September 20, 2012: Flamstead to Hemel Hemstead

And so the day came at last – a final stage on the Chiltern Way, the twentieth day of a project that we had begun seven years earlier. And how different were our lives then.

Janet, here from Michigan for an extended visit, was left in charge of the dog on this day and I actually left the house shortly before she and Fritz began their morning in the park, that is about 8:45. On the platform at Baker Street I bought some items for a trailside lunch as I switched from the Bakerloo to the Circle Line. Two stops later I was at Euston Square station – where I continued forward to the train station itself. There was only a short queue and I had soon purchased my return ticket for Hemel Hempstead. With my two passes this came to only £4.15, a price I soon had to repeat as Tosh, coming up behind me and fearing a higher surcharge, asked, “How much was it?”

We had plenty of time for additional errands – Tosh needed to buy some lunch materials as well and she also wanted to visit the loo – where she was soon helping strangers make change so they could afford the 30 pence fee. Our Midland train was by now trackside and we had already been seated for five minutes or so when it pulled out at 9:54. Only a stop at Watford Junction offered any delay and by 10:25 we were arrived.

A line of cabs manned by the usual Asian phalanx was approached and we were soon on our way back to Flamstead. It was a longer journey than usual (Tosh couldn’t believe that we were only meant to walk eight miles) and cost over £20 but, after all, we had saved a great deal on trainfare in purchasing our returns. And today we would have no race to meet a taxi rendezvous at the end – for we were walking back to Hemel Hemstead itself.

I had arranged OS map and pages from Moon’s guidebook in my map case on the train (remembering how everything went walkabout as I tried to order these things last time) and I was already wearing compass and whistle around my neck so, after being deposited in the parking lot of the Three Blackbirds, I had only to fish my camera out and we were ready to go. It was 10:50.

To regain our route we merely had to turn left at the corner and walk past the churchyard, where I paused to take the first photo. Across the road a metal Chiltern Way sign beckoned us to enter a narrow alleyway and soon we had reached the entryway to our first field. We crossed many of these on this day but, fortunately, there was always a post-harvest footpath pressed into the earth. Last time’s rough passage across the newly churned field on the other side of Flamstead had left my right thigh with a muscle pull that still twanged a bit with each step – but I just ploughed on (pun intended), assisted, of course, by my reliable walking stick.

The weather was perfect for walking – sun and high clouds and a fresh breeze blowing throughout the day. I wore my blue sweatshirt and brown trousers throughout the march and never felt the need to add or subtract.

At the end of our first field we were greeted by a curious Boxer with a substantial tail and a granddad and granddaughter with the latter’s push chair. Inquiries were made about our destination and a totally erroneous suggestion was offered on how far we still had to go. We had reached Pietley Hill Road and here we took a brief jog to the left, before continuing in the dominant direction for the day, southwest. The trio behind us also took this route but they soon turned off as we reached a dip in order to begin the first of a number of gentle climbs as we rose to approach a hedge on our left.

A gap here (a bit earlier than we had expected) put us out on Wood End Lane, where we continued our climb on tarmac. When Scratch Wood appeared on our left it was time to look for an escape from the road on our right. This was located and we followed a field path, aiming for a corner of a wood called Yewtree Spring. We were instructed to keep to the right of the trees but an entryway soon beckoned us into the deeply shaded wood itself. We took the dominant path but at the far side we could find none of the clues we were looking for. (Moon’s text mentions many a stile, but none of these had survived – far handier gates having replaced them some time earlier.)

The instruction that we were to bear slightly right across another field failed to compute – perhaps because we had exited the wood at the wrong spot, and I spent some time studying maps and poring over the text. We were just about to continue forward along a hedgerow when I decided to have a look around the corner of the woods behind us. Sure enough, I had gone only a hundred years or so when I discovered another exit and the appropriate CW signs. Now we could bear slightly right, crossing a field to reach the corner of another bit of woodland below us. Here too there were difficulties.

There was no stile into the foliage at all and I wandered along the right side looking for any entry point before retreating and checking out the left side. Here, indented, I found a gate with a Chiltern Way disc and, considerably relieved, we were able to continue forward in our southwesterly direction, past Woodend Cottage and onto its access lane. This brought us out to Puddephat’s Lane, where there was another jog to the left.

At a bend in this lane we found a path on the right and entered another field, with a grassy path beneath our feet and a family of grouse hopping down the trail in front of us. Now we approached Abel’s Grove on our left and reached a gap in a hedge at a far corner. Here a left turn on something described as a green lane was required (the lane was earthen, nothing green about it) and we chose the correct fork to pass a school, where a chap was just delivering some books, and emerge onto a road at Gaddesden Row.

We crossed the road and continued forward along the access road for Lane House, hidden in foliage ahead of us. It was easy and level walking hereabouts. Just before the house we had to turn left and follow a hedgerow – Tosh, as usual, well ahead of me. Again we began to cross open territory, with the handsome Gaddesden Parsonage on our left. We crossed two fields and reached a junction of tracks, turning half right to begin another long level straightaway as we headed for distant Home Farm.

Tosh did a good job of waiting for me at all the ambiguous spots and turnoff points and so she did now, as we were invited to head into March Woods, shortly before reaching the farm. Here there was a sign warning us that poison had been used in an effort to reduce the grey squirrel population and (thus) protect native trees – but this seemed an ominous portent.

