NEW England in the Fall – a trip that’s on many a person’s bucket list. But, listen, who needs to go to Vermont when you can enjoy East Lothian in the autumn?

Stubble fields, golden evening sunshine, and the trees ablaze with more shades of russet and gold that you ever thought possible.

I used to think winter was my favourite season, with the trees heavy with snow and the sound of boots crunching in the early morning frost, while the dogs ran free.

This autumn has been so spectacular, I may have to revise that choice.

Even the most bland and disappointing town-scape is transformed by a line of trees in full autumnal explosion of colour.

Recently, I’ve had to make a few visits to my old home town of East Kilbride, a new town labyrinth of underpasses and roundabouts and houses of uniform ordinariness – may the planners be forgiven. But, they did plant a huge number of trees along the bleak dual-carriageways and the dull housing estates, so that just for a brief time each year, it seems transformed, lit up with splashes of colour, variety, vibrancy.

So we treasure autumn and all it brings – the harvest safely gathered in, the smell of wood-smoke in the air, the berries dark and plump in the hedges, the dark nights drawing in and time to sit safe and warm by a good fire with the people you love around you.

I’m with Keats in celebrating the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

And where better to experience it than among the soft hills, the sweeping beaches and the yellow dappled trees of East Lothian. What’s not to wonder at?