What could be better for life in the sloe lane?
Ed Wiseman heads to Kent for a foraging trip in a Morgan Plus Six
Ileave the M20 at sunrise, a soft peach glow pushing lazily through the gunmetal clouds above. It’s October, but extremely mild, and despite the drizzle I’ve driven from Blackheath to rural Kent with the roof down. A moss-green bonnet stretches ahead of me, and a six-cylinder roar fills my ears as I point it down familiar roads.
It’s always a treat to come homehome, to the house where I spent my childhood and the country lanes where I grew up. But today isn’t just R&R or Sunday lunch with Mum and Dad. I’ve come to pick what’s left of the wild fruit in Kent’s hedgerows, to preserve and enjoy over winter. It’s one of my favourite times of the year, and well worth the early start.
The new Morgan Plus Six is the machine I’ve chosen for the trip. Fast, comfortable and as beautiful as an English autumn, Malvern’s latest drop-top roadster is the perfect car in which to prowl the roadside for hedgerow treats. Morgan has always been a divisive brand (my girlfriend hates it) but with the roof down and the heater on, I’m rather charmed. Hawthorn and hazel pass by in a dull blur, until suddenly, a flash of scarlet.
Rose hips are far from the most delicious of Britain’s natural bounty, but when cooked and prepared into a syrup, these ornate red berries – which pepper England’s hedgerows for a month or so at the end of summer – are a natural food supplement, rich in vitamin C. Wild roses are reluctant to surrender their fruits, though; not only are the stems covered in thorns, but the hips must be snipped with scissors, not plucked.
To be honest, I’ve just missed peak foraging season in Kent – the elderberries are gone, as are most of the blackcurrants. All that remain are some knurled, reddish mishaps that even the thrushes have rejected. It’s been a bad year for damsons and bullace and what little fruit there was has already been plundered. But there’s one treat – a real crowd-pleaser – that comes out after the others, a greyblue haze of small, hard berries.
Sloes are the fruit of the blackthorn. These can’t be eaten raw, but when combined with gin and sugar become one of Britain’s best-loved festive drinks. I need about 500g to a bottle of gin so I err on the safe side and collect 2kg. That should, I reason, be enough to go around the office.
One of Britain’s most underrated native foods is the crab apple. Practically impossible to buy at the shops, these ancient fruits bear a passing similarity to a regular eating apple, though anyone so duped into taking a bite will regret it – crabs are unpalatable straight from the branch, their tartness overpowering the fruity, sweet, profoundly apply flavours beneath. I gather a bagful of these yellowgreen fruit, my wellies crunching through a crumbly heap of windfall.
I nose my way back through the lanes with my harvest stowed on the Morgan’s modest parcel shelf. In the kitchen, I wash and roughly chop the crab apples, leaving the pips in place, before boiling them until soft. I squeeze the resultant mash through a cloth with the back of a spoon, like you’re not supposed to do, before mixing in the sugar and heating again until “jelling” has been achieved, at which point the mixture can be poured into jars.
The sloe gin, which is more important, requires each sloe to be pricked, before being mixed with sugar and gin in a Kilner jar. A colleague has already donated a bottle of Sipsmith, which I judiciously swap for a cheaper bottle of Gordon’s. The liqueur will be ready in six months but probably consumed by Boxing Day regardless.
It’s late by the time I get back on the road. The Morgan’s LED headlights pierce the night, which I enjoy alone, with the roof down. Under the bonnet BMW’s 3.0-litre straight-six begs me to reach further and further into its rev range, which I can, now that I’m no longer scouring the trees for fruit. The machine that has spent today pootling around the lanes with me in a traditionally Morgan-like way now feels like something almost serious; this English motor car shares its turbocharged powertrain with Toyota’s Supra and a raft of German saloons.
The Plus Six has a maximum speed of 166mph, and that feels attainable. That means that Morgan has, for the first time, built a performance car in the modern sense; its boundaries lie far beyond anything you’d be able to explore on the road. The short ratios and hardworking gearbox allow you to be as hands-on or otherwise in corners (though a lack of traction control and a layer of autumnal detritus force me to engage) and the steering has your full, undivided attention. In fact, the mechanical marriage between the steering and the brand-new chassis that underpins the Plus Six is what makes this car.
But would you buy one? Prices start at about £78,000, and this Emerald first-edition model is a fiver short of £90,000. That’s Porsche 911 money, and difficult to justify when you consider that Jag will do you an F-type for far less. But “Morgan people” don’t visit other showrooms before placing an order, nor do they rationally compare the attributes of their cars with those of mainstream brands. You buy a Morgan because you want one – and I suspect even the sceptics among you might do, if you give the Plus Six a try.
This is in no way a practical car, but then none of today’s festivities have been founded in pragmatism. I could have driven a German SUV to Waitrose to buy crab apple jelly, or to a chain pub to drink factory-made sloe gin. But it’s so much lovelier to pick and make one’s own, just as it’s lovelier to do so in a Morgan Plus Six – this is a joyous time of year, and I can think of no finer car to go with it.
Morgan’s Plus Six is fast, comfortable, and as beautiful as the English autumn