Tag: conkers

#365daysofbiking Early arrivals


September 12h – The harbingers of autumn come in many forms, but few more pristine and beautiful than a freshly cracked open conker husk.

I found these windfalls on my way home from Shenstone – still a little unripe  but nearly there – lying in the road. Like most men, I’m indelibly programmed to pick up a stray conker wherever I see it.

And when they’re beautiful like these, that’s not hard.

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#365daysofbiking That old imperative:

September 13th – First of the year for me, I would wager that conkers are irresistible to any British male of any age. We can’t simply walk past one of these beautiful shiny nuts lying on the ground.

In our childhoods, we hunted and sought these out, and today, they’re plentiful; but I still can’t resist collecting a few when I see horse chestnuts.

There lovely examples were in Lichfield Road near the Butts.

One of the nicer things about autumn.

September 14th – A real sign of autumn, my first conker finds of the season, and this year it looks like there’s a large, voluminous crop waiting to fall to earth.

This tree, spotted in the backlanes of Stonnall was laden, and the fruit fresh from the husk as beautiful and shiny as ever one could wish, despite the tree being hard-hit by leaf miner.

Like most men, there is an inbuilt genetic urge to collect fallen conkers and I still can’t pass them in the road without popping a few in my pocket.

September 12th – Conkers, by the shedload. The tree in Festival Gardens, Lichfield is laden with them again, despite being ravaged by leaf miner. Last year, due to the season, they were small, but this year, a better size. They’re thick on the ground in their shiny, brown glory.

Like all men, I’m programmed to pick up conkers whenever I see them. They are beautiful, like jewels in leathery, nutty perfection.

June 19th – Passing through Lichfield today on my way home, I stopped by Festival Gardens to check out the conker trees. They seem to be in fairly good nick, and aren’t showing much leaf miner activity at the moment. They are, however, showing a huge amount of fruit.

I think it’s going to be another great year for conkers. The spiny cased nuts look almost prehistoric to me at this stage.

October 4th – I was in Lichfield for a work meeting, then in the afternoon, stopped awhile to do some shopping. What started out dry but dull ended up rather wet – but the sun soon came out again. It was a day of contrasts, really – from shoppers scurrying from the downpour, to the earlier peace of Festival Gardens and the pretty little oriental bridge. Also in the gardens, conkers lay thick on the ground, the sign of this year’s excellent harvest. In the City centre, a hilarious animatronic puppet performed for shoppers, controlled by radio remote.

But best of all, I loved the way the raindrops on those oranges made them look fresh and appetising.

September 18th – Conkers. Every man I know is inexorably drawn to the shiny fruit every autumn, it’s almost an instinct to pick a few up if you see them. This splendid tree is at Festival Gardens in Lichfield, and the conkers are just starting to fall. This year, they’re small – I’m not sure if it’s just this tree, or general, but there are lots to come; the boughs are heavy with the spiny-husked horse chestnuts.

The tree is clearly suffering the ubiquitous leaf miner parasite, but it large and handsome, all the same. I gathered a couple of pocketfuls, and tossed them near Wall Butts on the way back.

September 8th – A hard 50 miler. I headed out to Hopwas Hays and explored the wood some more, finding what I think were training buildings for basic urban assault practice. They had a curious alley construction between them which would seem to be for practice around blind corners. These days, they seem to attract kids and campers. 

From there, I headed east through Harlaston and Clifton, then south through Thorpe Constantine and Seckington. The sky was darkening, and by the time I hit Shuttington and the canal at Alvecote, it was raining hard. Sadly, the band of rain followed me home. I was soaked and tired.

Still, it was nice to see the conkers doing well, despite the evidence of leaf-miner blight, and even the late hairbells were lovely.

Can’t avoid the feeling of autumn, too. As I rode home, the smell of coal smoke was heavy on the air, and there was a distinct chill.

September 19th – I remember when love was nothing more than a handful of sticky conkers. Come to think of it, it hasn’t changed much… It’s programmed into the DNA of every bloke in the UK not to pass a horse chestnut on the ground without picking it up. In Brownhills as a child, the only conker tree worth a light was by the bus stop at the bottom of the parade; come this time of year the poor thing was battered half to death. Little did we know that a couple of miles away in the lanes of Stonnall and Shenstone, the shiny nuts were so plentiful that they were lying thick on the ground. The Brownhills tree has since been lost to disease, but I always wondered if it recognised the kids torturing it. ‘I remember your dad. He was a lousy shot with a stick, too…’