Paradise Regained

This morning after church, the vicar's wife said to me, "How are you feeling after all that pedalling around like a bl**dy lunatic?"  As it happens, I'm not feeling too bad, although my knees are a bit rickety, and an impromptu massage from the lay reader helped my shoulders immensely.

Last year, we attempted to cycle to Welwyn Garden City.  We got as far as Hertford and then failed miserably and ended up getting the train back from there, just a few miles short of our goal.  So this year we had an itch to scratch, some unfinished business, and we decided to give it another go.

Things, as is often the case, did not start well.  For a start, we were taking a massive gamble - the plan was to cycle to Welwyn and get the train home but we checked on the trains and discovered that if we failed at the same point as last year and only made it to Hertford, there would be no trains back to Harringay due to engineering works.  Welwyn is on a different branch of the line and would be unaffected, so we had to make it to Welwyn. (I should probably mention here that we could probably get a train back into London from a different station in Hertford or one of the other places we would pass through, but it would entail us then having to find our way home from somewhere altogether different, which would not be ideal having cycled so far.)

Then, when we were setting off, my gears wouldn't do what I wanted them to and in trying to put myself in a gear in which I could actually cycle, I managed to twist my dodgy ankle - not too badly, but enough to bring a tear to my eye and warrant a sit down on someone's front wall less than 200m from home.  Eventually, we got going and went along our normal route towards the River Lea, through the usual Saturday morning Synagogue crowds.  When we got to the river, London Youth Rowing were running one of their sessions.  LYR is a charity that I have supported (through work) by participating in an indoor rowing relay race in the last couple of years, so it was great to see them out in their boats.

There are a couple of places in the first few miles along the river that have what James calls "bobbly bits" - they are bits of the towpath which have raised bumpy bits to enable the ponies and donkeys to get a better foothold, mostly where there's a bridge that goes over a joining tributary.  Hitherto, I have not managed to get over these bobbly bits without having to dismount.  They may be designed for the chassis of a donkey, but that is not the same length as a bike, and I just couldn't work out how James was managing to get across.  The first of these is (apart from the bobbles) flat, and this time I managed to get across, with a resounding cheer at the far side.  The second is a bridge with bobbles on it, followed by a bobbly upward slope.  I made it across both for the first time and couldn't resist screaming "F*** you, bridge", to the obvious amusement of the other cyclists who were around. 

When we got to the fantastic bit of resurfaced towpath I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, we realised that all was not as it should be - the powers that be had covered that beautiful, smooth, fast surface with gravel, making it clunky and horrible; it was such a shame as they had such a great opportunity to make it lovely and they've now ruined it all.

The Crown at Broxbourne

We carried on past the bus garage and the North Circular and we kept being overtaken by and the overtaking another couple who were trying to get to Hertford.  We eventually got to Not London and the cafe that had been our turning point last time out.  We stopped for a cup of tea and a piece of cake and watched a couple of other cyclists, kitted out with posh bikes and lurid Lycra, slipping off to one side of the seating area for a sly cigarette.

Bikes at the Crown

As we carried on out into Hertfordshire, we went through a few clouds of gnats.  They were, well, gnatty and got everywhere.  It wasn't long before we came to Broxbourne, where we stopped for lunch.  Last time, we hadn't quite made it to the pub that Everyone goes to when cycling this way, but this time we were wise to it and so we locked up the bikes and went into the Crown for some food.  There were bikes everywhere outside, chained to everything that looked as though it wouldn't move.

James, bee-magnet

After a very nice meal, we set off again and we hadn't been going too long before we reached a large weir and a split in the towpath.  As we came off the bridge over the weir, James came to a screeching halt (I'm still not sure if it was him or the bike screeching), ripped off his helmet and started flapping his hands around his head.  I asked him what was wrong and he said he thought there was a wasp in his helmet.  It turned out to be a baby honey bee that must have thought the helmet was his hive.  He survived, as did James.  Eventually, we made it to Ware, at which point a livid goose thought it would have a go at James until it realised that he was significantly bigger and faster (on land, in any case) than the goose was.  Shortly after that, I had to stop because of ducks on the path - apparently they don't respond to cycle bells.

 On the way into Hertford, we saw some aerial combat take place - a large bird of prey (perhaps a kite or a buzzard) was having a right old ding dong with a pair of smaller birds of prey (maybe sparrowhawks).

