We have had some rough weather recently featuring strong winds and plenty of rain. A couple of recent Sundays have been washed out because of heavy rain. Today it was just windy, blowing from the SW, so all right for our route today going out, but probably a struggle coming home. A good-sized group set off from Hatfield heading for Stanstead Abbotts in the Lee Valley. We did a southerly loop through Brookmans Park passing the station (surprisingly for a pretty ordinary suburban station, the scene of an historic meeting in 1942 between Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, and Anthony Eden following the German invasion of the Soviet Union). Then on to Cuffley and Goff's Oak - this part of Hertfordshire is far from flat!
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| Re-grouping at the top of Bread and Cheese Lane |
After the suburban bits there were some rural hills through the woods to Hoddesdon. Here Jon lead us through the back streets to St Margaret's and so to our morning stop at the Village Cafe. This is my kind of place - good value and doing a brisk trade. Some headed back for home from here, but for the rest of us it was a route north through Much Hadham to Furneux Pelham. I had been thinking of heading a bit further north from here and going though Little Hornmead, but we were a bit late, so we headed directly to Braughing.
The Golden Fleece pub was a new stop for us, but when we arrived there was a long wait for food and no seating, so we decided to find somewhere else in the homeward direction. Fortunately the first pub we came to in Puckeridge, The White Hart, were only too pleased to serve the quick sandwiches most people wanted. From lunch the route back to St Albans or Hatfield took us through Dane End and Datchworth. A great day out and it didn't rain once!
(55 miles)
Richard 3/11/2013
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