The borders of Middlesex and Hertfordshire are as yet unspoiled, and still keep their country lanes and old-world villages in very much their original condition. This is chiefly owing, of course, to the lack of good local railway accommodation; and since these uplands in the bracing marches of those two counties are thus left in the most rural and “unimproved” state, we may, from the tourist’s point of view, hope that railway enterprise may for long years yet to come lie dormant and keep the cheap builder away.

In the first instance, however, we must needs be beholden to the Great Eastern Railway for conveying self and cycle to our starting-point, Waltham Station, twelve miles from town. Arrived there, the near neighbourhood of Waltham Abbey tempts us three-quarters of a mile across the river Lea into Essex; for the great Abbey, now the parish church of the town of the same name that has sprung up around it in the lapse of centuries, is a place of pilgrimage. Harold’s body was translated here from Battle, and although all trace of his resting-place is lost, save the traditional spot in the meadow by “Harold’s Bridge,” the Abbey is peculiarly associated with him. The massive tower shows up singularly white above the many old and picturesque houses that converge in narrow streets upon it; and the brimming Lea, like Denham’s description of the Thames—

“Without o’erflowing, full,”

goes in the prettiest of perspectives across the fields, making, with the wayside alders, the old-fashioned canal-locks, and the many water-channels that everywhere abound, pictures for sketcher or photographer. As for colour, notice that remarkably old-world square of bowed and bent, nodding and decrepit houses called the “Cattle Market.” Rarely, indeed, does the painter find so exquisite a tone as that of these ancient red brick buildings.

But it will not do to linger at Waltham Abbey, however great the inclination may be to do so. So we retrace our course, and passing the station again, come to Waltham Cross, where the Eleanor Cross, tinkered by restorers, but still lovely, stands in midst of the road beside the old “Four Swans,” whose sign, straddling across the highway, bears the wooden effigies of those fowls. Turning to the right at this point, and wheeling through the village of Waltham Cross, a railway bridge spans the road, and the supremely ugly new station of “Theobalds Grove” appears. Just beyond this, on the left-hand side, is a turning which, leading off as it does through gates, looks like a private road into a park. A park, indeed, it is—that of Theobalds—but there is a right of way. And it is a most beautiful road, or rather lane, with the best of gravel surface to cycle along, and the most gracious of foliage overhead. Half a mile of this, and then comes the most delightful of surprises; nothing less, indeed, than that dear friend of olden days in London City—Temple Bar.

The story of Wren’s beautiful, but inconvenient, entrance to the City of London is a romantic one. Long used as a Golgotha on whose topmost cornice to display the heads of decapitated traitors, it remained at the Fleet Street entrance to London until the increasing traffic necessitated its removal in 1877. The stones were all numbered and stored away in the City stone-yard for some eight years, and meanwhile the City authorities offered them as a gift to several persons or public bodies, without finding anyone to accept the gift. The Benchers of the Temple, who had the opportunity of securing the relic for one of their quiet courts, incredible though it may seem, refused it; but at last the old Bar was accepted by Sir Henry Meux, and re-erected here as an entrance lodge. It is the old familiar Temple Bar, cleaner than of yore, and more easily studied in this quiet spot than of old, in the roaring traffic of Fleet Street; but that it should thus be banished from its native London and be in private ownership seems pitiful. Why not, in these days when it has been proposed to restore the Elgin marbles to Athens—why not agitate for its restitution and re-erection in some quiet City lane?

And now for Gough’s Oak. There are more ways than one of reaching Goff’s (or Gough’s) Oak from here. Let us take the turning to the left, and, avoiding a further turn in the same direction, go by Love Grove, along a series of country lanes. The original Gough was Sir Theodore Godfrey, who “came over with the Conqueror,” as the musty old phrase goes; and on what used to be Cheshunt Common he planted the still existing tree, which fully bears out Dryden’s lines—

It may flourish for another hundred years if it is only left alone, although the giant trunk is quite hollow and full of holes, so that it is hooped and banded round like a barrel to keep it together. The hamlet that takes its name from this venerable relic is a thoroughly rural one of farms and dairies, and quite off the beaten tourist track.

