Lower Strensham

It's that time of year when wild cyclamen put in their surprise appearance: we have a few at home, in the long grass by one of our entrance gateposts. And here's a photograph of many more, which I took on Friday outside St Peter and St Paul, Lower Strensham. Quite a job, it is, to track down this church, though it is hardly more than a stone's throw from the M5. You go along a single-track lane for about a mile, and when you eventually reach the redundant church, you rather wonder whether it's worth the effort.

To start with, it doesn't look much from the outside; and it's kept locked, so the question arises: how do you get in? I was lucky, in that someone happened to be there to show me where the key was kept.

Once inside, it's a different story: the wood- and stonework are magnificent. And there is a "Good Samaritan" window by an artist new to me, Florence Camm (1874-1960), a pupil of Henry Payne. She spent all her life in Smethwick, running a successful stained glass company with her two brothers - and this at a time when women artists and designers were struggling to be taken seriously.

Château Bill

My Worcestershire brother-in-law planted a vineyard a little while ago, and with all this Summer's rain the grapes are currently looking good. We look forward to a wine tasting in due course. Meanwhile, in recent years he has been making a mean perry, using pears from some of his mature orchard, and - following today's visit - we returned home with a case of 12 bottles. It's delicious!

Worcester to Tenbury by bicycle

There are three ways to tackle this problem, all with drawbacks for the cyclist (like me) who is aware of Old Father Time's approach. Today, I made the journey to Worcester by train, both cheap and bike-friendly. Rather than wait for 90 minutes for the next bus to Tenbury, I set out under a grey sky to find the Martley road, via good views of the Cathedral, the River Severn and the Worcester County Cricket Ground. The decision has to be taken whether to follow the River Teme, after its crossing at Ham Bridge, or to plough on the B4204, involving a 200m ascent. Well, that's where it ought to be taken, but I missed the turning after the bridge and by the time I was half way up to Clifton (misleadingly called "on Teme"), it was rather late to go back.

The advantage of sweating up the hill is that you have a nice long downhill into Tenbury, passing Hill Top and Kyrewood, two places mentioned in my ancestor's diaries: I'm in the process of editing these, hence the expedition.

On the way back, I had thought of taking the relatively flat (until Abberley) A443, but having biked along to Burford Church from Tenbury, quite a wide stretch of that road, I realised that I might be lucky to survive the unequal battle with the lorry traffic. So instead I took the minor road along the South bank of the Teme, via Lower Rochford, Eastham, Orleton and Stanford - coming out again to join the B4204 at Ham Bridge. Drawbacks? Well it's marked with 19th Century milestones, scenic and there isn't a lot of traffic; but it's very steep and narrow - and it was pouring with rain.

My day out with the CPRE

Rather at the last minute, I joined a coach party today, organized by North Cotswold CPRE.

First stop was Bromsberrow Place, just under the Southern slopes of the Malverns, in the far North-West corner of Gloucestershire. Our huge coach all but came to grief under the low-hanging branches of the oak trees lining the drive: not quite another satnav saga, but similar. (We shouldn't have been going in that way.)

Over the past 17 years, the Bromsberrow Place garden, something of a sleeping beauty when in the late Miss Albright's ownership, has been brought fearlessly back to life by the Greenall family, who have made major investments - particularly in trees.

We marvelled especially at the walled garden. Facing South with wide views towards the Cotswolds, it contains rows of groaning apple and pear trees, a vine house, colourful borders and masses of succulent vegetables. It was good to hear that local schools bought the produce, and that their children came along regularly to help harvest it. All the various aspects of this estate seem to run brilliantly under its imaginative and hands-on owners. (This was no surprise to me, having in the past worked alongside Gilbert Greenall - he and I both being trustees of the Summerfield Charitable Trust.)

In the afternoon, our bus took us to the six-acre garden of Elton Hall, owned by Mr. and Mrs. James Hepworth. This is an extraordinarily pretty 18th Century house, brick-fronted with ogee windows, not far to the South-West of Ludlow. (We had driven past it when we were staying on the Croft estate last month.) At Elton also the scene has been transformed in the last 17 years, since the arrival of Anthony Brooks - a most modest man, yet clearly an inspired gardener.

Walking round, it was hard not to be distracted by the Hepworth family elephant (in many guises), horse, puffin etc. collection - all dead; and the five inhabitants of Fort Tortoise, very much alive. The garden is full of follies - one (dating from 1997) to commemorate a distinguished former owner, Thomas Andrew Knight, an early President of the RHS: a Latin inscription on the floor below his portrait gives thanks to the EU for the grant which helped build it - and to those who don't smoke within the gazebo.

I don't know anything about planting, but in this garden the late Summer colours - and the way they were massed - seemed to me particularly magnificent. The ladies with notebooks amongst us were enthusing about Echinaceas and Rudbeckias. Even table tombs in the adjoining churchyard seem to have been carefully bowered with wild flowers. Excess of pure colour is painful: variety and combination of colours is most pleasurable - so taught Thomas Knight's more famous elder brother, the connoisseur Payne Knight.

Overall I found it was the Elton experience that marginally won my heart - in spite of the Bromsberrow bravura. But almost best of all in the day was to be driven painlessly through Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire, countryside as varied and majestic as any one could hope to experience in the course of a two-hour journey.