Watford to Hemel Hempstead
Walked by Sally and Richard, 12th January 2020
8.9 miles (3 hours 40 mins, including lunch stop), 7.75 miles on route of Grand Union Canal Walk
For all photographs taken on this walk click here
About halfway along today's walk we passed underneath the M25. On that basis, and given that we were walking along a canal towpath for most of the time, (which, generally speaking, is pleasant enough - in small doses!) it was never going to be a stunning walk. However, it was massively better than we'd expected. We were also lucky with the weather. The weather forecast had consistently shown bands of heavy rain passing across southern England over the weekend; initially these were shown as giving Hertfordshire a very wet Sunday morning (which is when we needed to be walking because Richard needed to return to Norfolk later in the day to take my car to the garage first thing on Monday), then things changed to indicate that the morning would be dry. We'd driven across to Milton Keynes on the Saturday evening and set off to drive to Hemel Hempstead about 7.30am, just as it was getting light. We have found a route that doesn't use the M1, instead heading almost due south through the Chilterns on the B440; it's an excellent route, but it was raining and there had obviously been a lot of rain in the night, leaving a huge amount of surface water. When we got to Hemel Hempstead Station car park we checked the weather forecast again and it showed a fair probability of rain until 10am, then a reducing probability during the day. We decided to take the risk and although this decision felt slightly crazy as we walked around to the station in quite heavy rain, this was the last rain we had (though it threatened from time to time) and the sun was out for most of the day.
We'd chosen Watford as our starting point because between here and London the route of the West Coast Mainline diverges from the route of the Grand Union Canal, so this is leg was the furthest south we could walk between two stations on the same railway line. It is actually Watford Junction station on the main line, about a mile from the canal. We caught the 8.44 train from Hemel Hempstead and set off walking just before 9am. The residential streets we walked through were more pleasant than I'd expected and we were soon in the delightful Cassiobury Park. The park was created in 1909 from the purchase by Watford Borough Council of part of the estate of the Earls of Essex around Cassiobury House, which was subsequently demolished in 1927. This morning, the park was a happy hub of activity, with friendly dog-walkers and joggers. We walked past the band stand and down a tree-lined avenue then past a children's playground and (dry) paddling pools. We reached the lovely River Gade, near a Weir. Then (at last, after all my waffle!) we crossed the Grand Union Canal, just by a lock, and turned right onto the towpath.
For the first mile or so, the canal was a delightful tree-lined waterway, with semi-rural views to the left (we were probably actually looking at golf courses!) and parkland to the right. There were a number of moored canal boats, plus occasional bridges and locks for interest, but the only real reminder of our closeness to Watford was the number of other people about. The other people were mostly dog-walkers, runners and cyclists, with an occasional canoeist or canal-boat resident. Near "The Grove" (a grand-looking house on a hill, the former home of the Earls of Clarendon and now a 5-star hotel!) we crossed over the canal, then back, The canal meandered a bit (to avoid their lordship's land?) past The Grove Mill, and the guidebook pointed out the embellishments on the bridges and canal-side cottages, again "the price the canal company had to pay for passing through such aristocratic parkland".
We passed under a spur from the M25 to the A41 and for a while the canal ran close to the A41, making it rather noisy. At Hunton Bridge we passed the home of the West Herts Narrowboat Trust and a narrowboat called Persephone, the name of Richard's boss's daughter, whose christening we are missing today. There is also a lock here, and by the lock, a junction with the River Gade. The river, which rises near Dagnall in the Chilterns (on our driving route this morning) and flows down to Rickmansworth, where it joins the River Colne, was close-by the canal for the whole of today's walk, occasionally forming part of the Grand Union Canal. I don't understand how this works i.e. how the water doesn't end up all flowing out of the canal, but there you go - these engineers were clever chaps!
The canal pulled away from the A41 and passed through an area of open countryside - with the high bridge carrying the M25 just beyond. There was work taking place on the viaduct which carries the motorway, which meant there was rather a lot of scaffolding, but other than that the motorway was really not at all intrusive. As if to make the point, a narrowboat came chugging past us.
Bizarrely, for the second half of today's walk, now outside of the M25 so by some measure further from London, there was more evidence of being in commuter-land. The main reason appears to be that former canal-side industrial sites have been converted to desirable flats. The guidebook, written in 1993, talks at some length about passing the sights and smells of the Ovaltine Factory in King's Langley; the facade of the Factory (away from the canal) is now all that remains and in its place is a large housing development - pleasant enough but not the same. Delightfully, the old bridges and locks of the canal remain, and a broad-beamed boat owned by the local Waterways Experiences, who provide "accessible canal boating for all" was just coming through one of the locks.
We also passed a broad area of water to our right, well populated by fishermen (and women?) and then underneath the railway, which was also close-by the canal for most of today's walk. As we approached the Nash Mills and Apsley areas on the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead, there were more flats in the place of the former Dickinson's Paper Mills. The modern office blocks on the left hand side remain, but the whole area around Apsley has been massively redeveloped with Apsley Marina and a modern footbridge crossing the river to The Paper Mill pub. However, unknown to us at the time, just slightfly further on we walked past Frogmore Mill, still a working papermill, but operated by the charity "The Paper Trail" and open to the public - it looks fascinating. The Gade Valley is known as the region where paper-making as an industry developed and flourished, but of the seven paper mills formerly in the area only Frogmore Paper Mill survives.
Also in this area we passed the Boston Belle Cafe, open and serving coffee and cake on a canal boat. It was very tempting but we weren't that far from our car and had lunch with us. A little while later, as we continued to follow the canal through Hemel, passing a site where more flats are being built, then a Sainsburys and a DIY store, we began to feel hungry - it was only about midday but we'd had an early start. The wall of a lock provided us with somewhere to sit and it was a good place for a lunch stop, if a little public given the number of people passing, and rather tempting for passing dogs; two dogs attempted to eat our lunch!
We passed under Bridge 150, across which we had driven this morning and from here we could have taken a rather muddy path across some of Boxmoor's common land to the station, but for completeness we continued to Bridge 149, by the Fisheries Lock. When we were here in October heading for a walk on the Chiltern Way the lock was in use. Today it was overflowing, and the top end of the lock was completely under water. Presumably there with some problem with a lock further along the canal, but we didn't get chance to investigate further as we were heading back to our car in the station car park and so to return to the flat, on a road that was much dryer than this morning.
