After a lot of studying of the weather forecast we decided that Sunday was the better day of the weekend, and that getting out early was the best bet for keeping dry. So we found ourselves at the car park at Gustard Wood well before 9.00 getting ready to set off. The journey so far had been notable as the first time we had stuck to the back roads rather than heading for the A1(M). But it soon became apparent that we might have been a little bit over-enthusiastic since the predicted early drizzle was still around.
An easy first kilometre got us back onto the Hertfordshire Way at Lamer Park and we could set off south through the well-tended parkland. I had remarked on Wednesday that the contour features in the fields didn't look natural and were more like a golf course and this was quickly confirmed when we found a notice explaining the history of the site. Things soon started to get familiar since we had now got onto the area used for an HH Tuesday evening street event starting from Wheathampstead in August 2019. We even managed to identify the control on the fence post that Helen had missed since the Hertfordshire Way sign she was looking for was only visible from one direction, which wasn't the direction she approached it from.
Continuing towards Wheathampstead we crossed the disused Luton, Dunstable & Welwyn Junction railway which is now the Ayot Greenway. Turning left would have taken us in just three kilometres to Sherrardspark Wood and into Welwyn Garden City. But instead we continued south and reached the "River Lea or Lee" (as the Ordnance Survey seems to insist on calling it). The water was rushing through very fast and was quite close to flooding the road and even the separate (and higher) footpath bridge. This was another case where we knew what was just a bit further east. The River Lea runs through Brocket Hall and Lemsford Springs and then into Stanborough Park, and we had walked this stretch when doing the Welwyn Garden City Centenary Walk in September. It then joins the River Mimram in Hertford and we will be seeing it again at a later date on this trip around Hertfordshire.
The path now passed to the east of Wheathampstead along the Devil's Dyke. The entrance is marked by two brick gate posts with inlaid memorial stones explaining some of the history. The dyke itself is fifteen metres deep, forty metres wide and 460 metres long. It was built 2000 years ago by the Catuvellauni as part of the defences of a settlement shown as Belgic Oppidum on OS maps. The memorial stones settle for saying that it was "probably" where Julius Caesar defeated the British King Cassivellaunus in 54 B.C. Not the best-known of British kings. For some reason I had never been through it before, but it was a standard feature on the chippy hikes that Helen used to do with the scouts.
We passed the white-brick Beech Hyde Farm with its strange chimneys and the words "Model Dairy" in brick set into one of the outbuildings. We had now made enough progress to reach the day's literary interlude as we reached The John Bunyan pub. This would have been convenient for John Bunyan when he was staying in the nearby cottage which exists now only as John Bunyan's chimney. Though to be honest it is a Grade II listed chimney according to the sign.
The drizzle had just about stopped and patches of blue sky were beginning to appear. Groups of cyclists rode by and we debated why none of them were women. After a short stretch on the road we turned left along the edge of a flooded field and came to the start of Heartwood Forest. When we moved to St Albans 21 years ago this was still mainly open farmland with a few patches of trees. The Woodland Trust have now turned it into the largest continuous new native forest in England, and over 600,000 new trees have been planted. We have spent several days planting various bits of the area over the past few years, so we can claim at least a few hundred of these new trees as our own, and I also produced the orienteering map. The Hertfordshire Way was established in 1996 and so essentially skirts the edge of Heartwood. It would be very easy to add a few extra kilometres to take in most of the site, including the Arboretum which contains examples of all 60 native British trees.
For now we stuck to the traditional route and headed past fields of clover and the newly planted orchard before reaching Sandridge. The spire of St Leonard's Church at Sandridge was covered in a large flock of starlings. And then it was on to the road junction in the middle of the village and to the end of today's section of the Hertfordshire Way. I decided that The Green Man marked the end, but I could equally well have chosen the adjacent Rose and Crown or Heartwood Tea Rooms. At this point we are just under six kilometres from the car but less than four kilometres from home as the crow flies.
We ran the familiar route through the farm, past the car park and the scout hut and up to the top of the hill to have a snack break on a bench with views back over towards Hatfield and Potters Bar. Four or five skylarks flew around and made a lot of noise on the fields behind us. Our route then continued through what was just open grassland when we first visited but is now quite thick woodland. This was part of the route of the Parkrun that used to take place at Heartwood, but which has now migrated to Jersey Farm. Part of the problem that caused the move was how muddy the paths were getting, and it was certainly very muddy today.
I had deliberately chosen the route through Heartwood to go through the area where James and I planted trees as part of his D of E Bronze award. Back in November 2012 it had been a field of bare earth. Eight years later we found ourselves running through woodland with birch trees well over three metres tall and a variety of other species. Somewhere just off to the right should be a group of oak trees laid out in an "HH" shape if they have all survived this far. We had a short stop to watch a large flock of nearly 50 goldfinches flying around the trees in the hedgerow and various smaller bushes before they disappeared off. And with that we went through the gate at the exit of Heartwood and moved on to the next orienteering map of the day: Nomansland Common.
We stuck to the trees, brambles, gorse and heather to the north of the road rather than the open grassland with scattered thickets south of the road. We turned left just before reaching the cricket pitch, The Wicked Lady, and the Arboretum, and headed up the hill towards Wheathampstead. There was a short period of confusion at a path junction in woodland where the OS map showed open fields, but we pressed on and everything worked out as expected. This was enough to trigger Helen to buy a new copy of the map when she got home, which does indeed show the woodland that was missing from the 20-year-old map we had been using. We met someone Helen knew (and used to work with) as we reached the outskirts of Wheathampstead. She'd already spotted someone running past in Heartwood who was probably a parent she knew from Beaumont School.
The road through the housing estate at the top of the hill gave views down to the spire on the church in the trees in the valley. As we got closer a second smaller spire also appeared. This was on the Old Church School; a very distinctive building in Decorated Gothic style built in 1862 with attractive flint and brick zig-zag decoration. The school is right next to St Helen's Church which was yet another impressive building in a large well-tended churchyard. We decided that Wheathampstead had quite a lot going for it.
On the edge of the village a buzzard flew low across the track and we turned north to cross the River Lea and the Lower Luton Road before starting the final climb back to Gustard Wood. The fields here were yet again covered in an almost unbroken layer of small stones. The dark shape sitting on the power line ahead turned out to be another kestrel. Leaving the fields we crossed the Mid Herts Golf Course which seemed very busy, presumably with people getting in a final round before things shut down again.
There was just time to fit in St Peter's Gustard Wood Church before the final short stretch back to car. I commented that this was the first leg where we hadn't seen a red kite. Almost as I said it a red kite floated out above the trees ahead of us.
