The American election was yesterday, with results beginning to emerge as we set out. The second lockdown starts tomorrow. But today it was time for a slight change to the routine. Out of the front door, turn left but leave the car behind. We had worked out that we could cover the section between Sandridge and Verulamium starting and ending at home. This was to be a leg where we really didn't need a map or guidebook. The good news was that the weather was perfect. There was light frost overnight but now there was a vivid blue cloudless sky with bright sunshine.
The route went through quite a few orienteering maps, starting with Highfield Park. The first 500 metres took us off that map and across the Alban Way which will be the route home three hours later. Across the Hatfield Road and then it was the long driveway up to Oaklands College, where Peter spent two years between Beaumont school and starting his degree at Chickenshed. This is another mapped area and we put on the South East Orienteering Association Sprint Championships there in 2014.
There is significant building work going on with new college buildings and student accommodation replacing the huge greenhouses that used to be there. Then we came to the fields where you never know what you are going to see. In the past it has been wallabies, pygmy goats and pigs. Today it turned out to be alpacas. Stopping to watch them gave an excuse for us both to remove a layer of clothing having now warmed up nicely.
We skirted round the edge of the Jersey Farm housing estate and moved on to the Jersey Farm map. Two red kites were flying low over the pond which was significantly larger than when I last updated the map. Then it was along the muddy edge of the field and on to Jersey Farm Woodland Park. This is the venue for our nearest parkrun. In the almost forgotten days when parkrun used to happen we oscillated between here (which is a bit undulating) and Ellenbrook Fields (which is flatter and faster and only three kilometres off to the east and where we managed to fit in a real orienteering event between lockdowns).
From the top of the hill we could see down into Sandridge with the church spire rising over the houses. An easy splash down through yet more mud along the field edge, a short stretch on the road and we had made it back to the Green Man and the start of today's section of the Hertfordshire Way. Conveniently the first thing we came to was the public toilets so Helen decided to make use of them. The route then goes past the football pitch, across two fields full of horses and gulls, and along a track up the edge of Heartwood Forest. We could have ventured through the gate into Heartwood itself and run up the edge of Langley Wood and through the oldest area of tree planting but we stuck to the moral high ground and the official path.
The south western edge of Heartwood is marked by the Midland Main Line which we crossed over a brick bridge leading into a farmyard. The highlight of the local bird life appeared to be the collared dove on the barn roof until I spotted two rheas in an enclosed courtyard. Alpacas and rheas: Hertfordshire wildlife at its best. Unfortunately, the photographic evidence is missing. Despite going through every imaginable menu on the camera I couldn't work out how to activate the manual focus, and all my attempts show wonderful detail of the chicken wire with just vague rhea shapes behind it. Looking it up at home later I was reminded the switch on the front goes between automatic and manual focus. A short stretch on a farm track through ploughed fields and past the St Albans School playing fields, and we reached the Harpenden Road.
The next section took us through the Childwickbury Estate. The Gatehouse on the Harpenden Road is built in Scottish baronial style complete with turrets and an intricate carved stone sign showing the date of 1897. Childwick Green consists of several large and impressive houses arranged along a short stretch of road with the small Church of St Mary hiding behind neatly sculpted hedges. And then it was down the main drive through well-tended parkland, only slightly spoiled by the large number of signs indicating that pretty much everything was private land and that trespassers were unlikely to be forgiven. A road off to the left offered glimpses of what anywhere else would be the main house and grounds but here are just the outbuildings. Childwickbury Manor itself is behind high walls and hedges further down the drive, but you never really get a good view. Famously this is where film director Stanley Kubrick lived and is now buried.
A heron appeared in a marshy area just off the track, but no amount of waving or jumping around could get it to move out of the shadows. The cows on the other side of the track were more forthcoming and posed with a ruined water tower looming out of the trees behind them. After getting a bit behind whilst I took photos, I caught up with Helen to find her deep in discussion with a walker going in the opposite direction. This turned out to be a member of Chigwell Orienteering Club who was walking the Hertfordshire Way clockwise and so was getting quite close to the end at Royston. He recognised Helen from the top she was wearing. It turned out that he had entered the event scheduled for Stanborough on Saturday which was one of the first casualties of Lockdown 2.0. I wondered how many other people that we passed each day were attempting the whole circuit.
Batchwood was now in view to the left with the sports centre and golf course behind it. This is where Helen spends election nights counting ballot papers, which is looking like a concept that America might want to consider. We passed the entrance to the goat farm and jogged along the edge of a large pine plantation before emerging into the open fields with views across the Ver valley to Gorhambury and beyond. Just round the corner we got the first view of St Albans Abbey emerging above the trees on the skyline and decided this was as good a place as any for a snack break. We could see Verulamium down to the left and then the River Ver and the Redbourn road running close below us with Gorhambury House visible on the far hillside.