Following the road indicated by the sign-post that stands prominently near the Oak, we make for Northaw, whose name means “Northwood.” The most exhilarating of coasts down through woodlands, with wide views, blue and beautiful, of woods and parks, leads to a cottage or two marked “Cuffleys” on the Ordnance map. Turn to the left here, and so, by a country lane, to the small village of Northaw, with a modern church standing on its pretty green. Thence it is as straight ahead as the winding but splendidly surfaced road will allow, to Potter’s Bar. Here the Great North Road is reached. Continue through the somewhat characterless village and turn off to the right where a sign-post points to Potter’s Bar Station and South Mimms, along what is called Mutton Lane. At a quarter of a mile from South Mimms turn to the left, and the old church tower presently comes in sight. Here we find the Holyhead road running right and left. Turn to the right, and then to the left off the highway, and up the rising gradient of the village street. At once the most concise and most readily understood direction to Shenley is this: “Follow the telegraph poles.”

In under three miles this village is gained—one of the quaintest and most old-world of places, with an old “round-house,” or village lock-up, standing between a horse-pond and the “Queen Adelaide Inn.” Local gossip tells how the last of the long line of petty offenders to be imprisoned here was the then landlord of that inn twenty-three years ago. He had, innocently enough, taken home for firewood a few pieces of wood he had found in a neighbouring park. So they locked him up, and the reeking dampness from the pond nearly killed him.

Shenley Church lies a mile away from the village and has lost its tower. The bells, save one, were removed to the more accessible Chapel-of-Ease in the village, and the one remains in the churchyard, hung in the most extraordinary manner on an iron bar.

Returning to the village, and having found the way to Radlett, we go by a winding lane downhill, and between the two parks of Porters and New Organ Hall. Radlett is a quite modern settlement, of no interest. The name, however, is ancient, and derives from the “Red Leat,” a tributary of the Colne, whose water runs of a reddish hue after rain has washed the red gravel soil through which its course lies. Here we cross the Edgware-St. Albans road and come to Gill’s Hill, a name of dread; for it was here, at Gill’s Hill Cottage, in 1823, that the notorious murder of Mr. William Weare was committed by John Thurtell. A lane on the right hand leads to the still existing house, and many morbid persons go and feast their eyes on it, as did Sir Walter Scott in 1828. This particularly sordid and stupid crime, committed by the gambler Thurtell, and connived at by his confederates, Hunt and Probert, for mere plunder, aroused the widest interest, and contemporary literature, not greatly to its credit, is full of references to the vulgar tragedy. Scott, as we have seen, actually paid a visit to the scene, and Carlyle alludes to it again and again. The thing that most held his imagination and exercised his sardonic humour was the evidence of one of the witnesses on behalf of Thurtell, to the effect that “he was a respectable man: he kept a gig.” To “gigmanity,” as a symbol and token of respectability, Carlyle often recurs.

High Cross, which now comes on our way to Aldenham, is, indeed, high. Higher still is Kemp Row, away to the left, the place where the mitred Abbots of St. Albans hanged criminals literally “high as Haman,” if not, indeed, considerably higher than that biblical personage. By “criminals” you are to understand a very wide interpretation—which, in fact, included such as stole the deer or netted game on the extensive manors of those dignified clergy. Those abbots had their gallow’s as a quite ordinary article of domestic furniture, and turned off many an unlucky poacher with the least possible compunction.

Aldenham is a place with a dignified air, derived from the many parks that surround it. Aldenham House is the seat of the recently ennobled Mr. Henry Hucks-Gibbs, who contended long and expensively in the Law Courts with that master of gall and wormwood, Lord Grimthorpe, as to which of them should have the right to spend a fortune on the restoration of the reredos of St. Albans Abbey.

From here it is a fine run, chiefly downhill, across the breezy heights past Patchett’s Green and Bushey Grove to the long village street of Bushey, well known nowadays for its artistic colony of the Herkomer School. The builder has been busy here, and Bushey and Watford are now practically linked together.

Watford is fast losing its old-time individuality in the amazing extension of Suburbia, but it is still remarkable to the stranger for its beeriness. Big bulks the name of Benskin at Watford, and every third house in the long High Street seems, from a casual inspection, to be an inn.

