IT IS a lovely part of the world, but villages along the Golden Valley, in Hereford diocese, are very scattered, and the Revd Simon Lockett is the incumbent of five of them. He lives in Madley, which, he says, is probably the most accessible of them all. But the people of Peterchurch, Turnastone, Vowchurch and Tyberton, together with their widely spread farms, do not often have a chance to see their Rector; so he has decided to spend more time going to see them.

His parishioners have recently helped him to buy a 1972 VW camper van, which he can park in a field and live in for four days at a time in one or other of the villages. He takes his own water, he says, and with his laptop and mobile phone he can be quite self-sufficient (above). “People can visit me and have a cup of tea.”