1:30 pm; Brent Pelham
I chose to take my edgy way – closer to the utter bounds of the county than the Hertfordshire Way, which took me from Royston out along the Icknield Way (a path is provided off the main road) until finally at an isolated far within shouting distance of the Essex frontier I finally turned south away from the Icknield Way for the last time and away from the Cambridgeshire border, to run instead beside that of Essex, which I have followed for the rest of the day.
It was a climb into the hills, but a gentle one – I hardly noticed the climb, though to my east was Langley, where I once sought out the highest point in Essex. Then to Barley and on to Nuthamstead, where I joined the Hertfordshire Way for a mile or two. (Complex paths on the very fold in the map, but a pause and a good compass found the way.
Few people along the way – a solitary dog-walker, three retired folk walking the Way, and the Cambridge Hash House Harriers out for a run.
Eventually, through fields and silent woods to Brent Pelham. It was a weird, unearthly but back-of-the-memory sound that greeted me, first a series of yelps, then many, and then a baying repeated and repeated – the foxhounds were giving tongue.
To the Black Horse (where there was no mobile reception so I did not ask about Wifi for posting this), and lunch.
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