Sometimes it doesn’t take much to elevate the same old ramble into something that feels new and different. I have previously written about Vesey Park in Lucan, for example. It is a place in which I regularly take a stroll with Nessa, our slow pet greyhound … (note to self – idea for a Children’s Book: The Greyhound who lost her Chase). It is a place that I have always found gives up more of its secrets the longer you spend with it. Indeed, it was only recently that I stumbled across a geology report on the park explaining that the steep bank on the North end of the park was the last great gravel push of a dying glacier at the end of the last ice age. That means that if you were standing in the park at the bottom of the ridge 11,000 years ago, you’d probably be standing in an ice cave beneath a great ice sheet several kilometers thick.
Today, however, I have come to Vesey Park for another reason. This is blackberry season and the brambles are teeming with perfectly ripe berries. A few weeks back, I had picked blackberries in Cooldrinagh. I had noticed that there was a surprising difference in taste profile berry to berry, bush to bush. And so, for no other reason than I thought it would be a nice idea, I have decided to go on a taste-testing walk of Vesey.
Having spent too many childhood years as a scout and too many adult years as a hill walker, I know that preparation for an expedition is key – particularly somewhere like Vesey Park, which is known for glaciers on occasion. I had noticed that some berries tasted sharp, others sweet, some intense, others milder than a Minnesotan hot-sauce. So I went a-googling. How do the experts describe the range of blackberry flavours? Is there a blackberry taste scale of sorts?
After a lot of searching (and discovering that Wicklow Way Wineries apparently makes an excellent blackberry wine!), I realise that scientists have, apparently, not turned their attention to blackberry taste scales. I mean – seriously – what have you scientists been up to? However, the most common words used to describe blackberry taste are sweet, tart and earthy. That works for me. And so, I draw a little triangle with one of these words at each apex. I will ramble through Vesey and ‘plot’ the taste of a berry from each cluster.
In order to ensure the scientific integrity of my results, my wife, Chrissy, comes along with me, my logic being that twice the tasting means twice the accuracy. We agree to limit our walk to the south campus of the park only mainly because it has the most berries at present and I have to be home to begin work in about 40 minutes.
At the entrance gate, we begin. We gently pull on a few until we find berries that give way easily. The tasting begins. We both agree that the berries here are mid-way between sweet and tart with no earthy notes. I plot it on our science triangle (trademark) and we move on – clockwise around the park.
The second bush is no more than fifty meters away – but the taste is very different. It is mellow and sweet – no tart notes, no earthiness. I hadn’t expected such a big difference so soon. We continue sampling until we soon arrive at our fourth location, right beside the gap in the hedges that leads to the off-path section frequented only by lovers and illicit washing-machine dumpers. Chrissy samples the berries here and shouts over to me. “Seán – you have to try these! They’re the best berries I’ve ever eaten.”
That’s a big claim coming from a woman who grew up in the berry-laden Northwoods of Minnesota. I make my way over, find a berry that wants to be plucked and pop it into my mouth. If this was a stage monologue, I would now pause for dramatic effect.
This is the most perfect berry I’ve ever tasted.
On the triangle, I plot it half way between sweet and earthy and a third of the way towards the ‘tart’ apex point. Blackberry scientists – this is your goldilocks zone. We agree that this small crop of berries is the finest we will ever find and we agree never to reveal its location of 53°21’07.7″N 6°26’51.7″W to anyone.
We move on around the park, finding some quite delightful berries, but none as good as patch number 4. Near the fork in the path to the lower park, as we stop, a heron spreads its wings and takes off through the trees only feet from our heads. We also notice that at this point, the berries are not blackberries. They are small and blue, with each cluster bearing only 4 or 5 small berry orbs. A phone app twice tells me that these are raspberries.. I vehemently disagreed and have not spoken to the app since. I still don’t know what they were.
In the reeds, bull rushes grow tall. We pass patches of ethereally-blue sloe berries. The trees are thick with vibrant haws. Indeed, I had been searching for haw recipes and, while some exist, it seems that traditionally in Ireland, haws were not eaten but were, instead, used in pea shooters by schoolboys. I’ll save that activity for another walk.
As we round the corner to the southernmost pathway, the berries change again. The sun shines on the other side of the trees, meaning that these berries are in perpetual shade. The first we encounter here are fruity, the second are like wine and the third are lung-puckeringly tart. At the hedge around the wetlands, I pick a berry that I mark on my map as ‘low effort’.
Soon, we reach the gate again and complete our loop having both ‘reviewed’ 14 different blackberry patches and developed the tools for a new branch of botanical science. It really doesn’t take much to turn a ‘known’ regular ramble into something that puts a smile on your face and a berry in your belly.