20 Apr 2019: Hatfield to Hertford

Nine of us met for the ride into Hertford and it was great to see Jon and David for the first time this year. We also had the company of Rona, which is always a pleasure and I learnt that we have been successful in poaching a rider from British Cycling (not sorry Mr Hoy 😊 ).

We made good progress going through Hatfield, WGC and Panshanger. We then headed on to Tewin, the roads quietened down and soon we were just a group of happy bods cycling around the countryside on a lovely, hot, almost summers day. The point of this route became obvious as we made our way up Marden Hill, this road is surrounded by woods and covering the floors of the wooded area is a lovely display of bluebells so we stopped here to take in this beauty.

Sunshine at Marden Hill

It’s not far from there to Bramfield and here we took the back road into Hertford on another fairly traffic free road, though what cars you do see tend to be moving fast. Once at Hertford we took a quick detour around the park then wiggled around the market to arrive at a packed Rose café.

This place never disappoints, always buzzing, sharing tables is always an option here. After a lovely brunch we went on our way again opting to go back via Hertingfordbury, accessed by the Lower Hatfield Road. The reason for this was because they are re-surfacing the Cole Green Way and this would have made for an extremely uncomfortable ride. We noted that The Prince of Wales (the former pub on the corner) in Hertingfordbury is now being worked on, with scaffold everywhere. Our route back was straightforward via Birch Green, Letty Green, the Old Coach Road and then onto the tarmacked section of the Cole Green Way. We retraced our steps through WGC to get back to Hatfield and after 23 miles we completed a great morning’s ride.

Neil 20/04/2019