For some reason Helen had decided that it would be entertaining to run a leg in snow, and the weather forecast the day before showed that this might well be the case. As it turned out the snow didn't appear, but we got a light frost and thick fog instead and the temperature never got much above freezing all day.
The initially chosen parking spot in Potters Bar turned out to be a bit busy so we ended up with half a kilometre of road run at the start of the day but saved it from the end of the day. Once we'd finally made it off the road there was a muddy section through the woods (complete with old ladies and small dogs having trouble getting through the mud) before we got back to the familiar mud of the path leading out of Morven.
The scrubby open area lower down the path was obviously a frost hollow and the trees and bushes emerged from the fog covered with white frost. We waded through an extra deep section of mud to get back to where we had stopped on the previous leg and headed east through a series of large puddles just for a change.
The road section to Northaw was notable for the large puddle which we had to cross the road to get around, and then Northaw appeared through the fog. Helen set about reading the list of best kept small villages in Hertfordshire that adorns the village sign. The list runs from 1957 to 1999, which is when Northaw won. The sign was obviously erected then but it looks like it has not been touched since.
Somewhere in the fog behind the village green was St Thomas a Becket Church. When we got close enough to see it this turned out to be a lot newer than most churches we had been past so far and was also notable for not being built with flint.
It was now all downhill through the woods and fields south of the mansions that line the Ridgeway in Cuffley. Helen's phone went off at which point she realised she was meant to be in a Whatsapp meeting with friends but this rapidly got put back to the afternoon.
The birding interest for the leg all turned up at once with a large flock of redwings in the trees by the road, a kestrel perching on the power line and finally a flock of at least 21 red-legged partridge just about visible through the fog in the field just across the road.
Passing under the Hertford Loop railway we reached the junction of the Hertfordshire Way. We headed north towards Cuffley towards the end of Leg 9 and the start of Leg 10 according to the official guidebook. Leg 10 then goes from Cuffley to Hertford but has an alternative Leg 10A and 10B which start in Cuffley and loop round further to the east on the way to Hertford. We intend to do both routes to Hertford so we will be back in this muddy field at some point to set off east towards the Lea Valley.
Confusingly this means that this part of the route is both clockwise and anti-clockwise so we started seeing white signs with green text (the clockwise route for people doing the end of Leg 10A) as well as the green signs with white text that we are used to (the anticlockwise route for people doing the end of Leg 9). This only lasted a short while since we were soon in Cuffley. The route emerges onto the road at the Community Centre which had been the scene of the Hertfordshire Orienteering Club Christmas Social at almost exactly this time for the past two years but today it was firmly shut.
We pressed on past Cuffley station and then spent a long time on the road contouring through Cuffley past a varied selection of large houses. The end of the road brought us to the entrance to the Scout Camp at Tolmers where we have all spent quite a lot of time on various scouting activities or when it is used as car parking for orienteering events on Northaw Great Wood. Another pill box showed up in Home Wood behind Tolmers and then we had reached Carbone Road at the corner of the now-closed outdoor centre.
The kilometre on the road from here up to Newgate Street was easily the worst part of the Hertfordshire Way so far. The road is narrow, it has no footpath and cars travel very fast. We pressed ourselves into the hedge a couple of times as cars went past and set quite a pace up the hill to get it over with. St Mary's Church finally appeared out of the fog and we could get off of the main road.
We'll return to park at Newgate Street for the next leg and so get to repeat this next two kilometres out of the village. In theory there should be views down to the south over Northaw Great Wood in the valley. As it was I could just about make out the shape of three horses on the far side of the field and everything beyond that was hidden in the fog. A walker was sitting on a tree stump at the point where we turned off the Hertfordshire Way for the day and James and I both spotted that he had two rucksacks. The missing person showed up just after this trying to look inconspicuous behind a distant hedge. Helen is somewhat better at choosing where to stop when needed.
The long, flat, muddy, fog-bound section continued as we headed westwards towards Brookmans Park. Passing through a farmyard we met a farmer complete with shotgun and a mallard duck that was probably going to be dinner that evening. We passed several small ponds and then a large lake in the garden of the next big house but any other ducks had obviously decided they had somewhere else to be. The next large house had some impressive topiary around it and a small decorative wooden gateway and had decided it needed a tree-lined avenue to add to the grandeur. The avenue had been planted with what looked like sycamores disappearing into the fog. These had had made it to about three metres tall but are going to need quite a few more years before they reach 30 metres and are suitably magnificent. We have passed a lot of these planted avenues and this simply reminds you that they all started out like this.
The next thing to emerge from the fog was a large water tower followed by the satellite dishes and aerials at Brookman's Part transmitting station. At the base of the water tower I spotted a spigot mortar emplacement in the trees although I have to admit I knew to look out for it having spent quite a long time on the excellent North Mymms History Project website. The path went between fences decorated with warning notices about high voltages and radio frequency hazards. A corner of the field was filled with satellite dishes which apparently make up the Brookmans Park teleport. The legs of the aerial towers were all mounted in a complicated insulating system. Somewhere underground there is a nuclear bunker. This was possibly the most interesting hundred metres of the journey so far. And just to make it even more memorable the fences meant that people had to stick to the narrow path which may have made it the muddiest we had been on yet.
We crossed the Great North Road again and ran down past yet more large houses before getting to Chancellor's school where Helen used to organise D of E expeditions and training. This local knowledge proved useful since she knew where the unsigned path was that we needed to take to escape from the roads and houses of Brookmans Park and get to Gobions Garden and Open Space.
Before we set off Helen had decided that this needed to be a 21-kilometre leg so that she could get her Strava half-marathon badge for December. This meant we could take a meandering route through Gobions to take in the things we had missed on the previous leg. We started with a lap of Gobions Pond. This provided a handy bench for snacks and I found a cormorant sitting on a dead tree in the pond.
We then dropped down to Gobions Wood and I set off to look for all the things I had read about. We found the brick bridge, the view along the path to Folly Arch just visible through the fog, the redwoods and the Canal. We overtook two small children who were just about managing to keep moving through the mud even though it was deeper than their wellies. But somehow we managed to miss the bowling green which is now covered in trees anyway but was somewhere inside the loop that we did.
We slithered through the mud across the fields and up the hill to Folly Arch and then did the final road section back to the car. This turned out to be half a kilometre too short so we needed to do a few quick laps of the side roads to get the full half-marathon distance. No red kite appeared to keep up our record of seeing one on every leg. But almost the first thing I saw after we set off home was a red kite.
