12:00 – Peters Green
A lot more road-waking this morning – almost the whole way from the M1 to beyond East Hyde – and even some of the bridleways are metalled. Nevertheless, a dry morning through new parts of Hertfordshire that I had not seen before.
The route heads east out of Markyate into the woods, and south then to cross under the M1 on a lane. After the harvest, the footpath has been lost and I had to follow faint traces and my compass.. Then it is a long road walk to Kinsbourne Green, which defies description, and the northern fringe of Harpenden. The a stretch down the A1081, which marks the county border here, and then following the Chiltern Way north-east (on a stretch which follows a minor road paralleling and then running on the border).
The River Lea forms the county border running downstream. A small, shallow river, one can hardly imagine the way it emerges on the Thames as a broad, meandering, industrial river. Here a minor trespass is needed into Bedfordshire, and a dangerous stretch of the walk, down a busy, narrow, sinuous road with no pavement nor walkable verge on either side.
Soon though an initially metalled path runs north-east, just yards inside the boundary line, and meets a path with runs on the border north towards Peters Green.
