bewilderbrain

Colder air, gold amidst the green, crunching under-foot, and a carpet of acorns…

Wednesday 9th September 2025
Walk start time: 9.01am
Walk finish time: 9.58pm
Walk area: Barry sidings path and surrounding woodland
Miles walked: 2.1

In search of autumns changing colours…

Enter that liminal time where summer flowers are fading, but autumn colours have not yet ripened. It prompts us to rove the landscape for bright splashes, hints of magic, and bold defiers of the lengthening night…

As I start today’s walk, I feel my eyes tuning to this frequency, the colour seeking instinct of early autumn, the reassurance that sights of bright flower and foliage bring to the brain as we sense, with some trepidation, the summer pulling away from our grasp.

The arrival of autumn this year has been a matter of some confusion for the poor trees. We have all witnessed the brown leaves falling on sunny days of 27 degrees toward the end of August, and the vast swathes of scorched or yellow landscape where grass or scrubland should otherwise have provided late summer colour and abundance.

But natures instinct to protect and preserve for the next season is strong.

Leaves fall, energy returns to the heart of the tree, ready for renewal.

As I head on to the sidings path, so familiar, yet of course, different every time, the canopies of many of the mature trees towering over me here, including a bounty of ancient oaks, are still largely, and rather reassuringly green.

I worried following such an extreme summer that autumn may be altered beyond recognition this year, but the trees are hardy, and wiser than I, and are only now speckling their branches with the first streaks of true colour.

I tramp forwards along the main path that is beginning to be dusted with brown and crunchy leaves down each edge, enjoying the feeling of one footfall in front of another, after not having walked properly for too long.

My search for bright spots in the altering light and mood of early autumn is quickly answered by this hardy blooming buddleia, reflecting its lilac hues with preternatural brilliance against the grey day.

Do autumn birds make weird sounds?

As I walk, an astonishingly weird bird sound accosts me from the copse that lies between the path and the nearby houses. It sounds like a baby duck with a severe head cold.

Pulling out my bird ID app, I record the sound and await the results. A wren? Well this is new one on me… it must be a wren having a particularly bad day?

A wren is one of those still relatively few birdsongs I feel I am coming to know. But this is the thing with liking, and trying to learn about birds – you think you are getting the hang of it, but then you realise that the little buggers can have different songs in different seasons, not to mention different plumage to identify them, as well as a whole other series of calls and warning sounds that bear no resemblance to what might be considered their typical songs…..

So much to learn. But this is no bad thing.

I hope the wren or wrens in question were okay. Perhaps it was some kind of Barry Sidings Wrens WI meeting in which the cake and worms ran out and matters became heated.

After a short distance on the main path I veer off onto the mud track that runs parallel with the main pathway. It is separated by an attractively wild thicket of assorted hazel and oak saplings, as well as abundant holly bushes.

The holly wears the crown…

The gleam of light on a holly leaf is one of natures great joys.
It transcends seasonal change – being a reliable jewel of bold sparkling green, however grey the skies, however bare the surrounding landscape.

A branch lying on the path in front of me reminds me of the comforting reliability of its deep, ever-present green, as well pulling a faint thread of awareness to the still distant, but nevertheless forthcoming cheese season…

Ahead of me, I spy a white cat looking furtive in the centre of the path, he disappears as soon as he sees me. At the very beginning of my walk, a black cat with beautiful emerald eyes stared at me from a living room window – almost knowingly. I’m not sure what she knew exactly, but I decide to take the black and white cat juxtaposition as some kind of positive portent for the season ahead.

An ocean of acorns heralds autumns arrival…

Coming back out onto the main path, I am directly beneath some of the largest mature trees on the walk. An old couple walking by sees me photographing a cluster of acorns beside the path, and the gentleman urges me to come and see another section, just a few metres away, where the acorns are strewn like confetti, thickly blanketing a patch of muddy ground.

The acorn field stretches away for a good 20 metres in either direction from the towering oak from which they have presumably originated. It looks like someone has made elaborate preparations for Squirrelfest 2025.

The smiling chap who wanted to illuminate the spectacle tells me that he’s been coming here for many, many years, and he’s never seen anything like it.

For a moment I imagine banks and banks of oak seedlings arising in the spring, a never before seen bounty of life-giving trees. A happy thought. I shouldn’t imagine it will play out quite like that, but I’d like to think there will at least be some reasonably full bellied squirrels over the winter months.

The low light of the path ahead has started to take on that different, and slightly mystical quality that it has as the suns proximity changes. It is gentler, less urgent than summer light, less illuminating, more nuanced and suggestive.

To me, nature is often at its most alluring in these in between, indeterminate time periods, its most mysterious and beguiling. I capture this peculiar quality of light in the next burst of colour relief on my walk, the dark flush of hawthorn berries.

Soon after, my eye is drawn to another colour, something that I never tire of looking at, the bright yellow- green of moss on a stone, which can sometimes take on a luminous quality in the shady spots in which it dwells.

I find I have now wandered off the path, a little offshoot into the stretch of woods to the other side, sloping steeply off down towards the river, the centuries old trees somehow seeming to cling effortlessly to the bank, roots deeply held in its tenuous looking earth.

I potter happily on the slope amongst the tree roots for a while, photographing leaves and random things, until my progress itself becomes tenuous as the little track I was following disappears into brambles. I retrace my steps to the main path.

The turning point for my route today, being but a short out and back walk, is the waterfall and pool.

Ever changing in the surrounding flora and fauna by season, the power of the water gushing from the mountain above and the reflected mood of the skies in the pool below. It feels like a natural spot for contemplation, and there is great serenity in the clear reflections of the water.

Fat robins, imaginary owls and magical autumn light…

A short distance into my return journey, an extremely fat and scruffy breasted robin, my only close bird sighting of the day, flies a few feet in front of me and lands precariously in a modest hazel sapling, eyeing me boldly, as if in challenge to its lack of elegance.

A few metres further on, I perform what must have been quite a comical double-take, as I spy an owl, sitting bold as brass amidst the trees of the woodland over to my left. Upon closer inspection, it is a pleasingly formed tree stump, pictured centre here. I’m sure it can’t just be me? The stump clearly has ears…

I take in the last stretch of off track mud path, breathing the slightly cooler, mulch scented woodland air deeply, and a hazy autumn sun peeps calmly through the trees.

It’s fainter, more mystical light feels like it is telling me to slow my feet, telling nature to slow its growth, to turn inwards to repair and nurture.

At the very end of my walk, just as the path is about to re-enter civilisation, another bright burst of foliage brings closure to todays quest for colour in the changing season. The vibrant green leaves and glossy berries of a cherry laurel, simple and joyful.

As the days pass, and the world turns inwards, I vow to continue outwards, in my search for the changing colours, sights and sounds of the season.