Meon Hill

A couple of Summers ago, I posted a photograph of Meon Hill, but this shows it better: I took it yesterday, pausing on the drive up Saintbury Hill. I was making my way home after collecting a bike Edmund had bought on eBay for William: his earlier one had been stolen - proof (as if needed) that you can't leave things lying unlocked on a Bristol riverside.

I also photographed the church at Saintbury, across a field from the road - on the off chance that it was in Gloucestershire: it is - as I discovered on my return; but quite near the Worcestershire border. In August 1990, Thomas, Paddy and I cycled to Arrow, and Saintbury Hill was on our route home. It was deemed too steep: "I'm going this way," said Thomas (pointing down the flat road towards Willersey). It was a sticky moment, but by dint of stick and carrot we did eventually all push our bikes up through the churchyard. There were no further complaints, as from the top, it's all more or less downhill.

William's "new" bike was from Honeybourne, four miles South of Bickmarsh. I came there circuitously from lunch at the Air Balloon - not a pub I shall seek out on another such occasion: perhaps demolition for the much-needed road improvements is the best thing that could happen to it, though how to preserve that evocative name?

I drove from there up the M5, turning off at Ashchurch, where I stopped to photograph St Andrew's: it stands like an oasis in the desert, surrounded as it is by industrial buildings, main roads and the railway. Gloucestershire is nothing if not a county of contrast.

The maize maze

On this, the last full day of our grandsons' stay with us, I took them over to Hidcote, near the edge of the Cotswold escarpment. There, almost opposite the entrance to the famous gardens, an enterprising farmer has, in recent Summers, turned some acres over to what I guess is called diversified agriculture. You drive into a field, park and then pass through a marquee into a large play area, with sandpit, go-karts, slides etc. From there you can enter an even larger area planted with maize, an extensive maze within it. Great fun, and well spiced up with notices about various mythological animals - a quiz sheet is handed out when you pay for admission. Suffice to say, the boys loved it, though for that age group it's quite hard to keep going the whole way. (We cheated, against a promise to return next year.) "I wish I was bigger," said Laurie.

Every so often within the maze there is a wooden bridge giving a view over what was once leafy Warwickshire. In my photograph you can see the mysterious Meon Hill, scene of a grisly killing some 66 years ago: I recall being thoroughly spooked by it as a child.

One of my earliest memories was of being with my mother in her car, stuck in the 1947 snow on the adjacent hill leading up from Mickleton to Campden. Driving down that way today, possibly the hottest day of the year, I was finding it hard to envisage a blocked road.