The Number 32 bus for Newent, leaves the transport hub in Gloucester, at 20 minutes to the hour, every hour. Today, after buying a coffee and a native delicacy known as a, "Gloucester Drip," for sustenance, I boarded the aforementioned vehicle at 12:40. Waved my bus pass over the card reader, and headed for the front seat on the upper deck. I paused a moment, noting that it was a sunny afternoon, and I needed to recall which side of the aisle I needed to veer to, to avoid being roasted. I veered the wrong way. Should you ever find yourself in this dilemma, go right.
It was the perfect day for sight-seeing. Rolling down memory lane,the bus carried me past the farm where fifty-five years ago, I picked blackcurrants: five shillings a bucket. Three buckets a day. A Guinea was good money back then.... William came with me once, but he was a hindrance. Not a lot of fruit-picking happened that day.
We were risk-takers, and that's all I'm going to say on the matter.
In those days, before gang-masters and health and safety, the farmers would send rickety old coaches, some pre-war, I swear, into the housing estates, to be boarded by mothers, their offspring, and teens out for adventure and pocket-money. We'd be collected around 8am and be returned just after 4pm. tired and triumphant, clutching our well-gotten gains.
The farm now grows pumpkins, and runs events during school holidays for bored kids.
I see the low-lying fields near the Severn are flooded. I hear it's been the wettest March for ever, or was it a decade? Some time, anyway.
Highnam village is the first stop. It's big enough to have a Manor House and a neogothic church designed by Pugin who also, I believe, had a hand in the Palace of Westminster. I visited it once. Very ornate, possibly artsy crafty, definitely mock- medieval.
I expect Ivor Gurney played the organ there, but you'd have to check. I'd love to hear 1662 evensong sitting in an ornate pew, or down on an art-deco kneeler, but I doubt that happens now, and besides I'm Catholic, and we don't, "err and stray like lost sheep," we get straight to the point, and SIN.
When were you last privileged to take the best seat on a double- decker? I'd advise you give it a go! Peering over hedge tops into wooded gardens, fulfilled the nosey-Parker urge, and the views over the countryside, Malvern Hills to the right of me, and the Cotswolds behind me, cannot be enjoyed from a car, even if you're not driving it. Wonderful.
Fifteen minutes in, skirting Tibberton at Barber's Bridge, I remember the tiring walk up the hill to my home, and I call my husband, with a request to pick me up from the bench outside the lbrary, claiming, "Heavy Shopping." To my amazement, he agrees.
There's a monument at Barber's Bridge to, " The Welsh of Lord Herbert's Force who fell in the combined attack of Sir William Waller and Colonel Massey on their entrenchment at Highnam March 24, 1643."
With a touching irony, the monument is constructed from the stones of the walls of the City of Gloucester, that they would have attempted to take, and that King Charles II ordered torn down after returning from exile.
According to which is probably a Civil War legend, the Parliamentary Army led by Col Massey, stopped here to get shaved, before a skirmish with Lord Herbert's Welshmen, creating mayhem and resulting in the (possibly accidental) burning down of the parish church.
The troops were drunk, I believe.
Passing through Highnam I see the tower of Pauntley Church in the near distance. Pauntley is the hamlet which is famous for the fact that Dick Whittington left it, and I was headteacher of its school for thirteen years. 1996-2009.
Upleadon next. There's a garage here, and a turning to Hartpury, where there is a magnificent ancient tithe barn, and a medieval bee shelter.
We're rolling along apace now. There are sheep in the fields in season, and solar farms. Ten minutes to Newent.
The 32 pulls up outside the library, on time, and here's Ray, parked up a whole waiting to drive me up the hill and home.
