Indian Summer

Yes, we all know it hasn't been a great summer in Britain. But never mind, I thought - - there might be an Indian Summer. Early September is often gorgeous and I have fond memories of lovely narrowboat trips at this time of year.

Sadly, in a helpful attempt to over-compensate for the Spring drought, the weather continued to throw it down.

However, we did have an Indian Summer, in the sense of an Indian Takeaway. That is, it was pleasant whilst it lasted but was all gone very quickly. It was last Thursday.

And, luckily, Silverback invited me to go for a walk with him on Thursday, and it was the perfect day for it. Blue skies. Little white fluffy clouds.

So I left all the financial stuff in our office temporarily, and off we went to Eccup Reservoir, just outside Leeds.

Lovely day or not, Eccup Reservoir is somewhat lacking in what Silverback termed, in his blog post about it all, as photogenicness. (And now this word has been used twice I think it should enter the dictionary).

To try to alleviate this problem, Silverback stood me in the front of the reservoir in his photo in the hope that I would look interesting. Judge for yourself the result on his blog. To my mind, the most interesting thing was that in his photo, every other colour looked just as it did in real life, except my hair, which is light brown but looks ginger.

I didn't think of adding any foreground interest, and hence my photo of Eccup Reservoir is one of almost stunning dullness.

It was a gorgeous afternoon though. Every fruit-bearing tree is bearing more fruit than I would have believed possible. I think it is because of the hard winter last year. It frightened them. "Nooooo! It's minus TEN! We're going to DIE! Quick, we must produce lots and lots of fruit to carry on our species!"

Here are some hawthorn berries. See what I mean?

I knew I wouldn't starve on this walk. There was plenty of food on the way, such as this field of turnips.

I like raw turnips. I like most raw vegetables. I spent a lot of my childhood eating raw cauliflower, raw cabbage, raw carrots, raw turnips, raw potatoes - - and then, to my annoyance, suddenly this became fashionable and suddenly everyone was diong it. Except for the raw potatoes, which are poisonous, apparently. I told Silverback this and he nodded sagely in a kind of "This explains EVERYTHING" way.

Anyway, here's my favourite crop. A field of stripes.

It was a delightful walk, and only three miles from home.

I thought, and not for the first time, how much I enjoy wandering along country paths like this.

It's chucking it down again now. But the Indian Summer was lovely while it lasted.