Five Go Mad On A Towpath

As a break from my usual urban explorations and in support of two good friends and their favoured charity I agreed, drink must have been involved, to do a 25km sponsored walk along the river Lea from Hertford to Enfield Lock.

The original idea was to do a 25 mile walk, in celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary, but it was pointed out that none of us had really done enough training for this and also that the length of the day in October might not be sufficient for us to complete the walk without torches.

So the day rolled around and I was recovering from a really heavy cold but still managed to drag myself out of bed at 05:15 in order to be at Hertford by 09:30 on a very foggy and chilly October morning.

Hertford itself is a very pleasant town which still exhibits a partial medieval street plan and a fine selection of buildings in a variety of styles. I was able to pontificate on the pargeting on some of the buildings in the town centre.

A fine breakfast at a local bar set us up for the walk and we headed off to the tow-path that runs beside the Lea which is part river and part canal. After about an hour the fog burnt off and the day turned bright and warm. This combined with good quality walking conditions underfoot (mainly gravel and tarmac with some very short stretches of muddy grass) meant that we made good progress.

One of the most interesting places we passed was Ware which is famous for its riverside gazebos.

I decided on this walk not to take my camera so there are no photos of the swans, ducks, moorhens, coots and other wildlife we saw, all I have to remember the journey by is a couple of huge blisters. Nor are there pictures of the speeding cyclists that seemed to be out in droves (what is the collective noun for cyclists? A chain? A hazard? A lycra?).

The further south we went the less interesting the scenery unfortunately but it was all downhill (very gently apart from at the locks) so when we eventually reached our journeys end we didn't feel too exhausted but were glad that it was only a short walk to a local pub (the Greyhound - home to 'eyebrow' Terry) and then a stiff legged hobble to the train station for, in my case, the long journey home.

A goodly sum was raised for charity, much laughter was had due to most of us not being to speak or hear clearly for one or other reason which led to a conversation around whether a GPS walk tracker was best kept in a dwarf or on an elf, so all in all it was a great day.

Normal service will be resumed next month with the next leg of my tube walk and possibly some strolls in the Cotswold Hills.