‘Late August, given heavy rain and sun,’ Seamus Heaney wrote back in 1966, ‘For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.’

This year, thanks to the crazy weather, that full week has moved forwards in the schedule. Anyone waiting until the end of the month for the ‘summer’s blood’ of fully ripe blackberries might find they’ve missed their chance.

Blackberry picking has long been one of the highlights of late summer: a chance to forage and find yourself some delicious free food. Maybe it’s because they’re brimming with anti-oxidants that make you look younger that the pastime is one that seems increasingly of interest the older you get. When you’re youthful, you can sail past those hedgerows without a second glance: as time ticks on, anything that could stop those skin wrinkles is suddenly worth a pause.

Go for a walk at this time of year and it’s not long before you come across a professional forager or two. You can spot them from the collection of Tupperware they have secreted in their backpacks. Or maybe they’ve pulled over at the side of a dual carriageway having spied a hitherto untouched bush. The real die-hards may have brought a portable set of steps with them, or have mastered the art of using a walking stick to pull those more difficult to get blackberries within reach.

Because however many blackberries you pick, there are always some on a higher branch that prove frustratingly elusive. And of course, because you can’t reach those, you somehow know that they’re going to be tastier than the ones you’ve already got hold of. The question is, are you prepared to have the battle scars of scratched arms to reach them?

I stopped some blackberry pickers on a walk last week and asked them for some tips. Never pick below knee height came the reply, in case a dog has decided to use the bush for different reasons. The dogs wouldn’t be alone in such behaviour – one of the oldest blackberry myths is that you shouldn’t pick them after Michaelmas Day, on the grounds that the Devil landed in a blackberry bush when he fell from heaven, and urinated over the brambles in anger.

Blackberries don’t last long once picked – a handful of days at most. You need to eat them or freeze them – by the end of the month, a forager’s freezer will be overflowing with them. It might feel a long autumn of blackberry and apple crumble ahead, but once the hot weather has finally turned, each mouthful is a reminder of summer.

Which reminds me, I should get out there into the hedgerows with my plastic box myself, rather than brambling on here.