This week, Breakfast reporter Claire Carter has been visiting some shining beacons in rural Gloucestershire, with today's trip taking her shopping in Down Ampney.

The locals there run one of the county's longest running Community Shops. Down Ampney is one of 11 villages in the County that have decided to club together an army of volunteers to keep the village shops alive. The shops are not just about offering the basics of newspapers and milk - some of them have cafes, post offices, fresh bread and a library built into them as well.

As a boy I grew up taking regular trips from Cheltenham to the Forest of Dean to spend time with my grandparents and family. My Great Grandad, and in my childhood my Great Uncle, owned and ran the very traditional village shop in Bream. I remember school holidays helping to weigh out sweets from the array of glass jars behind the counter and pulling the cheese wire across the huge lumps of Gloucestershire cheese. We then hopped into the Morris Minor van to chug up and down the hills of the Forest making deliveries of fresh goodies in white paper bags. The business is no more, and the shop building is now sadly flats, so power to the people of Gloucestershire who decide to do something for themselves.

The Stanley Mill is Grade 1 listed and has been described by historians as one of the most important surviving textile mills in the South West. Architecturally it is stunning, especially inside, but it is largely empty and unloved.

So should developers be allowed to preserve the mill by converting the building and surrounding land into flats and housing? There are some beautiful examples of converted mills in Gloucestershire, but should Stanley Mill be the next?

Our week long look at rural Gloucestershire focused on the lack of regular public transport for our County villages.

I was joined in the studio by Phil Williams, the County Council's Passenger and Transport manager, who told us that we have to use the current buses to enable us to get more. But if the buses aren't running regularly enough to persuade us to rest our cars why would we use them?

We heard about a village bus service that has been set up and run by the Community in Ashleworth. Is this something that's happening where you live? I'd love to hear from you.

As we drive through Gloucestershire's countryside we pass, or get stuck behind, many a trundling tractor, but I didn't realise just how many of our farmers' tractors are going missing, and that they could be heading as far away as Iraq and Australia.

The National Farmers Union estimate there's at least one case a fortnight here in the County, so on Wednesday's show, Roy Limbrick, who runs a beef and cereals farm in Sherbourne, asked us all to keep an eye out for unusual activity around Gloucestershire farms. Roy and his neighbours had their tractors stolen over the last Bank Holiday, so now during a busy time in the agricultural calendar, he's without a vehicle and waiting for his insurance company to pay up.

Apparently these vehicles can be worth up to £100,000 and the trade which started with diggers in cities has spread to farms. Are you a farmer who's been hit by these thieves - tell me your story?

This week the long awaited demolition of the Merchants Quay begins.

Once a home to a variety of shops and a café, this is what it's replacement is going to look like.

Let me what you think and what you'd like to see in its place?

I spent my Bank Holiday Monday watching grown men dressed as foxes stagger to the floor after the Tetbury Woolsack Races. It was a busy Tetbury where crowds may have been bolstered by the cancellation of the official Cheese Rolling at Coopers Hill, so I was intrigued to hear on today's show how the unofficial event was received, and if the official Cheese Roll can return.

2nd placed Jamie Lee from Brockworth joined us before heading off to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder. Despite his injury he'd enjoyed a much more local and low key event "as it used to be", and wants big screenings in Brockworth to fend off the large crowd numbers.

Official organiser Richard Jefferies joined me in the studio and told us how ancient laws make an all ticket Cheese Roll impossible. Other text suggestions included spreading the races over a weekend. What do you think? How can Coopers Hill cope with 15,000 people from all over the world?

See a video from yesterday's unofficial cheese rolling on the BBC Gloucestershire website.