Blessed morning on the moor

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/12/blessed-morning-moor

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Late summer is flat in north Derbyshire; the light is harsh and the moors a drab monochrome. The air is heavy; lay your hand on a slab of gritstone and it comes away moist. The woods are deep in shade, the herbaceous plants gone to seed, tall stalks of foxgloves nodding towards the ground. Then, blessed morning, you wake to a clear sky and the air filtering through the open bedroom window is sharp and fresh, and from the north, promising the “penalty of Adam”, the season’s change.

Today was that day, and I celebrated by visiting one of the richer corners of moorland hereabouts. Swallows were gathering in bright sunshine on telephone wires at the base of the hill, sending their clicks down the line, and a late brood of great tits was mobbing through the birch as I climbed. Where the trees gave way to heather, the berries of the rowans had, in the space of hours it seemed, turned blood orange, an auspicious tree come to fruition; you can make a tart, smoky jelly from rowan berries, mixed with apples, that is good with venison, or, for vegetarians, a crumbly, soft cheese like Wensleydale.

Not all moors are equal. Blacka, lying outwith the grouse-ranching industry, isn’t burned. It is consequently deep with lush bilberry, even now thick with fruit in this exceptional year, in a patchwork of leggy heather that is still flowering. Both are turning now, yellow bilberry leaves browning to rust, the heather’s purple fading to a duskier tone, less vibrant, almost melancholy. Yet the overall mosaic of colours remains potent and vital. Low to the ground there’s the small but insistent red of cowberries, or mountain cranberries, good for jam that is hugely popular in Scandinavia, but not quite the all-you-can-eat buffet of its purple-fruiting cousin.

“How do you do it?” I asked a friend, eating a plateful of her bilberry pie. She looked quizzical. “I mean, how do you resist eating them before you get home?”

• Forty Years on the Welsh Bird Islands, the 2015 memorial lecture in honour of the late Country diarist William Condry, will be given in Machynlleth on 3 October by Professor Tim Birkhead.