A curiosity in the shape of a fig tree growing out of a large stone altar-tomb in the parish churchyard is the local marvel at Watford, and if you do not see it, why, then, no Watfordian will consider his town properly explored. It may be seen, within a railed enclosure, outside one of the church windows, and is, of course, the subject of a legend. This is the last resting-place, they tell you, of a lady who on her deathbed exclaimed, “If there be a God, may a tree grow out of my heart!” This shocking and wicked tale is, of course, as absolutely baseless as the equally wicked and shocking story to the same effect told of Lady Anne Grimston at Tewin. The tree is a chance seedling. Anyone malicious or mischievous enough could create countless such miracles by inserting seeds in the crevices of such old tombs.

From Watford the way is bordered for nearly two miles on the left hand by the beautiful lawns and woods of Cassiobury Park, and here and there ancient elms form avenues along the road, and lend a grateful and cooling shade. Cassiobury is the seat of the Earl of Essex, whose notices, setting forth the dreadful things which will be done to trespassers, are plentifully displayed for the length of a mile and a half, and do not add to the sylvan beauties of the scene. Beyond and adjoining Cassiobury is Grove Park, the Earl of Clarendon’s seat, just glimpsed in passing. Now the Grand Junction Canal and the river Gade, flowing in one channel, are seen on the left, and presently we cross over them, turning slightly to the left at the hamlet of Hunton Bridge. A canal is not usually a beautiful object, being straight and formal, and generally with the commonplace surroundings of coal and other wharves; but the Grand Junction, which accompanies the road from this point to Boxmoor and onwards, provides interest and a series of charming pictures all the way. Beside it, at a decent distance, runs the main line of the L. & N.W.R. to King’s Langley.

King’s Langley is a village pretty enough, but of no particular interest; but the church has a claim to inspection, containing as it does the altar-tomb of a former Duke of York; Edmund de Langley, fifth son of Edward the Third, born at the Royal Palace of Langley, 1341, died 1402. It stands in a chapel at the east end of the north aisle, lighted by a stained-glass window, presented by the Queen in 1878, in honour of her “ancestor.” Notice stones in the churchyard to various persons bearing the odd name of Evilthrift. A few fragments of Langley Palace yet remain on a hilltop a mile distant from the village.

It cannot be said that the hamlet of Frogmoor End, which succeeds King’s Langley, is beautiful, neither is Apsley End precisely a poet’s dream. They are quite modern settlements, helping to spoil this once wild and lonely district of Boxmoor. There is a Boxmoor village now, and a railway station beside the road, named after it, but of actual barren moor there is but little.

On the skirts of what was once the moor, we turn to the right, and in a mile and a half reach the little town of Hemel Hempstead, through its suburb, Marlowes. The town is mentioned in Domesday Book as “Hamelamestead,” and the country folk call it “Hampstead,” instead of “Hempstead,” to this day. Like many of these little Hertfordshire towns, it is somewhat scrubby and out at elbows, and is not sufficiently removed from London to be altogether provincial. Its streets are steep and run in perplexing and unlooked-for directions, and its church tower has the characteristic Hertfordshire leaden extinguisher spire developed to an altogether surprising height and tenuity.

But if Hemel Hempstead be not particularly inviting to the cyclist, at least the road that runs thence to Great Gaddesden has supreme charms. Hitherto we have been on high roads; here we are on byways bordered by parks and picturesque hamlets. It is but two miles from the town we have just left, through Piccott’s End and Water End, to Great Gaddesden. At the beginning of Water End there is an exquisitely beautiful bit that Corot himself would have loved to paint; where a group of tall, bushy Lombardy poplars hangs over the old bridge that carries the road over the river Gade, and gives a lovely foreground to a view of an ancient two-gabled, white-faced farmstead amid fertile water-meadows. To lead one’s cycle on to the grass beside the water and to lie here in the sunshine of a hot summer’s afternoon, lulled by the rippling of the stream and the purring of the wind among the poplars, is a delight.

The road now runs past the park of Gaddesden Place, with the river on the right, and crossing another bridge with more poplars, climbs a little rise by a few cottages, and thus, leaving Water End, comes in half a mile to the very, very small village of Great Gaddesden. How almost invariably it is the case that places called “Great” are really microscopically small! The church and village lie off to the left, in the level “dene” beside the Gade, whence the name derives; secluded, unspotted from the world. It is an interesting old church, full of monuments to Halseys and their relatives by marriage: all, to judge from their epitaphs, the salt of the earth, which must have lost its savour now they are gone. The large pieces of pudding-stone that crop up in the churchyard attract attention in this part of the country.

