Summer isn’t over on bank holiday Monday

September starts waving autumn at us before summer has actually left. There are still three decent weeks to do something with it – without booking another holiday or turning the diary into a military operation.

I have a theory that Britain treats the August bank holiday as summer’s leaving do. We have one final weekend of sitting in traffic, attempting to cook outdoors and insisting that the weather is “brightening up”, then Tuesday arrives and summer is quietly packed away. Parents start looking for school shoes, supermarkets rediscover pumpkins and somebody announces that the nights are drawing in as though this has come as an unexpected administrative decision. The only problem is that summer hasn’t actually ended. In England and Wales, the summer bank holiday falls on Monday 31 August this year. The Met Office calls 1 September the beginning of meteorological autumn because meteorologists divide the year into tidy three-month blocks, which is perfectly sensible if you are comparing weather statistics. Astronomical summer carries on until the autumn equinox, though, which arrives at 1.06am on 23 September in 2026 . I am going with the astronomers on this one. They are offering us another three weeks of summer and, for once, astronomy has produced the more convenient answer. That does not mean we need another list of 37 things to cram in before autumn. Most of us failed to complete the first summer list, along with the June exercise plan and whatever we confidently promised ourselves we would do with the garden. This is about using the pieces of summer that are still available, without making them feel like another job. You don’t need a completely free weekend One of the problems with summer is that we keep trying to do it properly. The activity needs a whole Saturday. It must be sunny, but not too sunny. Nobody can have another commitment, the car needs to be working and somebody must know where the cool box has gone since it was last seen in 2023. By the time all those conditions are satisfied, the clocks have changed. Late summer is much better suited to smaller things. An ordinary evening is long enough for a walk somewhere unfamiliar, an outdoor swim or a couple of hours exploring before dinner. None of those needs annual leave, specialist equipment or a WhatsApp group containing 46 messages about where everybody should park. Try becoming a tourist in your own town . Walk down the street you normally pass without looking, visit the local landmark you have somehow avoided for ten years or choose a part of town where you cannot already name every shop and takeaway. Alternatively, geocaching gives an evening walk a bit of purpose. You are essentially using several billion pounds’ worth of satellite technology to find a small plastic container hidden behind a tree, which is both ridiculous and surprisingly enjoyable. A sunset hike also becomes easier to fit around normal life at this point in the year. Choose a route that suits your experience and mobility, check the forecast and make sure you can get back safely before it becomes properly dark. Bring a torch anyway. The sun will continue setting even if you have stopped to take 83 photographs of it. The darker evenings are not entirely bad news We tend to talk about shortening days as though somebody is stealing them from us, but earlier darkness does have advantages. Stargazing in June sounds wonderful until you discover that the sky will not be properly dark until a time normally associated with bad decisions and kebabs. By September, you can see the stars without reorganising your sleep for the rest of the week. You do not need an expensive telescope or enough astronomical knowledge to get into an argument about whether Pluto is a planet. Find the darkest safe place you can reach, give your eyes time to adjust and try to identify a few constellations . Two or three is enough. Nobody from the Royal Observatory is going to appear and test you afterwards. Friends stargazing in Gujarat, India. Photo: Rutil Sharma on Unsplash . This photograph is illustrative. The same changing light makes an outdoor film night much easier. A projector and screen are useful if you already own them, but please do not turn this into a £600 shopping project. A laptop, blankets, something warm to drink and a film you actually want to watch will do the job for a couple of people. Late summer is also probably the least unreasonable time to watch the sunrise and sunset on the same day . The sunrise is getting later and the sunset earlier, so the challenge no longer requires the sleeping habits of a dairy farmer. You will still need an alarm, but it should not feel as though you accidentally booked a flight from Stansted. Summer and autumn are both showing off This is the useful overlap between the seasons. We can still eat outdoors when the weather behaves, but apples and blackberries have started arriving to remind us that autumn is waiting just offstage. The Woodland Trust says blackberries ripen from July onwards and can be picked through late summer into autumn . If you know what you are looking for, taking a container on a walk can turn it into the beginning of a crumble. Blackberries ripening in a hedgerow. Photo: Annie Spratt on Unsplash . Pick responsibly, take fruit only where it is plentiful and leave plenty for wildlife. Do not eat something you cannot confidently identify because your phone looked at a blurred photograph and declared itself 73% certain. Your phone will not be the one explaining the decision in A&E. You can get much of the same seasonal pleasure without foraging. Visit a farmers’ market , ask what is growing locally and buy one thing you would not usually take home. Apple-picking farms also begin opening their orchards around this time, although dates, varieties and booking arrangements differ, so check the individual farm before setting off. This all feels like a rather better way to acknowledge the changing season than buying something described as “autumn spiced” while sitting outside in shorts. The places haven’t disappeared either The end of the school holidays changes the rhythm of places. It does not empty them completely – I am not going to pretend Cornwall becomes a deserted paradise at midnight on 1 September – but some attractions, beaches and towns begin settling down after their busiest few weeks. That makes this a good time to return to somewhere you rejected in July because the car park looked like an evacuation exercise. Explore a nature reserve or wildlife sanctuary , visit a nearby town or take the train somewhere you would normally dismiss as too close to count as a day out. Check opening times before travelling because some places reduce their hours once the main holiday period ends. Look at access information too, particularly if a route involves rough ground, steep paths or facilities that are only open at particular times. “Quieter in September” is useful. “Locked on Tuesdays” is less so. Outdoor swimming still belongs here. In London, the heated pool at Oasis Sports Centre stays open throughout the year, so nobody needs to race there before an imaginary end-of-summer deadline. Other lidos and outdoor pools have their own autumn timetables, which makes the live venue page much more useful than an article confidently quoting opening hours from three summers ago. A swim outside when the air has just begun to feel like September is arguably more memorable anyway. In July, getting into a pool feels entirely normal. In September, it feels as though you have made a decision. Do one thing properly We are called 42 Things To Do, but I am not going to suggest completing 42 things before the equinox. It would be excellent branding and terrible advice. Choose one thing you would genuinely be disappointed not to do and put a date against it. If something else fits naturally around it, lovely. If the weather collapses, have an alternative that does not make the entire day feel cancelled. You might arrange an outdoor swim and then explore the surrounding area. You might visit a farmers’ market, take something home and cook with it. You might plan a sunset walk and find somewhere interesting to eat nearby afterwards. What you should probably not do is spend four hours driving between unrelated activities because each one appeared on a different social-media post with the word “unmissable” attached to it. Give yourself enough time to enjoy one thing before moving on to the next. The same applies to money. Walking, stargazing, blackberry picking and exploring your own town do not need to become premium experiences before they count. A good memory does not become more legitimate because somebody scanned a QR code and charged you £38 for it. Autumn can wait its turn The point is not to deny that autumn is coming. Autumn has plenty going for it and will arrive perfectly well without us spending September trying to summon it with cinnamon candles. The point is that summer does not become unusable because August has finished. There are still evenings to walk through, places to explore, things growing in hedgerows and enough time to do something you will remember. Browse the 42 Things To Do activity catalogue , choose one thing that fits the time, money, weather and energy you actually have, then give it a date before 23 September. Summer does not need an elaborate farewell. It just deserves slightly more than being abandoned beside a half-used bottle of sun cream on 1 September. Header photograph: Annie Spratt on Unsplash . The photograph is illustrative.

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