Joint Core Strategy

With heavy hearts, we trekked down to Shurdington Social Centre this evening: the outing was to visit the three local Councils' travelling exhibition to promote their draft plan for where to locate an extra 33,200 new homes over the next 18 years. Of particular concern to the Davis family is that over a thousand of them are scheduled to interfere big time with Caroline's dog-walking.

We listened to a desperately dull presentation from one of many men in a suit, who then declined to answer questions from the floor. Whereupon the microphone was grasped by a spokesperson for the snappily-acronymed Hatherley and Shurdington Triangle Action Group, HaShTAG. Bridget Farrer (she it is in my photograph), the bit firmly between her teeth, resisted all the suits' attempts to cut her short, a doughty display, much appreciated by the citizenry.

It has to be important to safeguard the lea of the Cotswold escarpment from the building that's mooted. I go back to an idea promoted by Kit Braunholtz many years ago: develop along a channel directly between Cheltenham and Gloucester, and combine that development with a major upgrade of the public transport infrastructure - e.g. a new light railway - and a strategy for bringing together the complementary strengths of Cheltenham and Gloucester. So far from either losing its identity, there's no reason why their distinctive attributes could not be enhanced by such a process. Further, the joint attraction of the two towns would make our area a more viable alternative to Bristol for those wishing to relocate to the South-West.

Back from Cirencester

I caught the bus to Stratton Post Office, just North of Cirencester this morning, with the aim of walking back home from there. In the end, I cheated somehat, by descending from Crickley Hill Country Park to Little Shurdington, and catching the bus back from there. But it was still a reasonable workout in preparation for Spain - 14 miles/22.5 kms. Even though I carried very little, I'm exhausted this evening! Am I mad, planning to walk this distance every day for three weeks? Probably.

It couldn't have been a better day for a long walk - sunshine and practically no wind. The first half was much the more beautiful: I visited five wonderful Cotswold churches as I walked up the Duntisbourne valley - dedicated to St Peter, Holy Rood, St Michael, St Peter again and St Bartholomew. Though there's no church in Middle Duntisbourne, this picture of the hamlet with its lake seems to me to capture the spirit of today's walk.

Until I reached the doggy domain of the Country Park, I saw not a single other walker. And spoke to just two men - almost the only people I saw in the Duntisbourne valley: one was a 74-year-old, working on his allotment, the other, 78, scooted up on his electric power-assisted bike whilst I was eating my sandwiches, to clear out the area round a spring, till 1954 (he told me) that village's water supply.

Walking to Cockleford

Caroline has sadly opted out of our proposed French walking next month, so I embarked on a little training on my own this morning. Having caught the bus down to Shurdington, I set off a bit creakily up the Greenway Lane, following its line to Ullenwood, and thence through Barber Wood and over, amidst lambs and ewes, to Cowley. It's my favourite time of year, the chestnuts just bursting into leaf. Clouds scudded across a fitfully blue sky until I emerged from lunching in the Green Dragon: then darkness fell, and after some warning claps of thunder the hail descended: the A435 became suddenly white. This I took to be a hint that I should catch the bus back the five miles to Cheltenham.

A bonus day

"Fair and rather mild. Good bye fair twenty-ninth for another four years." This is how my ancestor, Peter Davis opened his diary entry in 1836. I am preparing a talk on it, to be given to the church's 55+ Club tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, to mark today (when the weather was much the same as in 1836) with something unusual, I biked to Warden Hill, Badgeworth and Shurdington, to look at their three churches. This is one of Tom Denny's sensational windows in St Christopher's, Warden Hill - "The Ravens", made in 1986. It's inspired by the Western Counties of Ireland, where ravens are common, and Luke, 12:24, "Think of the ravens: they neither sow nor reap; they have no storehouse or barn; yet God feeds them. You are worth far more than the birds."