Leaving the village, make straight ahead across the road by which you have come, and charge up the hillside lane as far as you can. Then get off and walk for a quarter of a mile, looking back a moment to where Great Gaddesden nestles in the valley. The summit of this hill reached, the lane winds in pretty and shady fashion for a mile, and then descends to a lonely hollow whence lanes run in three directions. Fortunately, there is a sign-post here. Follow the lane to Markyate. It is not at first a very pleasing lane, being rather plentifully strewed with large, smooth, round flints, the “plums” detached from their native pudding-stone; really looking like big kidney potatoes—but harder. Happily, they soon grow fewer, and leave us free to enjoy the descent through the wooded dell leading to the lodge and gates of Beechwood Park. Do not take either of the roads to right or left, but the narrow lane ahead, which, although narrow, affords excellent riding.

Flamstead is a mile and a half away. One quarter of a mile walk uphill, and then the going is quite level on to the village, situated above a hollow where the little river Verlam or Ver runs, and therefrom originally named Verlamstead. It is quite a small place, with a large church, whose tower has the usual Hertfordshire extinguisher spirelet and is daubed with plaster and bolstered and tied up with red brick debased buttresses and iron tie-rods; and altogether, although old, is exactly like the kind of thing designed nowadays by the very latest school of unconventional, nightmare architects.

Leaving the church on the right, the road bends to the left, descends steeply, and then, turning to the right, joins that broad highway, the old Holyhead road. Friars’ Wash is the name of this junction with that old highway. It was a place where in days of old, when the river Ver ran strong, and roads were not so good as they are now, both friars and other wayfarers occasionally had an involuntary bath.

Turning here to the right hand, and then ascending the first lane branching off to the left from the main road, a steep way leads up to the queerly named Popnuts Green, and on to Kennesbourne Green, where the Harpenden-Luton road is struck. Speeding to the right along this, and taking a left-hand turn at Mutton End, we come steeply down into the valley of the Lea (and into the Lea itself if we are not careful) at Pickford Mill.

The quiet, park-like beauty of Hertfordshire scenery is in no district more lovely than that mapped out here. To follow the course of a river downwards is often a good cycling tip, and one well worth remembering when studying maps for the purpose of planning tours, for it gives, as a rule, a descending gradient. The next few miles of this ride fully bear out these remarks, and, moreover, afford some exquisite peeps of the Lea, bordered by picturesque mills. Pickford Mill and Batford Mill are among the most striking of these. At Batford the view is especially beautiful.

A lane leads from here to the left, towards Mackery End, a Charles Lamb landmark. By this very road that we have come he and his cousin Bridget revisited the scenes of their childhood some forty years later; for it was at the farmhouse of Mackery End that some early days had been passed with the Gladmans, relatives of theirs. “Hail! Mackery End,” exclaims Lamb, writing of this visit, and adding, “this is a fragment of a blank verse poem which I once meditated, but got no farther.” Just as well, perhaps, because the name and subject would scarcely seem to lend themselves to the blank-verse method. The first line, for example, does not compare favourably with “Hail! smiling morn,” does it?

The farmhouse of Mackery End can still be seen, but it is greatly altered. Perhaps the barns and outhouses at the back are contemporary with Elia. A very interesting old house is this Jacobean mansion to which the name of Mackery End is generally given, although the title belongs to the hamlet in general, this being the “End” in the direction of the wide-spreading parish of Wheathampstead. It stands solitary in a meadow, and is dignified and imposing.

Regaining the road from this literary landmark, we pass watercress farms and watery meadows, and, running through a little hamlet, come uphill to Wheathampstead by the railway station. Here turn to the right, and through the village, taking the left-hand turn just beyond the church. It is a long, straggling village, whose downhill or uphill perspectives are alike pleasing. The church—one of the largest in Hertfordshire—has an odd spire; a whimsical elaboration upon the usual Herts method which must surely have been of strictly local design.