We could hear signs of activity at the farm on our left. Open country beckoned at the end of the wood, with the Gade Valley far below us and many signs of human activity spread out before us – railway lines, highways, villages. We slanted off to the left, descending to a little dip where there were many signs that had to be studied in order to pass through a gate and head uphill. After only a short climb we passed through a fence and soon reached the grounds of stately Gaddesden Place, a colonnaded mansion that commanded a great view of the valley scene below.

There was again considerable ambiguity about how to descend the hillside before us – but I was encouraged by mention in the guidebook of a cream-colored cottage in the village of Water End and so we headed downhill for this landmark, eventually passing just to its left and reaching the busy A4146. After dashing across this highway we turned right on its pavement and soon found an escape between cottages. This brought us into open country where we dropped down to a footbridge over the Gade itself. There seemed to be a good crop of watercress hereabouts and a second bridge to cross near a pond.

Tosh had been talking about a lunch spot but the cool wind of the hillside had discouraged such a moment before this; now, as we began to follow a path uphill, we found a good spot not too disfigured by cow muck and sat down at last. I ate my egg and cress sandwich and some crisps and sucked at a carton of that guilty pleasure of yesteryear, strawberry Ribena.

I noted that this was a day of milestones for two veteran walkers. We would finish the Chiltern Way, together we would watch the last four episodes of Mad Men, which I had recorded at home, and I would actually cook a meal for Tosh for the first time. I also mentioned that completion of the Way had a number of melancholy associations for us as well. When we had started this route in 2005 both of our spouses had been among the living; indeed, Harold had completed the first six stages. Tosh said she had been thinking a lot about her husband lately and wondering how he would have reacted to all the changes the world had seen since his death in 2006 –­ none of them positive from his point of view, no doubt.

After our lunch we continued uphill past a hawthorn bush and turned left to pass through a herd of nursing cattle and out to the Nettleton Road. A jog to the right put us at the foot of a steep climb up to another patch of greenery, Heizdin’s Wood – but the dead tree that was supposed to be our landmark had disappeared.

We turned half right in the woods and continued to climb gently before emerging again in more open country and continuing forward to tracks that lead us out to a road called Potten End Hill. Here we had a right-hand jog, before turning left to follow field edges and hedges down to a valley bottom. Again a brief jog to the left put us on a rising track that climbed steeply up to the precincts of Boxted Farm. We used its access road to gain the Berkhamstead Road, which we crossed to reach a field path that continued forward against the backdrop of a handsome set of buildings that were, in fact, the Boxted Pig Farm.

After passing through some scrubland we reached Fields End Lane and turned right briefly before finding a path on our left. In various stages this lead unerringly in the direction of Hemel Hempstead itself – with long stretches in the leaf litter of encroaching woodland with little to interest the eye. After passing a playground on our right we plunged into woodland a second time and I must say that I was becoming dispirited by the unvarying descent; you could tell that suburbia was just over on our left but there was nothing to do but tunnel forward on our tired legs.

After well over a mile of this we emerged onto a grassy corner of Hemel Hempstead, where the Jocketts playground was on our right and our way forward over the greensward was a little difficult to determine. Moon’s suggestion that we bear slightly right to reach a road junction made only partial sense. We did reach Jocketts Road, as advised, but the suggestion that we follow it uphill was ambiguous since, from a nearby dip, it went uphill in both directions (whatever happened to “right” and “left” I want to know).

In the event I think we took the wrong direction, right, rising steeply along Jocketts Road. There was no mini roundabout at its end and we had to turn left with no evidence of Northridge Way in sight. Tosh spoke to a woman waiting for a bus and asked her how to get to the railway station. The woman said we were to turn right at the next roundabout and right again at the next one as well. This we set out to to but I was soon convinced that we were well-off route (in spite of the many trains shuttling by at the bottom of the hill on our left) and as we had just about exhausted the suburban street on which we walked (with no evidence of another roundabout in sight) Tosh asked a chap (about to drive off with his teenaged daughter) for additional information and this fellow said he’d not be going out of his way if he just dropped us off at the station itself.

So, this is how we ended it, in the backseat of a stranger’s car. (We had also gotten a ride from a stranger in Peter’s Green.) I could tell, as the car did a complete circle, that we had been sent in the wrong direction and I reminded Tosh of one of the grumbles I had added to my book, A Walker’s Alphabet – never rely on locals for accurate accounts of the local geography.

We struggled into the station soon thereafter and had only a ten-minute wait for a Euston train at 4:49. I think I dozed off a bit. I revived a bit as we walked home from Maida Vale station while Tosh and I exchanged memories of all those wonderful walks on the Chiltern Way.

Footpath Index:

England: A Chilterns Hundred | The Chiltern Way |

Footpath Index:

England: A Chilterns Hundred | The Chiltern Way | The Cleveland Way | The Coast-to-Coast Path | The Coleridge Way | The Cotswold Way | The Cumberland Way | The Cumbria Way | The Dales Way | The Furness Way | The Green London Way | The Greensand Way | The Isle of Wight Coast Path | The London Countryway | The London Outer Orbital Path | The Norfolk Coast Path | The North Downs Way | The Northumberland Coast Path | The Peddars Way | The Pennine Way | The Ridgeway Path | The Roman Way | The Saxon Shore Way | The South Downs Way | The South West Coast Path | The Thames Path | The Two Moors Way | The Vanguard Way | The Wealdway | The Westmorland Way | The White Peak Way | The Yorkshire Wolds Way