Navy Apples

After the Apple day at Lorton my sister was interested to see there was one going to be held in a Community Orchard in Dartmouth. We went up Ridge Hill and bumped into a man who knew all about it! He told us that the orchard had belonged to the Naval College but when the new road was cut through into Dartmouth they had let it go to the council. Presumably scurvy had ceased to be a problem. The council had then let it go to volunteers - Friends of the orchard. 
At the weekend they planned to have an apple picking day on Saturday and a juicing on Sunday. 
The orchard was behind a wall so we went in to explore. It was quite a large plot of land and a big undertaking. The apple trees were a mix of a few, well pruned  mature specimens and a few new plantings. It was rather overgrown with grass and brambles but on the top of the rise there were some beautiful mature Ash trees and some really ancient Sweet Chestnuts. These were dropping nuts right left and centre so we eyeballed the squirrels for a few and sat on a bench with a couple of windfalls and munched happily whilst having a magnificent view of the front of the College.
(In fact we never did get to see the Apple Days in action as we couldn't go on Saturday and Sunday was cancelled due to Storm warnings)