Lea-ving

As last Saturday, we spent most of today down near Malmesbury, helping Edmund pack up his cottage at Lea. The removal van comes tomorrow morning. Unlike last week, it eventually turned out to be a bright day. After three fine days, it suddenly seems to be Spring and things are needing doing.

En route, we parked at Stockwell, to give Floss a walk. Just before getting back into the car, I had my first glimpse of the sun as a crisp golden disc in the cloud - as one usually sees a full moon on a clear night.

Cherry read

An email from Mini today, enjoying Japan in the Springtime, with lots of photographs of blossom! So, to keep my end up I append this one of the tree in our own front garden.

With my assistant (our youngest grandchild), we finished the digging today. Team work involved my inserting the spade, and Laurie pulling it towards him, landing flat on his back every time. We discussed the difference between a square and a cube, and he informed me it was not horns on that slug, but eyes ("Silly Grandpa!").

Between the showers, I earthed up the early potatoes ("Annabelle"), and filled the empty chimney pot with some very smelly manure and one tentative dahlia. We have been lucky to avoid late frosts in recent years, but who knows, with the weather as it's been?

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.

Duntisbourne Abbots

Another warm, sunny day! From our walk this morning, we had a good view overlooking the most Northerly of the Duntisbournes, with its six well-tailored yew trees leading up to the 12th Century church of St Peter. (Actually, there are seven yews, one male and the rest female, or is it vice versa?)

I came away having been lent three books by female authors to choose from for our forthcoming bike holiday: Molly Keane's Devoted Ladies (1934); The Report, by Jessica Francis Kane (2010), and Mel T.P.Z O'Dea's The Ghost Whisperers, published only last year.

Spring sprung

21st March, I always thought to be the first day of Spring. Well, the bikes are being serviced. And as can be seen from the tulips and wallflowers blooming in our garden, Spring certainly seems to have arrived in Cheltenham.

But not just in a meteorological sense: in 2012 it's also true in an astronomical sense, because this year the Vernal Equinox is today, its earliest since 1896. Time to get digging and spread some of the horse manure we picked up a fortnight (or more) ago! But first I have to do something about the remainder of our apple and fig prunings, littered over the back lawn.

A red day

It started badly. A case of wine arrived. In transit from front door to larder, the carrier handle broke, and so did a precious bottle - all over the pale hall carpet. As a result, the air was blue and the carpet red.

But we have radishes too to redden our day. The first fruits of our 2011 garden, along with some lettuice (but that wasn't grown from seed). A very satisfactory crop, in spite of the lack of rain, something that today at last looks as if it may be changing.

Cycle North

My five-day bike trip, from Cheltenham to Ampleforth, began today in glorious Spring sunshine. After mass in Prestbury, I tackled the steepest hill I am likely to encounter, Cleeve Hill, and then freewheeled down into Winchcombe, where I was given coffee by friends in their garden.

On to St Michael's, Buckland, as recommended by Simon Jenkins - a shrine of woodwork. Then lunch in Broadway, where I photographed this amazing wysteria, and on to Mickleton. St Lawrence's there is encircled with trees in blossom, and fields with frollicking lambs. Halford was a surprise: a village I'd been through many times on the Fosse Way, but beyond that containing an ancient bridge across the Stour and a host of pretty stone and brick houses. And a beautiful mediaeval Gabriel typanum over the North doorway of St Mary's church.

Traffic was mainly other bikers, motor bikes, sports cars and the vintage brigade: no lorries of course. Geese, pigs, horses I saw, but not one cow.

The best part almost was having cups of tea with two 90-year-old friends of my parents, who I dropped in on en passant - and finding asparagus for sale just before I arrived here at Little Kineton, with no present for my welcoming hosts.

Cheltenham in blossom

Appropriately, seeing as it's the week of the equinox, our photography tutor set us - for homework - the task of taking a seasonal image. So yesterday I biked down to the town centre and braved the traffic buzzing round Berkeley Place, so as to try to capture the blossom without also including cars or signage. (I am not really ever going to master post-production zapping, I have begun to realise.)

Veiled vale

A starry night meant low temperatures again in Cheltenham, one of the coldest places in the country apparently. Having scraped the ice off the car windscreen, I was rewarded with a lift up to Ullenwood, and walked back from there - in broad sunshine. The Severn Vale was shrouded in mist, May Hill looking like a distant island.

Spring is round the corner now, with snowdrops and woodpeckers as advance guards. Despite the frost, there was still plenty of mud coming down from The Crippets and through the deer farm. GCHQ dominates the view from the escarpment here: its occupants are no doubt sitting in their shirt sleeves, the twin boilers going full pelt - as can be seen:

Getting the pitch of the hall

Normally, at 9 o'clock on a May evening, I would be in the garden - here it is on 11th May last year - and indeed that is where I was this time yesterday. But the weather has changed. Back into Winter gear, I almost feel tempted to turn the heating on again. Amazing there was any play at Lord's in the First Test. Not that I could follow it much today, as I've been busy at work. Only seven more days at the office till I retire: only four more days wearing a suit. (We "dress down" on Fridays. Oh, I forgot: I have to dress "up" tomorrow: a legal colleague, Hugh Jessop has died: I must go to the Cheltenham College Chapel to pay my last respects at his memorial service.)