end, so I did a triangle across to Bourn, up via Conington to Over, then back via Cottenham instead. 50km in four reasonably leisurely hours: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=481750 has the route.

Words of the trip are 'foraging' and 'exotic fauna'; goats on a farm outside Conington, emus (and nice tea and chocolate cake) on Highgate Farm just outside Willingham, blackberries in the hedgerows, and an apple-tree with beautifully sweet ripe red apples on the little lane between Conington and the A14. I'm sure there were also plums in the hedgerows, but am not quite confident enough to pick a random white-hazed dark-blue fruit and eat it, in case it's deadly nightshade.

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Nice goat.

Were the blue things about the size of blackberries? Sloes, in that case.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Yes, the google-images of sloes are exactly right, and since they're described as inedible until the first frost has passed and they've been soaked in gin for six months, it was probably best not to try them.

What would round yellow soft-looking (so not crab-apples) fruit that size be?

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Not sure - some sort of hip or haw? (I just like saying 'hips and haws'. Sloes are haws, I think, coming from the blackthorn.)

I'm sure I observed frost this morning (though it might just have been glittery dew), so it is sloe-picking time. I have a date for same in Dorset next weekend and have already purchased the Tesco Value gin...

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Sloes are plums :-)