Where they spend the rest of the year, I do not know, but clearly it is autumn now because the spiders have started showing up. I found a massive one in the laundry bucket recently, and another large one turned up in the bath.
There’s a place on the canal near town where the canal and the towpath go under the road. There are lights in the ceiling, and this is always a popular spider spot in the dark part of the year. Here they grow to considerable sizes, and their webs fill with strange objects – crisps and other food items, perhaps offered as placatory gifts from the young humans who frequent the tunnel at night.
I rather like spiders – so long as they aren’t unexpectedly on my face, we’re good, we can be friends. They are in fact helpful members of the household, likely to eat the insects that might otherwise do their best to eat me, or my clothing. I’m enough of a goth not to be offended by having a few spiderwebs around the place.
Druid Life 
September 8th, 2021 at 11:25 am
Yes! It is spider season here in the eastern US too.
Every September, like clockwork, these large orbweavers the size of quarters (about 1″ in diameter) begin making their webs around the outside of the house, or between trees, or wherever. They’re big and scary looking, but they only really hang around (haha) during the fall and early winter.
I’ve come to think of them as the official harbingers of autumn. One always makes its web across the outside of my bedroom window, right in front of my desk area. I like to think we write and weave things together. 😂
September 11th, 2021 at 7:07 pm
Yes, I’m finally beginning to understand and identify spiders who are definitely most visible this time of year. They’re tough to get to grips with as it’s often only the genus and not the species who have common names and many can only be identified under a microscope. I’ve just today been on a spider field ID course with Richard Burkham of the British Arachnological Society -https://www.britishspiders.org.uk and it was massively inspiring.
September 14th, 2021 at 7:54 am
I haven’t even tried to get to grips with species, it’s more ‘hello friend from under the bed’ at the moment. Maybe one day! But, my visual memory isn’y great, so it might prove too difficult.