Bitter blackberries?

I've just got back from a week's holiday on the North coast of Norfolk, a new landscape for me -  sand dunes, long sandy beaches, and a distinctive vernacular architecture of flint and brick.  More of Norfolk another day!

Whilst away I was bemused by an article in Guardian (7 September, Patrick Barkham) - 'And Now for a Very Peculiar Autumn' . I don't know where Patrick lives, or when he starts his Autumn calendar, but by my reckoning we were only 7 days into Autumn when the article was published. And whilst the article bemoaned the 'season of unripened fruit, sour blackberries, and piddling conkers' it said nothing of the magnificence of the late summer harvest we have had this year. It's been an August of fruits and berries such as I can scarcely remember - plums, damsons and cherries dripping off the trees and coating the footpaths and lanes, sloes and hips bursting from the hedgerows, rowanberries, berberis, and argusier berries colouring the trees and bushes with jewel like intensity.

If we were living 500 years ago I'm sure this would have been remembered as a great year for free food, a summer and autumn to fill our cupboards with jams and fruit cheeses, syrups, pickles and dried fruits to shore us up against winter cold and the early hungry gap.

But yes, I admit, some of the blackberries have been bitter! But there's plenty of autumn left yet.