Having turned to the left beyond this church, we are upon the Hatfield road, and on high ground, overlooking the Lea. Down below, on the other side of the river, the clustered chimneys and romantic-looking gables of an old house are seen, surrounded by the picturesque litter of a farmyard. This is another Water End, the fine old mansion where Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that clever and beautiful shrew, who by turns bullied and coaxed both her husband and Queen Anne, is said to have been born; but the best authorities do not seem to be very sure of this. Beyond, as we continue along the road, the towers and spires of Brocket Hall are seen over the tree-tops. After passing by this park, we desert the Hatfield road by turning off to the left; crossing the Lea again at Lemsford Mills, where we take a turning to the right. This leads presently to a fine broad highway, running right and left; none other, indeed, than the Great North Road. The right hand leads to Hatfield, the left to Welwyn, in which direction we now proceed, uphill, coming in full view of the more than Roman solidity of the great Welwyn Viaduct that carries the Great Northern Railway across the valley of the Mimram stream. It is a steep and dangerous descent into Welwyn; dangerous, that is to say, for the inexpert, for the rash, or the brakeless cyclist. For the rest it simply needs caution—plenty of it!

Welwyn is an old coaching village, and still keeps evidences of its past prosperity. These decayed old coaching towns and villages must needs be a great deal more interesting now than they ever were when in the full flush of their success. In the same way, doubtless, when railways are superseded, the romance of them will become suddenly apparent. Welwyn Church is a queer jumble of ancient and modern. The scorching cyclists who are the curse of the Great North Road are of the opinion that it is a nuisance, projecting as it does into the highway at the bend of the road. So much for the point of view! Dr. Young, the author of that doleful book the Night Thoughts, was rector here, and died in 1765. A constant companion of the high-living, punch-drinking, literary patrons of his age, it seems odd that he should have written such depressing thoughts over the midnight oil.

Being quiet tourists, we leave the Great North Road and its crowds of cyclists without a regret, and, turning to the right by the “White Hart,” come immediately along pleasant byways beside the Mimram. Here we pass under the great viaduct that for some time past has been blotting out the surrounding landscape, and providentially lose sight of it altogether. Crossing the stream just beyond, the park of Tewin Water is skirted, and a left-hand turning in the lane where the park ends brings us across the stream once more, and so to Tewin village, if one can call that a village whose chief characteristic is a plentiful lack of houses. There are legends at Tewin. In a meadow by the church may yet be seen the foundations of old Tewin House, demolished many years ago; and here, it is said, lived that old Lady Cathcart who was four times married, and four times left a widow. The first she wed to please her parents, the second for money, the third because of his title, and the fourth was put in her way “because the devil owed her a grudge and wanted to punish her for her sins.” This last venture of hers was disastrous, and probably prevented her attempting a fifth. It was in 1745 that she married Number Four—a Colonel Hugh Maguire, who took her to Ireland and kept her shut up for nearly twenty years; until, in fact, his death released her. Perhaps he had seen the posy ring she wore, which bore the pleasing sentiment—

“If I survive I will have five,”

and tried to spoil her chances. It was about 1765 that Colonel Maguire died; and the old lady lived until 1789, dying at the age of ninety-seven. Her ill-treatment would not appear to have crushed her, for she danced with the utmost spirit at the Welwyn Assembly Ball in her eightieth year.

Tewin churchyard contains the tomb of another remarkable lady, that of Lady Anne Grimston, who died in 1710. This is a substantial altar-tomb, whence have sprung seven ash trees. The story has it that Lady Anne Grimston was a sceptic, and on her deathbed wished that trees might grow out of her last resting-place if there was any truth in Christianity. Accordingly, here are the trees, sure enough; and they have broken the stonework and interweaved themselves with the iron railings in such a manner that they form a quite homogeneous mass. Many marvel-hunters come to see these champions of revealed religion; but it may shrewdly be suspected that this story, to the discredit of the lady, has been invented to account for the trees.

From Tewin the way to Hertingfordbury and Hertford lies through the lovely park of Panshanger, the seat of Earl Cowper. Hertingfordbury’s name is about the same size as the village. There are fifteen letters in the name and as many houses and cottages. Hertford town, where this run ends, has its picturesque corners, but the taint of Suburbia has long since leavened its old-time provincial air.