Perhaps it is a memory from being taken for walks along country lanes by women, who had just survived the 2nd WW.
Rose hip syrup was promoted to offset the risk of vitamin C shortage in children, several of the wives around farm used to make it. It was recently an old countryman referred to the Apple Rose being the red version of the dog rose and being not suitable for rose hip syrup, funny how a chance encounter can trigger off a deep memory. Long hot summers in the 1950's, ladies with sacks around their waists, reaching out over hedges that had proper thorns in them so that they could pick the haws or hips.
The hand brushed hedge was cut late spring, early summer so briars and bramble were able to grow through them and trail on the thorn mat, never seen in today's machine cut hedges. Funny, the old boy, who had triggered this memory, had the best hedges on his farm I have seen in years, when we first met him, he was actually trembling with rage, that we were walking to his farm and accused us of opening up the public footpath (he thought if no one used it it would lapse). After a bit of coaxing he settled down, showed me a trick to open a hazel nut, with a penknife, which I already knew, but he thought I was a townee.
The reason no one used the footpath we were on, is a lost bridge. During the 1962-3 winter a huge block of ice was carried down the River Vyrnwy, in the thaw, and demolished an ancient stone bridge. Footpaths lead to it on both sides.