Trolley 925

A M&S trolley captured at the town end of the Kokoro Passage, on return from a trip to St. Helier, to be reported on in due course.

Rounded off this part of the trip by buying some strawberries, two packs of 600g each, variety 'Driscoll's Beatrice' from Robert Pascall of Kent, via M&S.

I ignored the advice about washing before use, as I don't think washing is very good for ripe strawberries, but I did remove the stalks - rather deep set and awkward to fish out - and sprinkle some sugar on them. Granulated as I did not think to look for the castor, which was probably somewhere. They were OK without sugar, and OK with sugar when fresh, but the sugar rapidly took the sparkle off them and they were not that great by the time we finished them in the course of the evening. All in all, not as good as the strawberries we had at the start of the season.

Pascall trades as Clock House Farm, to be found at reference 2. As far as strawberries go, they appear to concentrate on varieties from Driscoll's, for whom see references 3 and 4.

From reference 4. Clearly a company with a marketing budget. I notice also that the two berries lower left have voids where the strawberries of my childhood would have had white hulls, hulls which usually came out with the stalks.

PS: I learn from reference 5 that modern strawberries were invented in France from originals from North and South America, with more than half the world's crop coming from China. So not so odd that M&S are using strawberries from the US.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolleys-923-and-924.html.

Reference 2: https://clockhousefarm.co.uk. 'With over 100 years of experience across the fruit growing industry, our strong team of passionate fruit growers strives to deliver the very best fruit to you. Best in terms of superior quality and unsurpassable taste'.

Reference 3: https://www.driscolls.eu/.

Reference 4: https://www.driscolls.com/. A Californian company, which looks to be regionally HQ'd in the Netherlands and which does have a presence in Kent. Almost certainly the inventors - or at the least the owners - of the variety in question.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry.

Group search key: trolleysk, 20250728.