However, it was very hot, and I thought cycling might be a softer option than walking: you might burn off more water but, on the very up side, you are air cooled. Much less likely to get overheated. So, for a change, an extended Horton Clockwise, something I have not done either on foot on or saddle for some time.
I noticed in passing that the blackberries looked a long way off being ripe, far more so than those on the island. While last year, according to reference 1, they were getting on for ripe at the beginning of the month. Must try and take a closer look today.
The Polish shop in Ewell Village was open again.
And a little later I parked up outside M&S in Epsom High Street. Cherries all present and correct at £5 for 750g - not that much more than I would have paid in the market, but what I hoped that I was buying was quality and reliability. Which was how it turned out to be, two thirds of the way through them and just one dud. Otherwise very good.
The boxes were rather substantial, a sort of jigsaw in MDF, with rather flashier versions being highlighted on today's front page of their website at reference 2. Destined for a full life as child play accessories in the course of the summer.
The packaging was slightly tricky, with the country of origin being Spain, but the variety being Somerset, and since the latter is the longer word, a quick glance is going to register grown in England, perhaps subliminally, therefore good. One suspects that M&S would not be too proud to stoop to such tricks.
We then got to wondering about the logistics operation which delivered enough boxes of cherries to all the hundreds of M&S food halls in the land to be ready to respond to a national advertising campaign. Maybe two or three full-on articulated lorries worth all told? My paternal grandfather used to deliver a cart load of cherries to Cambridge market from time to time, so perhaps several lorry loads, a hundred years later, is not that unreasonable a haul from a single grower. But there must be a lot of fertilizers, insecticides, spraying and other inorganic stuff going on in order to maintain top-notch appearance and quality on such a scale. There were also chillers, as the cherries got home still cool, which gave them a dull appearance, but that soon wore off in our dining room - with chillers presumably being essential on what must be getting on for a week's journey between the tree and said dining room.
Do their pickers come from places like Bulgaria or can they get by on locals?
But I should not moan and carp. Probably the best cherries we have had this year.
PS: presumably the Spaniards, who grow a lot of our fruit and vegetables, are not going to be too keen on a hard Brexit.
Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/07/blackberries.html.
Reference 2: http://www.obeikanmdf.com/.
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