Time for one last leg this year. Newgate Street was less foggy then when we were last here but still very cold. We set off down the long muddy path we had already done and found that it was now slightly less muddy, mainly because all the mud and puddles had frozen. Northaw Great Wood was still down there in the valley somewhere but we were left imagining it since there was still enough mist to keep it hidden.
We crossed a road and set off down the wonderfully named Cucumber Lane. The OS map shows a trig point here but there was no sign of it. Strangely we still haven't yet seen a trig point on this trip round Hertfordshire.
The route soon left the road and headed down the undulating Hornbeam Lane through a varied selection of fields and woodland. This was to be a theme for a day where the scenery seemed to be constantly changing. We had certainly left behind the huge open hedgeless fields of earlier legs.
Another theme for the day was big houses. The first one came complete with oversized Christmas decorations on the gate and a large livery stables next to it. We even saw a woman riding a horse in one of the dressage arenas which was a first. Business was obviously good at the stables since the next 400m of road was newly block paved and had a wide sandy strip down one side for those arriving by horse.
Crossing the road took us through a somewhat more run-down farm with large dogs barking behind high hedges and fences. This part of Hertfordshire obviously has a higher class of villain since the police warning notices were targeted at "hare coursers and poachers" rather than the "criminals" on posters elsewhere. We were soon passing Harefield Wood but any hares were keeping well hidden or had been poached already.
There was now a strange loop around West End. We got within 10 metres of the path junction to turn right to Essendon but for some reason the Hertfordshire Way takes a one kilometre detour to the left at this point. My guess would be that someone who was involved in defining the original route wanted to make sure that it went past their front door. But anyway, we got to see the delights of The Candlestick pub, a very nice cottage with its own Victorian post-box set in a flint wall, and two enormous houses.
One of these was still being built and was a large stone building. It obviously isn't going down well with the locals and the couple we talked to as we were passing said that it was known locally as the "Town Hall". The other enormous house came with an even more enormous garden complete with everything you would expect: topiary, rock garden, tennis court, stone balustrade, lake, scattered statuary, small temple at bottom of garden. Yours for under £5 million it turns out.
Getting back to almost where we had been ten minutes earlier we turned left and headed down the edge of a field, across Essendon Brook and up into what the map shows as Backhouse Wood. Today's red kite was just about visible in the distance. A large fence ran alongside the path in the wood and at the top corner we found a notice saying this was a "United Nations Global Compact" project with "5 Year Wildlife and Woodland Restoration in Progress". This seemed odd but one photo was enough so I set off up hill. At that point James yelled quietly and I turned round to see James and Helen staring at something inside the fence.
What they were staring at was a white wallaby. I spent ages taking bad photos from a long distance trying not to disturb it. Eventually I just started to walk closer and soon got right up the fence. It just sat there and stared back at me. Then James spotted another one some way further back in the enclosure. Quite what they were doing inside a UN-sponsored fence in a Hertfordshire wood was not clear. It still isn't after some extensive Google searching. There does not appear to be a single mention of them anywhere we can find. Until I publish this of course.
Continuing into Essendon we got a distant view of St Mary the Virgin Church but turned off down School Lane before reaching it. Essendon Golf Course was open with people playing and a long queue for hot drinks at a van in the car park. Quite a change from the empty golf courses we had run through during previous varieties of lockdown. I stopped to photograph a flock of at least 30 redwings in the next field and Helen ended up talking to another local walker. It turned out that in our excitement about the wallabies we had failed to spot the llamas that were also somewhere in the enclosure.
We waded through the mud and standing water on the outfield of the cricket pitch just before Little Berkhamsted and then passed St Andrew's Church. Stratton's Tower emerged from the mist in the next field and looked interesting enough for a short detour to get a closer look. It was built in around 1789, but probably not by an admiral so he could see ships in the Thames as one of the stories goes. But it does feature on the sign when you enter the village, where you also discover a date of AD827.
One more muddy valley crossing and a small section through runnable woodland brought us to the road into Bayford. This led to the village pond and village sign which marked the end of today's section of the Hertfordshire Way. This was another good one in terms of getting back to Royston since the big loop out west and then back east meant we had managed over 12 kilometres on the route but only had five kilometres back to Newgate Street. We were heading south roughly parallel to the railway away to the east nearly all the way back on two convenient paths through mainly fields and wood.
Leaving Bayford we passed the wooded Bayford Moat where Helen used to run Guide camps, although not for at least 25 years. Then it was along Stocking Lane which presumably refers to previous local industry. We had to move aside to let the post van past on its long journey to a house in the middle of nowhere. Well, not quite nowhere since the next highlight was the confusingly named Brookmans Park VOR sitting in a field just off the track. We have already been to the Bovingdon VOR on Leg 11 and to Brookmans Park on Leg 17, but for some reason this navigational aid is seven kilometres from where it claims to be.
There was a brief run along White Stubbs Lane, which is the familiar route to Wormley and will turn up again when we are on the other loop to Hertford, and then the final track led all the way to Bayford. A large fenced area of woodland was full of rubbish but it all appeared to have been neatly sorted. A dark shape in the far corner of a field turned out to be the muntjac that I had been expecting to see ever since we left Royston.
A final large house surrounded by farm buildings, tennis courts and another disused golf course turned out to be Ponsbourne Park. "Nestled amid rolling landscapes deep in the Hertfordshire countryside, the Ponsbourne Park effortlessly mirrors its idyllic surrounds" allegedly. Well, the bit about idyllic surround and rolling landscape is definitely true, but the hotel was closed so we didn't get to check the effortless mirroring.
The road took us up the hill to Newgate Street, past the church and on to the village hall and that was it for 2020. By my calculations we have another twelve legs to go and we should get to Royston before the end of March. We shall see.