Cherry blossom in Hertford

Once we got to Hertford, we had to get the maps out.  James had printed out a map of the centre of Hertford and detailed directions, with Google Streetview pictures, of how to get from Ware to Welwyn.  We found how to get off the river, and went down a lovely cherry blossom-lined street toward the centre of town and then finally got to the point where the trail had gone cold last year.  Suddenly, we saw the sign that either we had missed or wasn't there last time around and we followed it (and our maps and pictures) until we reached the place where the route went off the roads.

Hertford Town F.C.

At this point, we were less than convinced that we were going the right way.  The only thing we could hear was the cheering of a load of football fans, and the only signposts we could see were signs to Hertford Town F.C.'s "fan day".  The maps and pictures said to go that way, so we did, and we found ourselves in the car park of said football club's stadium and popped in to see what was going on.  In the far corner of the car park, there was a sign for the cycle route (along with a riding stable) so we followed the sign and started along an off-road trail.  Now, either we were being stupid or the next sign was in a really silly place, because before long we were trying to cycle up a mud path on a steep hill - neither my bike nor I is designed for such terrain.  Before long, we came to a dead end and the conclusion that we had taken a wrong turn.  James suddenly remembered that the path we were supposed to take was on a disused railway line, so it would be pretty unlikely to be going up steep hills.  I was left wondering why he couldn't have remembered this before we went up the hill, while he turned back to find the right path.  Once we'd found the right path (it was signposted, just not very well), we set out between the trees, with the sunlight pouring between them.

We were coming around a long bend and I was feeling quite relaxed in the saddle when I had sudden cause for a moment of utter panic.  We came across something that I had never yet had to deal with while cycling - HORSES.  There were two of them, right there in front of me, going in the same direction as us, and they were enormous, one level shy of a shire horse.  Presumably they came from the riding stable we had passed in the corner of the football stadium car park, and their riders were just walking them along gently.  I knew, of course, that the last thing I ought to be doing was pinging my bell at them, but beyond that, I really didn't know what to do.  Just as I was trying to make a plan, I heard a bell pinging behind me - I had slowed down for the horses, but the cyclists behind had not, and they had not yet seen the horses.  This could have been disastrous, but I think the horses were far enough ahead that they didn't hear (or at least get spooked by) the bell.  The two cyclists slowed down and asked the riders if it was OK to pass and, as they passed, I told the riders there were two more of us behind and rode by slowly.  We thanked the riders, they thanked us and everyone lived happily ever after.

A little while later, the trail turned into a paved pathway, which in turn turned into an enormous hill.  By this time, I was seriously running out of steam.  Two of the last three signposts we had passed had told us it was three and a half miles to Welwyn (and they must have been at least half a mile apart) and the most recent one said two and a half miles, and it must have been about two miles from the previous one.  A little while later, we saw a signpost in the other direction saying Hertford was 4 miles (at which point we were supposedly less than three and a half miles away from Hertford on the grounds that we weren't yet in Welwyn).  Finally, we came to the end of the off-road path, only to find another signpost which said "Town Centre - 3 miles".   The seeds of doubt were starting to germinate in our minds, as we wondered if Welwyn was a fictitious place after all, but we kept to National Cycle Route 61 (or "The Yellow Brick Road" as it had become known, following last year's reference to Welwyn as the Emerald City of Hertfordshire), as planned, although we struggled a bit as some oik or other had turned one of the signposts around, and eventually made it to the shopping centre in which is situated Welwyn Garden City train station.

The Yellow Brick Road

You'd think, at this point, that our troubles would be over and our quest had been fulfilled.  Oh no, not so.  The aforementioned shopping centre is the only apparent means of gaining access to the train station.  The door to the shopping centre has a sign on it saying "no cycles" - not "no cycling" (which would be entirely reasonable, of course), but "no cycles".  We asked some people waiting at a bus stop how we could get into the station with our bikes and they told us to go through the shopping centre.  We decided to go in and see if we could find a security person who could show us the correct way to get to the station with bikes, but we couldn't see anyone and figured that once we were in we may as well try to find the station entrance.  We squeezed into a lift with our bikes and made it to the first floor and along to the station just as a security guard, who was probably going to try to eject us from the shopping centre, was catching up with us.  He realised that all we were trying to do was catch a train and let us be.  And so it was that we completed our quest and finished the leftover business from last year - we caught the train back to Finsbury Park, which took about half an hour, and then cycled home from there, still none the wiser as to the proper way to get a bike into Welwyn Garden City train station.