Leap of Faith

There is only one church dedicated to St Faith in Gloucestershire, a remote and delightfully modest one: as I hadn't photographed it, and as it was my turn to plan today's expedition, I suggested the six of us should set out to walk to Farmcote from the car park of the nearest pub, the Plough at Ford. Did it prove a step too far? Despite another glorious day (no sign of the forecast "weather bomb"), I detected some murmuring in the ranks.

The first photo op came as we were booting up. Jackdaws Castle abuts the car park, and there was Jonjo O'Neill's string proceeding down towards us in stately fashion, before turning and galloping back up the hill, four by four, an exhilarating sight (only possible to stage if you have several million pounds in the bank).

Cutsdean, straggling along the upper reaches of the Windrush, possesses - nestling within a farmyard - a church of St James. Though it was locked, we could still admire the black scallop centred in the church gate. It looks recent - no coincidence, surely, that a James owns the village? [PS As it happens, it IS a coincidence!] The same lordly hand has left its impression upon the landscape that extends North from beside Beckbury Camp down to and beyond Stanway House. The prodigious avenue, all of two miles long, will have cost but a fraction of that string of racehorses, but will I trust endure long after horsiculture is forgotten.

Grandfathers' footsteps was the name of the game as we followed Campden Lane West from Stumps Cross.

The Windrush

Four of us, having parked under the vast Sycamore tree at Cold Aston this morning, walked to Aston Farm and then up the South bank of the Windrush, from where I photographed this peaceful scene. Another idyllic Spring day!

It follows two evenings out with Shakespeare. As You Like It performed by the Tobacco Factory at Cheltenham's Everyman Theatre last night, and Henry IV Part 1 relayed from Stratford to our Cineworld on Wednesday. In his magnum opus, Harold Bloom writes, "Shakespeare's invention of the human, already triumphant through his creation of Falstaff, acquired a new dimension with Rosalind... the most admirable personage in the whole of Shakespeare,... the most remarkable and persuasive representation of a woman in all of Western literature." What a privilege to see two excellent productions of these masterpieces on consecutive days!

No punts in view

In the Parks this morning, the Cherwell had almost overflown onto the Oxford University cricket ground. And the Windrush Valley, below us as we drove home, was flooded worse than I have ever seen it. When will our politician begin to make (and take action upon) the connection between these extraordinary conditions - repeated all round the world - and the climate change we humans are effecting?