Katie's wedding

We all danced to Gaz Mayall's band, The Trojans last night (who could resist it?), following a delicious dinner - itself following a magical reception in the gardens of Sudeley Castle. The rain stopped just in time, and evening sunshine filtered through onto the speech-givers. Somehow Katie and Rob deserved nothing less than a nine-piece ensemble of such sheer verve and excellence. (From left in my photograph: Antoin O'Doherty, Zoe Devlin and Gaz himself)

Winchcombe

This week's trio of Wednesday walkers set off from the foot of Corndean Lane and walked up to Charlton Abbots. Its tranquil church (St Martin's) is rather hemmed in on the West side by conifers: the Baileys seem to have dotted them everywhere around their 4,000-acre estate. We skirted Sudeley Castle on the way out of Winchcombe, and returned past The Wadfield and its Roman Villa, along what was once the path of the Cotswold Way (now diverted). Six beautiful miles.

Toddington

I called at Toddington this morning for a couple of reasons, one of which was to photograph the church as part of my Gloucestershire Churches project. Not for many years had I turned off the B4077 down the lane leading to St Andrew's - which I don't ever recall going inside before. We went past once, many moons ago, to look at the adjacent Manor from the outside: then, it was in a relatively early state of neglect - very soon, matters became a lot worse, until Damien Hurst bought the estate a year or two back. The whole of the Manor is now swathed in scaffolding, awaiting a new incarnation as an art gallery - assuming Hurst doesn't go the same way as Timon of Athens.

Like the Manor, Toddington church is vast and rather forbidding. But the oak hammerbeam roof looks magnificent on a bright morning such as today's: there's not much stained glass to darken the interior, and what's there stimulated little excitement in me. A large chapel to the North contains white marble effigies of the ancestors of our former guide - the 1st Lord Sudeley and his Tracy missus, dating from the late 19th Century, yet in the style of the 14th. So, one can't help wondering what if any impact Hurst might have upon "his" church in due course.

Coming away, I spotted this relic of the past. There are not many fingerposts left in Gloucestershire - I tried to capture some of the plainer variety by photographing them a couple of decades ago, before they were replaced.

"The Christian Christs"

My friend Christopher Page came up with this apothegm over lunch today. Something - a mantra - for me to take with me on my walk, next week. It's equivalent, he offered, to those seemingly tautologous words, "The just man justices," in Hopkins' beautiful sonnet, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame.

After lunch, I went shopping for some waterproof gaiters. The first packet I took down turned out to have only one inside it. "Take another," the cheerful assistant urged. I did, but when I got it home, I found it had three gaiters inside.

This lovely image (16th Century glass, as I recall), I found at Sudeley yesterday: amongst other quirks, one of two angels, kneeling behind the crib, seems to be wearing a pork pie hat.

Katherine Parr

Wolf Hall is the book I have enjoyed reading most in the past six months. Though it's "only" a novel, it takes you by a new way right into the thick of early Tudor times. Three of Henry VIII's wives feature more or less prominently in Hilary Mantel's story of Thomas Cromwell's rise. So, when a last minute offer came for me to learn more this afternoon about the last of the six, Katherine Parr, who died (aged only 36) at Sudeley Castle, I went for it. And a very pleasant tea party it was.

Biographer Annette Kobak stressed that the early 16th Century wasn't her period, but nonetheless she brought this original KP to life. You pray to God, she reminded us, but row away from the rocks. The victim, not of a nest of vipers, but of "a threat of courtiers", KP sacrificed her literary life in order to massage Henry's ego: that, and changing the bedroom door locks, were what saved her from the block, we learnt.