Echo columnist and At Your Service writer Mike Amos gives his own appreciation of the departing Bishop

THE day after his consecration as Bishop of Durham, the morning after the carry on at the Cathedral, Michael Turnbull led the morning service at the small parish church in Ingleton, between Darlington and Barnard Castle.

Propped against the graveyard gate was a notice reading: "Slippy path, take care." It was, said the At Your Service column at the time, life's parable in four words.

Bishop Michael has generally proceeded with sure feet and with good humour. He has been a superb preacher, a radical thinker and a bishop equally comfortable in London or in Ludworth.

Some of his priests might claim that he has spent too much time on secular regional affairs - not least in his high profile support for regional government - and too little on their pastoral care; others suggest that he has appointed too many "specialist" ministers and too few to prime the parish pump.

Though his inter-personal skills are immense, the diocesan media machine remains stuck in the time of Moses, who dealt in tablets of stone.

To his regret, he has also failed to inspire the diocesan clergy cricket team past the qualifying stages of the Church Times Cup.

After that first service at Ingleton - "we know the imperfections of creation," he had said, "we know the pain and the reality when things go wrong" - we spoke and met fairly regularly.

On one occasion I was invited to lunch with the Bishop and his senior staff at Auckland Castle, an excellent meal cooked not by some episcopal aide-de-camp but by the ever charming Brenda Turnbull.

What I was doing there in the first place remains a holy mystery, however.

His vision, energy and acknowledgment of the urgent need for change within the Church of England have all been inspiring.

Had the notice board at Ingleton been bigger, or the writer more long winded, it might have added the line from the hymn about treading the steep and rugged pathway rejoicingly.

Very many in the Diocese of Durham will be grateful that for the past nine years Michael Turnbull has so vigorously joined them in the ascent