Damsons

The southern edge of the Cotswolds flows towards Bath like a river delta, becoming diffuse and interrupted instead of a solid body. There are deep, steep, hidden chalk valleys; remote in spite of being so close to two major cities.

During a walk through St Catherine's valley, we spotted what we thought was a short line of sloe-laden blackthorns, unusually productive, but which proved to be wild damson trees.
Their plums were as small as grapes or sloes, with a sky-blue bloom where they were not wrinkled through age. One bush had younger bitter fruit, but the others were plump and sweet. We ate as many as we could on the spot, standing on tip-toe to reach higher up the trees to where the fruits were more profuse, then picked a pound or so to take home.

We ate damson & apple crumble for our pudding, on Sunday evening.


:-)