The view out of the hotel window was this:
..yes, that is the job centre across the road. I had to be out by 10, so I found myself at the Town Hall:
which is an extremely impressive building; probably built around the time the Marchers came through here, and inside, I found one window that wasn't dealing with council tax etc.. I was handed a phone, and did an interview with the press officer, who gave me a few numbers.
First was the radio station, which was just up the hill a little, and across the ring road. There was a group of four hanging around the car park having a fag, but they took one look at me, and knew there was something newsworthy there. I was let in, and ushered straight away into the studio of a guy whose name I missed - although he must be a bit of a celebrity on Luton Radio. It was a recorded interview - about three minutes long, and I don't know when it went out. In total, the entire thing lasted about 15 minutes, but as I left he did recommend to me a good, new cyclepath with apparently led directly to Harpendon; half the way.
In the foyer, I rang the newspaper, and was given very direct directions, which were lost on me because I didn't know any of the major roads she mentioned. Anyway, I found the building, but we arranged the interview for an hour later, so I had to go back into town and kill time with a coffee. I turned up back here at about 12:
and inside, it was the home of these papers:
There was an interview for about three minutes, during which timne I explained the bid in detail. I also mentioned the March, which the interviewer hadn't heard of, and the story that I'd been told in the Olde Trip in Nottingham, about the members of the Luton Co-op staying up all night fixing the Marcher's shoes. This gained real interest for what I was talking about, and another few minutes saw me walking into the town centre with a very cool photographer called Jane, I think, who had me stomping infront of the Town Hall playing the blues, just like I'd done in Leicester. This is how it appeared in the paper:
After that, I was feeling pretty good, so I walked through the Arndale Centre making sure everyone saw the T-shirt. Although...it was here that I got my one and only look of disgust. I was sorting myself out by the Orange shop, and a rastafarian came up, directly to me. He looked past me, to the guitar slung on my back, and closed in, on the words 'Walk for the History of England'. I said 'Alright?' but he just stared at the words, and walked off, not happy. Obviously, there was something in him that misinterpreted the words 'History of England' as 'Walk to celebrate the British Empire' , but, what can I say? There's no point in trying to convince someone who's already seen what he wants to see, no matter how wrong he is. Anyway, this was the mall:
and much more memorably, this was the 'original' idea that the mall had opted for in the male toilets. I know...but I had to take this surreptitious photo, from the safe confines of a cubicle. To explain, the bottom, paler half is the front of the 'communal trough' part, and the bluer part is the back wall, about a foot further behind. To help the weary shopping men, they've put 'targets' on the back wall - six in all - all in a line. A very thoughtful gesture, to enliven the most mundane of moments in this cultural utopia.
Having said that, there was a good view out of the back window:
but after that, I was off, out of town, and soon finding the cyclepath that the radio presenter had told me about:
With this began one of the most pleasant stretches of the walk. I particularly liked the fact that the cyclepath had only been opened a few weeks, and lots of it wasn't finished. As well as this, most of the rest hadn't 'settled' yet, but it wound its way through woodlalnd where once the only option would have been to walk by the road, only a few metres away to the right:
At times, the woodland would open out, into semi-fields. It was a day that older people would have said 'couldn't make its mind up', and the sun would blare for a few moments, before the rain came down:
..and I came out at this sign, detailing the cycleway, but also marking the place where the curving aspect of the walk changed. After this the route became straight because - again - it followed the path of on old railway line, decommissioned in the 60s:
Again, it didn't take much looking to find the legacy:
Although the route would sometime deviate, and once came out at these striking fields, with a freight train going by in the distance:
After two hours, I noticed that the path seemed 'elavated' and that there were houses and gardens through the trees on either side. I asked a woman walking a dog 'What town is this?' and of course, it was Harpenden. Soon after, the path ended, at a suburban street:
..which, although quiet, didn't strike me as the most laid-back of places:
The town was high on the whiff of affluence, and I squeezed down the narrow pavements until I turned right towards St Albans:
There were signs everywhere which made me realise the type of place it was. Look at these; In Harpenden, obviously you can never have too many:
It was another two hours of reasonably good walking until I first realised that I was getting close to St Albans. What I remember most of this stretch were two dead woodpigeons, in perfect condition, barely thirty metres away from each other along the path -both looked like they'd just fallen from the sky about a minute earlier. The first sign I was near was a grammar school, but soon it was obvious:
Then I reached the 'Ancient Briton' junction in the leader picture of this day's entry. This was a large crossroads, and I took the right-hand turn - which turned out to be the second hopeless waste of time of the walk after the one outside Wakefield. I walked for 20 minutes along a suburban road until I turned round and walked the 2o minutes back, to pick the road ahead. I'd hoped it hadn't been the one because it was up a hill, but it was, and in another few minutes I was rung by tonight's host, Peter, telling me where to meet him. I got into town, and missed the place he'd described, when it started pouring with rain:
...So I took refuge in a pub called the Peahen, and watched the biggest rainstorm of the entire walk, that I missed by getting into town with just five minutes to spare:
I rang Peter, and he met me just outside this building overlooking the market place, which I think was once, or may still be, the town hall:
It was only a few minute's drive to get to Peter's, a vicarage next to his church. It was a truly stimulating night talking to Peter - he went to Queens College in Oxford, which he told me is known to be the 'northern' college -with centuries of links to the north of England, and he had the broad, in-depth knowledge of history which meant every sentence seemed to move onto another story effortlessly. One example of this can be seen in this pic below:
This is the maundy money of a man Peter knew, and nominated for the gift. His name was William Bunce, he died when he was 93, and he was apparently a larger-than life character. One of his ancestors -also named William Bunce - was the physician on the HMS Victory the day that Nelson died, and is shown on the famous painting of the scene. However, amongst other things this William had been one of the policemen who escorted the March from Edgware to Marble Arch on its last day -31st of October 1936, which similarly, had been another day pouring with rain.
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