Homeward bound

After our three-week exile, we have returned to Gloucestershire. But not yet to Cheltenham. It is a pleasure to be staying tonight in a house made of stone of a lighter colour than ever we saw in the North. Driving down from Wakefield this morning, we stopped at Ecclesfield, a dark church both inside and out, but its scale and grandeur a reminder of the days when the parish was more than twice as large as Sheffield. We paused also for a wander around the gardens at Renishaw, dominated by a magnificent display of hydrangeas. (My photograph was taken from the lawns in front of the house, the view seeming to indicate a remote setting, but the trees hiding power lines and other indications that we were on the edge of a big city.)

Getting back into the car, the M1 traffic contrasted rudely with two such oases of calm.

"Roman Cotswolds"

Aylwin Sampson, despite advancing years, still gives talks on many subjects to gatherings around the area. He pressed me - willingly - into ferrying him to Chipping Campden today, where he was due to speak to one of its three Probus Clubs.

Like all the best schoolmasters, Aylwin has plenty of jokes, some - as here - illustrated by his own delightful drawings. And he handles his overheads with great dexterity, demonstrating that PowerPoint isn't necessarily the only answer to the world's problems.

Woodchester's Orpheus pavement, Aylwin told us, is European's largest mosaic. "Scratch Gloucestershire and you'll find Rome," was one of his apothegms: it wasn't a saying that I'd heard before, but of course it's perfectly correct. We should know, having lived at Syreford, the site of a Roman military station (Wycomb).

On the way back, we tried to get into Saintbury Church, to see the stone dole table: it was locked, but the trudge up the steep path brought back memories of a near-mutiny on one of my bike trips with the children. My route home involved climbing Saintbury Hill: Thomas and Paddy took a look upwards, and then at the alternative, an invitingly flat road to Broadway. Only by threatening a hawny paw did I prevent a parting of the ways.

Meon Hill

A couple of Summers ago, I posted a photograph of Meon Hill, but this shows it better: I took it yesterday, pausing on the drive up Saintbury Hill. I was making my way home after collecting a bike Edmund had bought on eBay for William: his earlier one had been stolen - proof (as if needed) that you can't leave things lying unlocked on a Bristol riverside.

I also photographed the church at Saintbury, across a field from the road - on the off chance that it was in Gloucestershire: it is - as I discovered on my return; but quite near the Worcestershire border. In August 1990, Thomas, Paddy and I cycled to Arrow, and Saintbury Hill was on our route home. It was deemed too steep: "I'm going this way," said Thomas (pointing down the flat road towards Willersey). It was a sticky moment, but by dint of stick and carrot we did eventually all push our bikes up through the churchyard. There were no further complaints, as from the top, it's all more or less downhill.

William's "new" bike was from Honeybourne, four miles South of Bickmarsh. I came there circuitously from lunch at the Air Balloon - not a pub I shall seek out on another such occasion: perhaps demolition for the much-needed road improvements is the best thing that could happen to it, though how to preserve that evocative name?

I drove from there up the M5, turning off at Ashchurch, where I stopped to photograph St Andrew's: it stands like an oasis in the desert, surrounded as it is by industrial buildings, main roads and the railway. Gloucestershire is nothing if not a county of contrast.

80 and 100

Bobby Furber was my principal when I was articled as a solicitor in 1966. He may not have taught me much law, but he infected me with his enthusiasm for film and particularly music. "You must," he urged me, "buy Janet Baker's Saga records, Schumann and English Songs: only 12/6d each!" She was little known then, but even on my salary of £450 a year, I felt I could afford a gamble of that level: it paid off, and I still have the two 12" vinyls.

Now Dame Janet Baker, Happy 80th Birthday! I used to keep a record of singers and when/where/in what I had heard them. There can't be many in my book with more than the 33 entries I have for "Baker, Janet (m-s)". Over the period of more than a decade, she was a constant star in my progress to acquiring some sort of musical education, seen and heard mainly in London, but also in Birmingham, in Edinburgh, at Glyndebourne... and then (after her premature retirement) at the opening of the Elgar Birthplace Museum, where she made a pretty speech.

Another milestone: I have just added the 100th photograph of a Gloucestershire church to my website: still 400 or more to go though. The 99th was added yesterday, when I tracked down St John's, Pauntley. This must be one of the remotest churches in the county, but is well worth seeking out for its position. I was on my way to a GOGG garden visit: I had hoped Caroline would be able to come too, as the visit was to Schofields, near Newent. I had been there without her last year, and wanted to show her the amazing cacti, but she was ministering to our current Japanese student, Daisuke from Kanagawa.

"Looking, just looking, is all we have to do to see the essential truth," wrote the late lamented Roger Deakin: I am much enjoying reading his Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, lent to me by Chris Hoggett.

Dr. Philip Kingston RIP

I first met Philip in London, some 40 years ago, shortly after his marriage to my ebullient friend Rosalind Sutton. It was a shock at first that she had chosen as her husband one who rather obviously enjoyed a low profile; but getting to know Philip after the Kingstons had made their move to Gloucestershire, I found there was more and more about him to appreciate.

First and foremost, he was a family man, with plenty to be proud about in the way his two daughters have contributed. Professionally, he was held in high regard at Gloucester Hospital, where he was consultant haematologist, expert in treating Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. In the wider Gloucestershire community, he was valued for his work as an Advisor to the Summerfield Trust. On visits to The Croft, I was always amazed by his skill in the garden and DIY, and he was invariably good company around the dinner table - most recently in our house on 6th March, by when he knew he was living on borrowed time. And do Rosalind and Philip hold something of a record for visiting Landmark Trust properties? I wouldn't be surprised.

County boundaries

Gloucestershire is unusual in not having that many natural external boundaries: for a few miles, the Thames separates its South-East corner from Wiltshire, and in the West the Wye separates it from Wales, but otherwise the main boundaries are internal. The Severn is a major divide between prosperous East Gloucs. and unfashionable West. In the Cotswolds, house prices are at a premium compared with the Vale. Royal South Gloucestershire is another world from housing estates in Tewkesbury.

Today, in pursuit of more photographs for the Summerfield Trust (as mentioned last week), I drove to Cinderford, to see the vibrant Artspace project there; and from Cinderford to Cirencester. My two photographs here show the contrasting worlds I entered: below, Cinderford town centre, with its charity shops, and absence of any buildings of architectural note; and (above) Cirencester, with its elegant modern estates just adjacent to the town's beautiful market place.

Requiescat

The family feline has died - yesterday aged 13. He is interred under the ceanothus by the beech hedge.

Willum (not to be confused with grandson "William") was not, I am sad to say, blessed with a personality that endeared itself to me. He graduated from captivating kitten - here photographed at his Hampshire birthplace on the day some of us fell for him - to curmudgeonly cat, a dominant presence, but not a particularly loving one, at least until his final transformation to pathetic pussy. Perhaps he found Gloucestershire rather infra dig, as might a cricket enthusiast forced to move to a county captained by Tom Graveney having been used to A.C.D. Ingleby-Mackenzie.

Having said this, Willum is missed.

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.