Out In The Stubble

I love the harvest time of year, it's like summers big grand finale & one last blast of golden sunshine when the crops are cut to leave fields of golden stubble before the autumn arrives.

The farmers have had a good few days of warm dry weather & with this the combine harvesters have been out in force, so today I thought I'd take a wee ride out to see if I could see any combines at work in the area.

Leaving Innerwick I set off to see what I could find on my day's travels, most of the fields around the village have already been cut so standing on a bale to get a better view I spotted the tell tale sign of a combine at work...

...a lot of dust !

So back on the saddle I took off down to Skateraw.

Running the gauntlet cycling for around 100 yards along the A1 to gain access to the old Dryburn road which takes me down to Skateraw where the combine was working.

I love watching tractors working the fields it always seems to me such a rewarding job, but there's something about watching a combine that takes me right back to being a bairn.

 The excitement of watching the farms big daddy of farm toys cutting & swallowing the dry ripe cereal crops, I remember my friends & I used to run along behind the combine as it was cutting so that the straw being expelled from the back end would fall over on top of us, wouldn't get away with that nowadays !

It was the best part of summer, playing in the straw & bales building dens & the dusty smell of the fresh cut straw having great care free fun not wanting to go home when it starts to get dark & I get to have that fun all over again with my kids it's great fun playing with them in the cut fields around Innerwick & to see the smiles on their wee faces & the giggles coming from them is great. 

Leaving the combine behind doing it's thing I went around what's left of East Barns to get onto the national cycle network route 76. East Barns was at one time a small community of a farm, houses & a school, now all but gone other than a few boundary walls left due to quarrying operations carried out by the cement works.

Since the field had already been cut I thought this would be a good opportunity to go & have a look at the standing stone at Easter Broomhouse, the stone is not always accessible as it's located right in the middle of a field.

From the standing stone I could see two combines working the same field along at Wester Broomhouse & by the time I got there they were both out of sight down a hill, so while waiting on them coming back up I took a couple of photos of the Bass Rock, North Berwick Law with the Paps of Fife flanking either side & Dunbar's parish church sitting prominently in the town.

It was good to see both combines working together & how much different they were, the older John Deere was much noisier & needed to be emptied more frequently than the big Claas combine even though the John Deere had a smaller width of cutting bar, the Claas was much quieter & had tracks instead of front wheels. Both combines were like night & day in technology amazing how much harvesting has evolved in the last hundred years or so.

Along the hill roads I rode making for Spott, the hedgerows are full of rosehips & various berries so for a while it will be a real bounty for the wildlife in the coming months.

A quick wee blast down the Spott Brock where I spotted that someone has hammered some coins into a sawn tree trunk ?

Through the village of Spott & I noticed a cool bit of hedge art in someone's garden then it was head down & up the killer hill of starvation brae following a tractor carting bales, I should of grabbed the back of it for a pull !

Climbing up & reaching the top of Brunt Hill I had a wee look behind me to see the foothills of the Lammermuirs coloured vibrant purple with the blooming heather.

A couple of quick pictures while stopping for a breather & to re-hydrate.

Great time of the year this, with all the stubble fields it really opens up the countryside for mountain biking, exploring different ways to go through the vast network of fields & to see the sights that normally only the farmer sees, so I'll make the most of it before the ploughing starts.

Over the hill ridge & back onto a dusty farm track for a quick downhill ride back to Pinkerton farm.

Glad I didn't have to go through his field he was pretty moody looking...

...we had a stare out...

...I blinked first...

...I took off...

...He won..!

Nearly home & over the fence of my newly found path kindly made by someone else as to avoid getting stung to bits by nettles, thistles & also so I don't have to get my boots wet jumping the Dryburn.

Then up past the north lodge through the thicket of overgrown bushes & trees of the one time Thurston estate towards the caravan park listening to the vast bird life in the trees above.

And before I know it I'm back at the house drinking coffee before I wash my bike.

An enjoyable couple of hours spent out & about watching the combines working.

And within the next few weeks the fields will be getting ploughed, the cold, wet & windy weather will be making it's presence felt & the smells of the autumn will be here again, such is the never ending circle of the seasons & every one of them is enjoyable out on the bike.

Thanks for the visit

Come back soon.