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Nov 05, 2024

Country diary: I’m too late for the sweet chestnuts this year | Trees and forests | The Guardian

Rhydyfelin, Ceredigion: On another warm autumn day before the grey blur of winter, I find that the September gales denied me my seasonal nutty snack A mature sweet chestnut tree stands by the path at

Rhydyfelin, Ceredigion: On another warm autumn day before the grey blur of winter, I find that the September gales denied me my seasonal nutty snack

A mature sweet chestnut tree stands by the path at the field edge. As I pass, boat-shaped leaves ease downwards through the still air, landing on me with a surprising impact. In this sheltered, west‑facing spot the tree has prospered, but this year I have arrived too late to enjoy the plump astringent nuts that fall in groups from spiked cases. Unlike its toxic cousin the horse chestnut, the nuts make excellent eating – but only a few specimens remain here, the gales of September having brought many of the seed cases to the ground before their time.

This tree evokes memories of almost forgotten autumns, of days with my father when as a child I explored the depths of the New Forest on Sunday forays. Then later, in my 20s, finding with friends hidden stands of sweet chestnut in the Teign valley of Devon, emerging with pockets bursting with nuts to roast – hissing – on the fire, after carefully piercing them to avoid explosions.

My parents are gone, my friends thankfully remain. I look across the valley, where a thin line of smoke rises from a farmhouse chimney. Below me, two fields away, the Afon Ystwyth winds between wooded banks from a steep gorge cut into the hills, the route twisting repeatedly before it reaches the flat pastureland below the stalwart mass of Pendinas.

I walk on, dropping away from the obvious trail and across to the southern bank of the river. Here, the matted vegetation and fallen tree trunks that almost block the stream speak of a less ordered landscape.

Parties of sparrows bicker loudly in the undergrowth while ducks feed and preen in the pools and riffles that signify the old age of the river. The grey cobble bank of Tanybwlch beach marks the seaward end of the Afon Ystwyth, and I pause here to note the freshening breeze and darker cloud moving up from the south. There is a sense of a change in the season, that this could be the last of the warm autumn days before we descend into the wet grey blur of early winter. It is a day to be savoured.

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