We pass almost skeleton trees, their pretty autumn leaves drifting down and littering the fields and roadside verges. In one field we see hundreds of gulls following a tractor, while other nearby fields are brown, newly ploughed and almost bereft of gulls. The richest pickings are obviously where the soil is freshly turned.
Further on fields are already green with new growth and yet still showing the brown stripes from the tractor. The growth is like fine green grass and has an abundance of pretty male pheasants scattered throughout the fields. We pass fields of young brassicas, interestingly not so many pheasants to be seen in these darker green places.
I am surprised to see so many wild flowers in bloom at this time of year; large patches of white ox-eye daisies, long scatterings of bright yellow ragwort and many large clumps of deep mauve geraniums, which are a great favourite of mine.
We made a random stop at a garden gate and bought some runner beans, home grown and freshly picked. We must buy a marrow to go with them, for the cooked combination of these two is excellent and very moorish. Cooked in the same pot, but with the runner beans given two or three minutes longer than the marrow, which if it is young I cook with the skin still on. The water, of which there should not be too much, can of course be either used for gravy making or drunk. If the marrow is young these two veg are also excellent freshly cut up and used in salads.
On the M62 we are passed by a sleek, low, red car with an odd registration number 77935, that is all, no letters. I can't recall seeing such a number before.
I am shocked at the amount of dead creatures I have seen on this journey, mostly pheasants, but also rabbits, squirrels, hedgehogs and of course badgers. Fortunately the fields are still full of pheasants and rabbits on the verges are also plentiful. Interestingly most of the dead pheasants are male. I wonder if this is because they are greater risk takers than females or is it that females are still protecting their young and so stay closer to hedgerows and less open places?
With sixty miles still to go, the trees and hedgerows have many more leaves and are still golden compared to those alongside the road at the beginning of our journey. Although some trees in Yorkshire have lost almost all of their leaves, there are others that remain green. The trees further south had a more distinct autumn colouring, orange, yellow and red.
Near the A4128 junction off the A1, I saw a dead weasel by the central reservation.
It is 17:36pm, the sun is setting and the sky is beautiful. To the right it is dark and stormy looking, then under a sudden line it changes to a block of the brightest orange and further down changes again to a pale turquoise. Ahead the clouds are brightly outlined with gold while underneath the sky has a pretty rosy glow. Hopefully a good sign for tomorrow.
Now at 17:56pm the sun is almost touching the horizon and is an enormous fiery deepest orange ball --- with the sky on either side stretching away, wonderfully red. The undersides of the clouds above and to the sides of the sun are red as is the top of the lower band of cloud.
A beautiful sunset to enjoy as we near our journey's end.
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