Spring is in the air

We walked up from the Kilkeney viewpoint and along the ridge towards Withington, as I had done in the rain the other Thursday. Severe weather warnings remain for many parts of the country, but with us the outlook has changed completely. So it was a revelation that today, looking over the upper Coln Valley, you could see Baker's Wood and Brockhampton Quarry clearly in the left distance, and Foxcote near to hand. Even the rash of conifers fail to mar this grand landscape. Skylarks and buzzards accompanied us on a still, warm morning. And for once it wasn't muddy.

2000 trees?

We have just returned from our friendly multiplex cinema, where we went to see Eugene Onegin beamed from the Royal Opera House. Since seeing Ileana Cotrubas in the Peter Hall production at Covent Garden (twice) and Elisabeth Söderström in the Glyndebourne Prom - all more than 40 years ago - this has been one of my favourite operas.

Last night's relay was one of the best such we have seen, I think. A thoroughly original interpretaion - dancers in the main parts as well as the singing actors - excellent singing, and the orchestra in tiptop form! My only cavil was with the unchanging set, which doesn't do at all for the key duel scene.

Though we lived barely four miles North of Withington for many years, I had never - before this misty morning - walked from that village to Foxcote. My photograph is of Upcote Farm, the first building you encounter after leaving Withington. The farmhouse faces South and is surrounded by a large stone barn and other outbuildings. A fountain was playing in the pond - altogether rather idyllic. Not such a peaceful place, however, later this year, when the seventh annual 2000trees festival takes place there.

Why "2000trees"? I wondered; but then we soon walked on into and through Vestey territory (Foxcote), in which trees have altogether possibly been planted by the thousand in recent years.

A walk - with no mac

For one day at least, it's been dry, and so well-chosen for one of our regular walks. We met at the car park above Foxcote, so as to admire the orchids in the common land below St Paul's Epistle. After Needlehole, we trespassed uncertainly through Hilcot wood - rather wet underfoot, and few paths going in the right direction.

It was when we emerged onto the land leading from Upper Coberley that we came across this sad sight, our noses leading the way past (as quickly as possible).

Needlehole

It was time to do some more serious walking, in preparation for my early May fortnight on the GR65 - only a week to go: help! Caroline was driving that way, so I cadged a lift to the Frogmill Inn. Hoisting a full rucksack onto my back - the first time in two years - I set off up the Gloucestershire Way. The rain began just as I was leaving Foxcote, and - with little let-up - continued till I reached home: eight miles in all. So, it's off to the shops today to buy a waterproof jacket: though my cycling trousers did a great job down below, my mac is useless I discovered. When I bought it, it needed marking for some reason: as the only name tapes we had were Leo's. Caroline duly sewed one on, in the certainty that the mac would never be thought of as his: after all, he was barely more than half my height. That shows how old it is.

More nostalgia: my photograph was taken on the now largely tarmaced drive up from Hilcot to Needlehole. This place, when I was a teenager, I knew, having rattled up there in the back of the Usbornes' Land Rover, not from Hilcot but along a mile of rough track from Seven Springs. It was the most romantic situation you could imagine - high, remote, silent, without electricity. The lease was with Caspar John and family: "When they come down from London, for weekends or holidays, it is as though the Genie of Soho or Fulham Road had suddenly popped the cork." So wrote Annette Macarthur-Onslow, in her charming memoir of the early 'Sixties, "Round House". It ends sadly: "I would, if I could, have stopped time then in that climatic autumn of the third year... The desire to view the landscape from every crest... Now came a new pattern... And over all there strode the pylons, whose grasping shadows cast by steel fretwork, encased smaller checks within the chequerboard of fields. The pylons... erect but not proud, were strange in the habit of strangers who are conquerors rather than friends." Now, Needlehole and Little Needlehole are all tarted up of course, security lights bristling, and completely overshadowed by those power lines.

More Gloucestershire Way

The forecast was good: I'd dug the garden; so I decided to tackle another section of the Gloucestershire Way today - from Coberley to Notgrove. It was a sublime walk. A gentle climb up the East side of the Churn Valley, through Upper Coberley; across to Needlehole, and down to the Hilcot lane; then up nearly as far as St Paul's Epistle, and down to the Coln via Foxcote.

Sitting with my back to the bridge over the river, next to the still-closed Frogmill, I ate my sandwiches in the sunshine. Then, crossing the A40, I found myself in horsicultural Shipton: not only with a maze of fences, but now about double the number of large houses since my last visit. The builders have had a field day.

The best part of the walk was the final stretch: across from Shipton to Hampen; over to Salperton - horses in front of the big house - and down and up the lovely, grassy valley beyond Farhill Farm, into Notgrove.

Still thinking about the Age of Stupid - see today's 4-star Times review incidentally - I found myself doing a double take at the packs of bottled water delivered to the gates of one of the biggest houses I passed: as we all surely now know what it costs to produce the stuff and its plastic bottles - if not, see here - how about a fine, not only for those smoking in public and failing to belt up in cars, but those drinking anything in the way of water other than what's perfectly good from the tap? (My entry for the most impracticable idea of the year award.)

(More photographs of the walk here.)

Out to tea

Caroline and I drove up to Foxcote yesterday afternoon, for tea with Marigold Bridgeman. We sat together in her sunny garden room, looking out onto a beautiful lawn and herbaceous borders, the Coln Valley stretching out below. Marigold admitted to being one of a diminishing breed who had never attended school, being taught at home by a governess. The first exam she sat was her School Certificate, which led on to a hospital secretarial job: she and her older sister Jeannine, who also worked there, were always ringing one another up. "Darling", they would call each other. So as "the Darlings" they were known.

I was surprised to learn that Marigold's mother and her three children had only come to the Cotswolds in 1943, when Marigold was still a teenager. Upon arrival at Upper Dowdeswell Manor, they were paid a visit and asked "Where are your horses?" "We don't have any." "Oh," said the neighbour, "what on earth will you do with yourselves!"

Marigold at length told her hospital boss, amid many tears, that she was leaving. "What next?", he asked. "I am buying a cow," she said, and so began a happy time building up a herd of pedigree Jerseys.

Everything of which Marigold spoke seemed bathed in affection; nothing in affectation. Despite not having had the best of health, she looked as serene as ever, more and more resembling the Queen, to whose sister she was such a good friend.