Every year we make an annual pilgrimage to the grouse moors in Northern England. A small team of friends walking in a line across the sea of pink heather. It's a beautiful place, that has to be seen to appreciate. Most of the worlds heather moorland occurs in the UK and in August the heather is in flower, blanketing the landscape.

We meet the night before to enjoy a few beers, a meal and banter between friends. You need a good feed, as the day on the moors requires miles of walking, across some pretty testing ground. The heather itself gets tiring when walking over for it hours, combined with long grass, occasional bracken and streams. So the grouse are hard earned.

We don't shoot many. This year the 8 guns shot 37 grouse, but this is more than enough for us and we all get a brace for the table.

We walked most of the grouse up, but we did do 2 mini drives, from the butts. On this day the wind was up, making the grouse fast and challenging to shoot. The grouse often taking on the wind speed as they fly. During the 2 mini drives, the grouse were driven with the wind and towards us. They literally come over you like little missiles. With a 20 mph wind they are probably flying at speeds of 70-80+ mph as they flash over the top of you, 10-50ft high. Too difficult for most of the guns, who find them too challenging and fast to shoot.

When we walk up the grouse, we try to walk slowly in an evenly spaced line across the moors. Every so often a covey of grouse will lift and rocket away from us in a variety of directions. Sometimes a bird or two will lift, other times a covey of 20 or more. You have no idea when, where or how many will rise from the heather. It's this unknown and the anticipation that makes the experience so exciting.

On this particular moor we saw plenty of black grouse, which was wonderful to see. There is a volentary ban on shooting Black Grouse on most moors, due to their declining numbers and so we are very careful to ensure that we don't shoot them and we haven't made a mistake to date.

By the end of the day, you feel worn out from a long days walking and we all have a few birds to take home for the table. It's a rare and special experience to us all. The beautiful pink heather moorlands and the amazing Red Grouse are a truly wonderful and very unique to Britain. I feel very privilaged that I get to experience doing this once a year. And enjoy the opportunty to be able to cook and eat one of our wonderful wild game birds.

I will try to include a grouse cooking blog. My wife makes a beautiful plum sauce for them.

It's the time of year (late August to September) when the Damsons, sloes, blackberries, crab apples, rosehips and elderberries all become ready to pick

Between us we picked a bowl full of Hawthorns.

Here is how to make the Hawthorn Berry Jelly:

1/ Cover the hawthorn berries in water. Add water to the saucepan until it reaches the top of the berries in the pan.

2/ simmer them in the pan for about hour. Mushing them up occasionally with a potato masher.

3/ Drain the hawthorn berry mush into a bowl through several sheets of muslin, for several hour or even overnight. Do not squeeze or the jelly will be cloudy.

4/ Measure the liquid/ juice that you manage to obtain and then add 7 parts sugar to 10 parts juice.

5/A the juice of a lemon.

6/ Place the lot in a pan and then bring it up to a rolling boil.

7/ Boil for around 20-30 minutes, removing the scum that forms at the top regularly. If you don't remove the scum, the jelly will be cloudy.

8/ After about 15-20 minutes. Dip a spoon in and then place the spoon in a cool place. If the liquid sets on the spoon, it is ready.

9/Pour the liquid into a clean sterilised jar and place it in the fridge to set.

10/Try on toast instead of jam, it's delicious.

You can strain the pulp through a fine sieve, if you don't mind the Jelly being cloudy. It makes the process quicker.

Ingredients:

A bowl of Hawthorns

A Lemon (juiced)

Sugar

Water

I followed my method for Crab Apple Jelly. Please have a look at this post, if you want more detail.

Enjoy!