"The Plot"

Last month, I reported on a visit to the late John Bunting's Chapel, on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors, above Oldstead. Returning home, I picked up "The Plot", John's daughter Madeleine's book about the Chapel and the small plot of land on which it stands.

Not many single acres of land can have had its own biography written about it! Some of it struck me as being a little uninteresting, but I did admire the author's treatment of the concept of "landscape". She quotes Trevor Rowley, "Large areas of rural England... are seen by millions and trodden on by hardly anyone at all."

This bears out a reflection I had, looking back on the 20 "Wednesday walks" I've done with others this year in various parts of Gloucestershire - never once retracing our steps. On hardly any occasion did we see other people on our path, and only rarely saw we people working the land through which we passed.

Stanbrook

In spirit, as far removed as possible from its original home in the soggy Midlands (near Worcester), the relatively new Stanbrook Abbey teeters on the Southern edge of the North York Moors National Park. I have been meaning to visit the nuns ever since their move four years ago, and today at last I managed it. Sister Petra showed four of us the temporary chapel, and we admired the magnificent view South over the Coxwold-Gilling gap.

Earlier, I had fulfilled another long-term ambition, to visit John Bunting's Memorial Chapel above Oldstead.