Just for a change, we have certainly had a proper summer this year! Here in the extreme South West corner of the British Isles the harvest is almost over, sure there are still some crops to get in, but largely it’s all done. Quality and quantity in this part of the world have been tremendous. The silo sides are creaking under the load of the settling grain and the machinery is almost able, like me, to take a breather! I am really looking forward to the chance of getting out on Harley for a relaxed pleasure ride, rather than a quick and frantic commute across Bodmin Moor; not that there is anything wrong with my route to work…wouldn’t swap it for 22miles across London at all!

Back at Dookes HQ we look set to enjoy a bumper harvest of our own. The trees in our orchard are laden with the most amazing crop of apples and medlars, whilst the hedgerows are full of blackberries, rowan and sloes. Just take a look at these beauties!

This is a Medlar, very popular in the time of Elizabeth the First, you have to let them go almost rotten before you can eat them! They taste like a baked apple with cinnamon.

These fellas are pretty special and rare; Cornish Gilliflower apples, first discovered in 1813 near Truro. Happy 200th birthday you beauties. I grafted this tree myself, no, not 200 years ago either…!

Blackberries, of course!

The mornings are getting colder now and a myriad host of spiders weave duvets of silver webs that catch the dew in the grass each morning. Autumn is steadily arriving. It really is a wonderful time of year. John Keats called it “the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” I think he got it about right too. Riding a motorbike your senses get bombarded with the smells of any season, this time of year they always seem so much nicer!

I posted a sunrise picture the other week, how about a sunset this time?  This was the view from Dookes HQ a week ago, pretty stunning eh? No filters, it really was that colour.

Right ho, that’s all for now; I know it’s only rock n roll, but i like it!

Dookes