This somewhat hysterical summer has been characterised by endless days, weeks, of pitiless sun, broken only by ferocious almost tropical late-afternoon storms with crazily strong winds, thunder and lightening, but often no more than a couple of drops of desperately needed rain. The result has been a sort of colourless pseudo-autumn, with the ground strewn with twigs and half-bleached leaves prematurely torn from their branches by the gales. Definitely not a good time to visit the woods. What this will mean for the “real” autumn which here reaches its best in late October/November, only time will tell.