A Berry Worth Crouching For

Few British fruits are as rewarding — or as stubbornly hard-won — as the bilberry. Tiny, dark and bursting with flavour, it grows on low shrubs across our uplands, and gathering a decent haul means kneeling, shuffling and getting purple to the elbows. But ask anyone who has eaten a warm bilberry straight from the plant on a heather hillside and they will tell you it is worth every ache.

The bilberry goes by many local names: whinberry in Lancashire and Yorkshire, wimberry on the Cheshire and Staffordshire moors, blaeberry in Scotland, and hurtleberry in older texts. All refer to the same plant, Vaccinium myrtillus — a close wild relative of the cultivated blueberry, though smaller, softer and infinitely more fragrant.

Where Bilberries Grow

Bilberries favour acid, well-drained soils on heather moorland, usually between roughly 200 and 800 metres. They are happiest on open, sunny slopes, especially north and east-facing ones, and they often colonise the edges of tracks, old quarry spoil, burnt heather patches and grazing land where sheep and deer keep the vegetation short.

Good areas to explore include:

• the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales, where wimberry pie is practically a local institution
• the Peak District gritstone edges and moorland fringe
• the Lake District and the Pennines, particularly above 300 metres
• Scottish glensides, the Southern Uplands and the Cairngorms, where the season runs later
• Welsh uplands such as the Berwyns and parts of Snowdonia

Plants grow in loose patches rather than neat rows, so once you find one berry, look closely around you — there are almost certainly more tucked beneath the heather.

Timing Your Visit

The bilberry season is short and shifts with altitude and weather. In southern uplands, the first ripe berries appear from mid-July. Across most of England and Wales, late July to early September is prime time, with August the peak. In Scotland, expect late July through September, and sometimes into early October on high ground after a cool summer.

A few pointers from experience:

• Berries ripen unevenly on the same bush — a patch is rarely ready all at once
• High, exposed sites ripen a fortnight or more after sheltered lowland ones
• After a dry, sunny spell the fruit is sweetest; heavy rain plumps the berries but makes them softer and quicker to mould
• Pick on a dry day if you can, and store your haul in a shallow container rather than a deep bag

Telling Bilberries from Their Neighbours

Get your eye in before you start picking. Bilberry plants are low, rarely more than knee-height, with bright green, oval, finely toothed leaves that turn red and bronze in autumn. The stems are distinctly angular and green, not woody and round. The berries hang singly or in pairs from the leaf axils, not in clusters, and each one is a dark blue-black globe dusted with a pale, waxy bloom. Squeeze one and the flesh inside is deep purple-red, staining your fingers immediately.

Two plants are often confused with it:

• Crowberry — also black, but with tiny needle-like leaves and a much more acidic, almost medicinal taste
• Bog bilberry — paler, more translucent, and usually found on wetter ground; it is edible but bland and watery

If you are ever unsure, leave it. The bilberry's taste is unmistakable: sweet, aromatic and gently tart, like the best blueberry you have ever eaten.

Combs, Fingers and Knees

The traditional tool is a bilberry comb — a small scoop with long, widely-spaced metal or plastic teeth, used with a gentle raking motion through the bush. Combs gather a lot quickly, but they also strip unripe fruit and damage leaves, so use them lightly and only where the plant is abundant. On nature reserves, SSSIs and National Trust land, check local rules first; some sites ask that you pick by hand only, and in England and Wales the general permission to gather wild fruit for personal use does not extend to commercial picking.

Hand-picking is slower but more selective and gentler. Crouch or kneel, part the heather with one hand or a stick, and roll each berry off with your thumb and forefinger into a shallow tub balanced on the ground beside you. Expect a realistic yield of around 250 to 500 grams an hour in a decent patch — a full kilogram in an afternoon is a very good day.

Wear old dark clothing and waterproof trousers, and expect permanently stained hands for a day or two. Long sleeves and trousers also help against ticks, which are common on moorland; check yourself thoroughly afterwards, as Lyme disease is a genuine concern in upland Britain. Take a map, tell someone your route, and keep an eye on the weather, which can turn fast on exposed ground.

From Moor to Kitchen

Bilberries are low in pectin, so they need a little help to set. For jam, add lemon juice or a couple of chopped cooking apples, and simmer gently — the fruit collapses quickly. A classic whinberry pie or crumble needs little more than sugar and a hot oven. They also freeze beautifully, spread on a tray first so they don't clump, and they make a startlingly good gin: fill a jar, cover with gin, add a little sugar, and leave it for two months.

Eat a handful raw on the hill, of course. That first warm, sun-soaked berry, with purple fingers and heather all around, is the whole point.