It was a trip to Blackmoor Village (Here) in Hampshire today, for their annual Apple Tasting Day. It is a village I know very well from my childhood days, as my Grandfather was the Head Teacher at the village school and my Uncle the Estate Manager.
The School house where my Grandfather lived was the start of my interest in Birds and the owners today were kind enough to let me take a photo through the window I looked through for my very first Coal Tit, among other birds.
Here are a few photos from today:
The same window I looked through 56 years ago and where I saw my first......
...........Coal Tit.
The old school next to School House and now the Village Hall.
Benji and Ted.
And Benji's buggy to help him get around.
Blackmoor Apple Tasting Day Here.
In Bumpers Lane there is an apple tree which has seen some good crops over the past 5 years. So today I took a few apples along with me to Blackmoor, to see what the apple identification experts thought of them. The response was a big thumbs up and one of the experts gave me his card, so that I could ring him and give this apple a name.
The apple is known as a seedling as it had grown from a pip. However if a branch is removed and grafted onto another apple tree, then the same apple will reproduce.
The name I came up with was Portland Surprise, which on the advice of the ID team was changed to Portland Russet. So all I need to do now is contact the team and get Portland Russet named.
This apple tree in Bumpers Lane and its.......
..........crop, was a topic of conversation at Blackmoor and hopefully given the name of Portland Russet.