The path down the edge of the golf course gave views of the hospital and the slightly more picturesque Abbey, and then we turned right just before Oysterfields Scout Hut where Helen used to run the Explorer unit that James was in. The remaining distance took us over two branches of the River Ver and gave a chance to check out the start of the road into Gorhambury to try to find out if it would be open at the weekend for the start of the leg to Redbourn. It had been closed permanently during the first lockdown, but the woman in the ticket office still didn't know what was going to be happening.
All that was left was to take the standard photos in St Michael's Church and then we went out through the side gate in the churchyard into the museum car park at Verulamium. This is the start of the St Albans parkrun and the end of today's section of the Hertfordshire Way. Now we just had to make our way home via whatever tourist attractions we felt like visiting, although we didn't feel the need to do the full extra loop into St Albans described in the guidebook. Helen was keen to go into the city to do a couple of things before everything closed down again so we set off towards the lakes. I mentally noted that the new play area that has replaced the tennis courts will need to be added to the orienteering map, but probably not before the Saturday Series planned for December which is another lockdown victim.
I managed a few photos of the bird life on the lake even though it was no more than the standard selection of coot, moorhen, mute swan, Canada goose, black-headed gull and another camera-shy heron that stayed safely in the trees on the island. Just past the fenced off stretch of Roman wall we came across a Hertfordshire Way sign on the edge of the lake that we had never noticed before, despite going past it on every lap of the lake at each parkrun (three laps on the old course, two laps on the new course).
After crossing the Rive Ver we passed Ye Olde Fighting Cocks which may or may not be the oldest pub in England. Climbing up through Abbey Orchard gave fantastic views of the Abbey with the clear blue sky behind. The recent restoration work was now complete and all the scaffolding had been removed so you could appreciate quite how big a building this is, with the longest cathedral nave in England at 65m. We headed between the West entrance and Abbey Gateway which is now part of St Albans School and on into Romeland. The school was the start and finish for the St Albans City Race in 2014. The Gateway is a huge archway with a small museum in it. All I remember from a previous visit is that they were keen to point out that Stephen Hawking was at school there. So was Nicholas Breakspear who is one of the two people from St Albans that always seem to get mentioned. He became Pope Adrian IV, the only British Pope but that was in 1154 so it may have slipped your mind. The second Albanian you should know about will appear soon enough, and Helen will force me to take a photo of an associated building.
We were now entering the centre of the city. Several roads were closed for "social distancing purposes", but it was market day and things still felt very busy. Helen headed for the Nat West bank to pay in our VAT refund check (I will avoid the temptation to recount a long story about how making tax digital didn't, at least as far as we were concerned) and then for HSBC to withdraw the cash that Peter needs to pay for his Chickenshed taxi each day. Chores done we headed back through Vintry Gardens to the Abbey, having had quite enough exposure to humanity for the day. I was all set to go back down through the Orchard to the river but Helen decided there were still sights to be seen so instead we went out onto Holywell Hill in search of a holy well.
But first we passed the Art Deco building that is now Café Rouge but was previously the Samuel Ryder Office and Seed Hall. Ryder was a seed merchant and as founder of the Ryder Cup he is the other famous Albanian you have been waiting for. A quick left and right into the housing estate and we ticked off the next target: a small hole in the ground covered by a small metal grille in a small brick square in a small garden marks the site of the original holy well that now has its own hill named after it.
Back to the River Ver and past the Lido we get to what everyone refers to as Sopwell Nunnery but is technically the ruins of Lee House. Helen took photos of a ginger cat skulking in the undergrowth whilst I tried to find an artistic angle for the ruined walls. The woodland along the river was as flooded as I have ever seen it, but the boardwalk kept us above the worst of it. Just past the allotments we climbed up onto the Alban Way and I suggested one final diversion. The Watercress Nature Reserve had been shut because of Covid every time I had run past over the summer. Today it was shut because they have working parties on a Wednesday. It's worth a visit if you can ever find it open. The third heron of the day taunted me from the top of a large tree staying just behind a large branch.
We settled for a steady run home along the Alban Way, which follows the route of the former railway between St Albans and Hatfield. Two huge brick arches take it under the London Road and the Midland Main Line railway. Then we crossed the path that I used to take when walking to and from the station for the train into London. I had averaged two or three trips a week into London for the past 20 years, but that all stopped in March. I haven't been at all since then and may never do it again, at least for work.
We passed Fleetville School and Morrisons. We got to know this route first when walking the boys to and from school. And then a final detour to the Spar shop to get the newspaper before reaching the car which was still there on the drive where it had been all day. Helen described it as a "weird" day, which indeed it was. But the good news is that it is done, we have finished the south western section from Royston to St Albans and we can now press on north west to Redbourn and beyond. Although we do of course come back this way when we pass through Shenley, five kilometres south of home, which should hopefully be early next year.
