We arrived at Poppins café in Hatfield just before 10am and were grateful to see it was actually open as sometimes they are a bit late unrolling the shutters at Christmas time. By the time it got to the 10.30 departure time there was a pleasing attendance of ten people including new rider Ellie from St Albans. It was a challenge to devise a route to Potters Bar that would use roads different from the usual meander round the lanes of Broxbourne Woods, however we did achieve this by setting off in the St Albans direction along the Alban Way. We skirted Highfield Park before a short off-road and slightly muddy section took us over to Milehouse Lane. We rode through the back of Napsbury Park before heading along the main road up the hill to Shenley. In Ridge we stopped to admire the World War II pillbox before using the horse-bridge to cross the busy A1(M) road. From Barnet we passed through the pretty Hadley Common, then took NCR 12 north to The Admiral Byng pub in Potters Bar where Jon and Judy were already wolfing down lunch.
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| Admiral Byng |
Afterwards, Peter and Sue made direct tracks home, while the rest
of us headed north through Little Heath and Water End before taking the direct route back to St Albans via Colney Heath. The afternoon's cultural highlight was passing one of the Victorian Coal posts in Little Heath of which I took a photo, remarkably the same one
this article shows. You might have seen many of these while cycling round south Herts and wondered what they were!
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| Little Heath coal post |
As only Steve H went back to the start in Hatfield I've shown the map below finishing on the Alban Way.
Carol
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