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.

Don Hunter RIP

When walking the Gloucestershire Way last year, I called at Don Hunter's workshop in Shipton Oliffe. We haven't had any need for furniture repair for a year or two, but over more than three decades Don had always been our man when something antique needed fixing properly: surely nobody took more care or can have been more respected.

Besides our professional contact over the years, I counted Don amongst my oldest friends, having met him in 1973 at North Farm House soon after I arrived in the neighbouring parish of Sevenhampton. Through his trademark smiles and just a few words, I have been able to follow the blooming of his marriage to Pauline, and of the welling pride he had in Andrew, their only child.

That day in March 2009 Don was with a customer: I told his colleague Carl that I was on a mission and wouldn't dally. So I moved over the road to pay a quick visit to St Oswald's before walking on through the village.

Don wasn't tied up for long, however, and came running across to the church after me. "You look different," I said. "Yes, my hair has gone curly: I've been in hospital," he explained, "for Treatment." Of course I knew what this must mean, but Don was in no mood to yield to self-pity. Indeed, he was his usual optimistic self, full of trust in the God he had long known so well and personally.

In Saturday's Gloucestershire Echo, his death was announced - "peacefully, at home.. Wonderful husband... much loved father... dearly loved by many." That last certainly includes me.

The Gloucestershire Way - again

This afternoon Caroline dropped me off at Birdwood, on her way to Ross-on-Wye, and I walked - aided by my new Leki - a further seven or so miles of the Gloucestershire Way, to Gloucester. Perfect weather for it! Warm, still, and bone dry underfoot - it's a section which could get extremely boggy, I imagine.

There was nobody else about, either on the path or on the River Severn, but I saw quite a bit of birdlife: a heron and a black swan flew off separately as I walked along the river past Minsterworth, and there were many more swans and lots of duck on the reservoir near Linton Farm. Had I been foraging, there were potatoes left lying around after their harvest; pears and apples - orchards abound - and of course it's been a brilliant year for blackberries.

The drawbacks about this section of the Way are the number of stiles and gates, and the traffic - both road and rail. And this photograph shows how it is impossible to see Gloucester Cathedral (from the West) without peering through a forest of pylons and their cables.

The Gloucestershire Way - another bite

What a beautiful Indian Summer day it was today! Caroline and I caught buses to Winchcombe, and walked the dozen or so miles from there to Tewkesbury. It's the last leg of the Gloucestershire Way, but we have still to go back and do the first three.

Surprisingly, for quite a modern long distance path, it's not well signposted. So, for instance, we got lost for a while on top of Langley Hill above Winchcombe - and this wasn't the only stretch that needs attention.

Although we were never far from a main road, we passed through some spectacular countryside. After looking back from our first climb over a view that took in both Cleeve Common and Meon Hill, the Malverns and Bredon then became the focus. My photograph shows Tewkesbury Abbey with the Malverns behind, taken on Crane Hill above Oxenton.

(I've mentioned previously my other bits of Gloucestershire Way walking - home to Coberley in January; Coberley to Notgrove; Notgrove to Stow, and Stow to Winchcombe.)

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.)

Eight plus one deer

Nearly an ideal day today for a long walk! Not too hot, pretty dry underfoot, and nobody about on the Gloucestershire Way between Stow and Winchcombe. But hardly a moment of sunshine, alas.

This stretch of the Way passes through some of the most remote parts of the Cotswolds. In the long stretch between Condicote and Ford you hardly see one house. And so, of course, the deer have nothing to fear. I particularly liked the albino one on the right of this group. (I am informed it may be a fallow deer amongst roe!)

Notgrove

More Gloucestershire Way walking today, from Notgrove to Stow-on-the-Wold. It was a beautiful day for it. The Pulhams bus did what it said in the timetable, and it was an easy walk from the main road into Notgrove village, glistening in the early morning frost.

I mentioned before how I first heard about the Second Vatican Council. Well, tomorrow is the exact anniversary of its being announced by the good Pope John XXIII 50 years ago.

I read in this week's Tablet that one of only two aims set out by the Pope on 25th January 1959 was to issue "a renewed cordial invitation to the faithful of the separated Churches to participate with us in this feast of grace and brotherhood." Rather appropriate therefore that I should be walking with a former ambassador to the Holy See. He said that I, as a Catholic, must find it sad to go into beautiful old churches (like St Bartholomew's, Notgrove), and think that they were "once yours, but no longer." "Not at all," I responded!

I just rejoice that they are well cared for, and that such treasures as this early 14th Century Madonna and child (in Notgrove's vestry) and the even earlier (possibly Saxon?) crucifix in the East wall are available for all to wonder at. We have had our ups and downs along the ecumenical way opened up by the Council. This last decade in particular seems to have seen a stalling in the process, which is sad. But we are in a totally different atmosphere to that which prevailed pre-Vatican II: my mother never went into a non-Catholic church except for a wedding or funeral.

And the good health of specifically Christian organisations such as Pax Christi and Christian Ecology Link demonstrates that we can today work together in areas where we are not in the least troubled by doctrinal differences.

The Gloucestershire Way

Yesterday, I set out to fulfil a New Year's Resolution: to walk the Gloucestershire Way. I shall leave the more remote bits till later in the year. It was easiest to start near home, from Crickley Hill.

The photograph was taken looking back North-Westwards at the Hill, across the A417. It must be the most hazardous crossing on all the 100-mile route: three lanes of traffic without any central reservation. But walk for five minutes up and away from the road and - noise apart - you are in the most glorious landscape: on a day like yesterday especially.

You couldn't find a better example of Cotswold walling than here at Coberley, supporting the garden of the former Rectory, a couple of miles down the Gloucestershire Way from Crickley Hill.

The church is certainly in need of a signpost: you can't see it at all from the village road. You approach it through a gate in a house wall, leading to a garden path. It's what Pevsner calls "the shadow of an outer courtyard of Coberley Court (demolished 1790)." The church contains some handsome 14th Century memorials, but was more or less entirely rebuilt 500 years later. Apart from its situation, it's not one of my favourite buildings though it feels much loved and cared for.



Pevsner seems to have missed the rather mysterious face in the farmhouse wall high above the entrance to the church from the road.