In the Appendices you’ll find detailed seasonality charts as well as contact information for the various organizations we mention throughout the book. If you like the sound of a particular event or activity then these will usually be a good place to find more information.

Living seasonally means living with some uncertainty. In the modern world, we’re not very good at that, but it’s important to emphasize that this book is about living with the seasons. We can’t dictate exactly when the birds should start nesting, when snowdrops might emerge or when the hedgerows will blossom. Only Mother Nature can do that. All we can do is tell you when she’s most likely to.

The same goes for our food and recipes – although the British seasons are actually fairly reliable, we can’t know exactly when any particular ingredient will be at its best. You shouldn’t feel you have to stick slavishly to the chapter headings or seasonality charts. Whether it’s raspberries ripening, sprouts sprouting or crayfish crawling, if something looks and feels good, then feel free to give it a go.

On a practical note, since we spend most of our time in London and Dorset, this book inevitably reflects those places as our seasonal reference points. If you live in the far South West of the country, the micro-climate of Devon and Cornwall means you have a good chance of finding any ingredient or natural phenomenon several weeks earlier than the book suggests, and if you’re in Northern Scotland you could be up to a month behind.

Finally, there is an abundance of conflicting views as to exactly when spring, summer, autumn and winter ‘officially’ start and end. For simplicity, we tend to use the meteorological system, which divides the year into four equal seasons, starting on the first day of March, June, September and December respectively. Obviously, nothing is truly that simple and we’ll touch on a few of those differing opinions along our seasonal journey.