Apples, battles, blowholes...
Crunches, bangs and whooshes!
SINCE WE FIRST learnt the alphabet we’ve all known A is for apple, and these trees are a beloved part of Britain’s countryside. Picture the froth of blossom on a springtime walk or branches low with ripening fruit as harvest approaches, with the cider scent of windfalls in the air.
Apples originated in the mountains of Central Asia but thousands of varieties now flourish here, shaded every hue from acid-green to crimson, and bearing creative names like Bloody Ploughman, Core Blimey, and Slack-ma-girdle. Modern orchards favour vineyard-style planting, but traditional ones do survive and The People’s Trust for Endangered Species is building a map ( www.ptes.org/ campaigns/traditional-orchardproject). Apple trees also pepper many hedges where the pomace – the pippy pulp from cider presses – was once spread, and look too for the sour-fruited crab-apple, the wild ancestor of the cultivated varieties.
Kent is famed for its fruit and you can thread through orchards near Faversham to visit Brogdale, home of the National Fruit Collection with over 2200 kinds of apple from around the world ( www. brogdalecollections.org, orchard pass £12). Or take a walk to Woolsthorpe Manor ( www.nationaltrust. org.uk/woolsthorpe-manor) in Lincolnshire and one of the world’s most famous trees, where an apple dropping onto Isaac Newton’s head is said to have inspired his theory of gravitation.
But it’s out west that Britain hits peak apple, in the counties of Somerset, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and particularly Herefordshire, which has more than 10,000 acres of orchard. The village of Much Marcle is known as the Big Apple, from where a 10-mile walk loops through orchards and by cider mills to finish at the biggest of them all: Weston’s. Perfect for a post-walk drink. Chin chin. WALK HERE: Download Much Marcle and Woolsthorpe at www.lfto.com/bonusroutes