[AlaninCarlisle]

When we moved into this house over 40 years ago, the two elderly sisters next door were at their wit's end as kids kept going into their back garden and nicking apples from their orchard. It got so bad that for peace of mind they had the apple trees cut down.

Twenty five years later I planted a few eating-apple trees in our garden. They are profuse fruiters but now I can't give the damned apples away. Kids, including my own grandkids are no longer interested in apples. It seems that the only apples folk are interested in are cooking apples

[snowdrops]

Oh what a shame, pity I don’t live nearer, I’d be interested in a bucket full. Anyone you know on Facebook,there’s freebie sites that I’m sure if advertised on people would snap them up. Or what a bout food banks ? There must be one near you, or schools,nurseries?

[hamstergbert]

A couple we know faced the same problem and gave us a couple of bagfulls of eating apples, which of course are perfect for Normandy Apple tart:

[mumofstig]

Last year I made lots of apple butter, lovely stirred into my porridge on a winter's morning 

[Lardman]

That looks so good.

I could just eat a wodge of it with some fresh cream   

[Alank]

When we were kids we used to walk up over the fells and down into a village in the next valley to raid apple trees and collect conkers.
Half a dozen of us would set off with our bags and then return home happy with what we had collected.
Probably a round trip of 8 miles so we got plenty of fresh air and free exercise.
Yes how times have changed 

[Growster...]

A good chum in the lane opposite us always puts out a crate on legs and fills it each day with cookers, free to a good home!

So they get the tom plants, and we get the apples!

[Kleftiwallah]

Good afternoon everyone,  well I have just come back from A&E.  Whilst blackberrying (I s'pose we are supposed to call it bramble collecting now) moving from one bush to the next my legs got tangled in some long rank grass and down I went, like a mighty tree.

The plastic box I was carrying shattered by my face under my fall and a sharp sliver cut my beak as I landed on it.  I had to ask my beloved to come and help me up!  With a blood soaked shirt and a pad of kitchen paper held to me nose, we made our way home. 

Cobbling together a mask (luckily we stall have some) and more tissue we tried to have a salad lunch but the nose wouldn't stop bleeding (spraying my salad with blood). Off to A&E  now I have a quaint cross of butterfly stuff on my conk.  No hot tea for 5 days

Cheers,  Tony.  More blackberrying next week.

[Growster...]

Awwww - poor you!

Blackberrying should be classed as a martial art, or at least banned from any of us over forty...

I fell off my bike last year, riding up a slope to a fave blackberry hedge, and had similar contusions and scrapes, but only to the legs, not the beak! There was blood everywhere, but I never complained, well, not until I got home and found these great holes in my knees!

Never fear though, the physical scars will fade, but the mental recall may take some time to wither...

[Yorkie]

Oh what a shock for you, Tony. Hope you recover soon