Seaham’s Coastal Path, County Durham: Summer’s Departure Leaves the Blackberry Bush Showing Signs of Seasonal Wear and Tear
Weekend blackberry pickers have trampled a sheltered cul‑de‑sac in this sprawling bramble patch, creating an arena for a territorial dispute between two male speckled wood butterflies. I’m almost sure I can hear the flick of clashing wings as they spiral upwards in a dogfight of ever‑decreasing circles; scales are being shed. Then, suddenly, they separate and settle, to feed on the leaking juice of the over‑ripe berries.
There is an end-of-season air of decay about these bushes, with their worn and tattered foliage. On this thin, nutrient‑poor limestone soil a few have already developed blazing yellow and crimson hues. There isn’t a pristine leaf anywhere: some have been nibbled by caterpillars, others graffitied with meandering tunnels of leaf miners. All are speckled purple. Turning them over, I can see why: purple, finger‑staining spores of bramble rust fungus.
The sun-warmed blackberries are sweet on the tongue, but part of the pleasure of picking them on a sultry autumn afternoon comes from standing still, listening to the low hum of insects and watching their incessant activity. Blue, powder puff inflorescences of devil’s-bit scabious have threaded their way through the prickly thicket, to be visited by an endless procession of bumblebee pollinators. One, near the end of its life, clings to the swaying flower, reluctant to fly, worn out. Its wing tips are shredded, abraded from when their thin membrane, beating at countless times per second, made contact with something unforgiving.
On the cliff edge, beyond the bramble thicket, gorse is festooned with orb web spiders’ snares. Some are clogged with drifting thistledown but most have done good business. A crane fly, disturbed when I pick a blackberry, flutters upward and immediately a dangly limb is snared. The spider is slow to react, the captive struggles, sheds a leg to free itself, then almost immediately stumbles into another web, and its weaver strikes instantly. A pang of guilt.
Is there a lingering sense of ennui at the passing of summer? Not really. Speckled woods, spiders and crane flies have already mated or laid eggs, worker bumblebees provisioned nests for new queens, impervious bramble seeds are on a journey through a mammal’s gut. Preparations for a new beginning.