Harvest

Selsey to Pagham

September and summer has gone. Heavy gray sky, cool wind and spitting rain. The beaches are empty, not even a seal to see at Selsey, named for Seal island.

Walking east with the wind behind me. The wooden groynes like the ribs of a giant beached ship, string out along the foreshore. Summer migrants are leaving, flying south to African warmth.

Along the shore there are autumn offerings, a harvest for anyone ready to look. Ripe blackberries, sweet from the sunshine. Dark sloes like mini plums, I take a few to try turning them into ink. Bright red rose hips, a source of Vitamin C, a syrup to save us city children from scurvy. There are red hawthorn berries too, worth gathering to make a hedgerow vinegar.

A small oak tree offers oak galls, the size of wooden marbles. The oak gall moth grows there and exits by a little hole. These tannin-rich galls have been used to made a strong, long-lasting black ink for centuries, I collect a handful to top up my supplies.

Flowering cherry gum oozes from a scaly trunk. This dark brown resin used instead of Gum Arabic for my home-made watercolour paints.

There are wild carrots and sea kale along the foreshore and the stony beaches are mixed with countless empty oyster shells. This landscape brings a bounty in autumn and I can imagine the Saxons who lived here gathering these riches ready for winter.

Walking around Pagham harbour, now an important habitat with mud flats and salt marshes for birds, there are hides to visit and bird watchers trundle around the shore burdened with telescopes and binoculars, their patient dogs resigned to slow walks.

Pagham harbour was once deep enough for ships. The Saxons landed here in the late 400s, after the Romans had left. Their settlements are remembered in the local place names. There’s even a pre-Christian, Saxon burial urn displayed in a local church.

Pagham is a quiet place now but the church at Church Norton was part of the early Saxon Christian community. Wilfred founded a monastery in 681, and this became a cathedral, home to bishops until the Normans moved the See to Chichester, nearly 400 years later.

This toe-hold on the Sussex shore was a busy place of ships and religion, trade and contemplation, sowing and harvest. Soon, the winter visitors will fly in from the north, looking for shelter and food.