Today, after a missed weekend, I start where I left off two weeks ago, in Cheshunt. The plan is to complete the last mile of the Essex border and then turn east at long last, along the border with Middlesex, towards Barnet.
The first mile is a farewell to a puzzling place – the Lea Valley. What industrial torture that pure river, the Lee, suffered in days past I can only guess at to leave its valley scarred and its streams sliced up and diverted. There must have been massive gravel extraction, hence the lakes, and the canalisation of the River Lea has left just overflow streams, one marked as the Old River. It is in some penance for those days that the land here has been designated the ‘Lee Valley Regional Park’.
I will turn east just a mile from the three shire point – Hertfordshire, Essex and Middlesex – and where I finished the Middlesex Greenway last year). Then east, meeting I hope some woods which should be familiar. It is not the straight route though: I must loop north of and around Potter’s Bar, as that town is in Middlesex. Chipping Barnet to its south though is in Hertfordshire, and is my destination, if the light holds and I can keep going.
It is to be a late start though – the trains are fewer and slower on the Lord’s Day. I will be prayerful, as I tend to be when amongst the wonders of creation.
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