To Lilley from Harpenden

We had planned to walk this leg of the Chiltern Way on 18th August 2019. The weather forecast had been reasonable until mid afternoon and it was a dry, pleasant morning in Norfolk. Having decided that it was better to walk the leg "in reverse" because we were more certain of parking in Lilley, we drove there first and it was still dry as I parked my car. However, as we drove to Harpenden in Richard's car the heavens opened and when we reached Harpenden and checked the weather forecast again, it was now showing rain for the next three hours. Given we had plenty to do back in Simpson, we headed straight back to Lilley and so back to the flat, where Richard spent the day touching up the paint in the bathroom. A useful day, if not quite what we had planned!

The next plan was to walk it on 1st September and we dutifully got up at 6am, to give ourselves time to drive from Norfolk. I felt fine for a little while, but by 6.30am I was feeling distinctly wobbly - so I went back to bed! It was probably just a result of the worry of all the things I had to do today prior to returning to work tomorrow after a month off and I felt better by later in the morning. That was rather too late to drive over to Hertfordshire and to do the walk before driving on to Simpson and doing all the other stuff.

Third time lucky. Sunday 8th September was a dry, sunny day, with an autumnal nip in the air first thing and the probability of rain was less than 3% all day. Furthermore, I was already in Milton Keynes, having had a meeting on Saturday, and Richard drove over on Saturday evening, so we didn't have a long drive. We got up at 6am and were walking before 9am, having left one car near the Lilley Arms (TL117265) and then driven to convenient little parking place in Harpenden, probably meant for when they service the mobile phone mast, on Thrales End Lane near its junction with the A1081 (TL123157). This walk could probably be best summed up as walking around Luton Airport, but it was massively nicer than that implies.

We started off by walking a short distance along the A1081 to Cooters End Lane, another lane which runs in the same direction as Thrales End Lane, climbing up onto the Chilterns from Harpenden. As we climbed there were good views back to Harpenden, and soon we reached the brow of Cooters Hill and descended again towards the Lea Valley. Unusually, a train came along the line (the main BedPan line) which runs along the Lea Valley at this point, just at the right moment to make a good photo.

We'd been passed by occasional cars (mostly posh 4x4s!) - not a problem though it's not a wide lane so I wouldn't have wanted to be driving the other way - and at the point where Cooters End Lane joins Thrales End Lane, there was a positive queue. We passed underneath a railway arch, crossed the Lea Valley Walk (here buzzing with cyclists) then crossed the River Lea, sparkling in the morning sunshine.

The route through East Hyde is not entirely clear on the map, but it was relatively clearly signposted: you turn right onto the B653, then left up a minor road (Farr's Lane) which climbs past houses. Just past the final house you take a path left which brings you to a track, along which you continue to climb. We met a dog-walker and stopped to talk about the glorious weather and countryside. It turned out that she walks this way every day. We turned left (with views to Luton Hoo House, now a posh hotel) and then right (now following a field boundary, sometimes on one side of the hedge, sometimes on the other, and sometimes walking down the middle, with hedge either side of us).

We emerged next to the village hall in Peter's Green and a slightly confusing Chiltern Way sign in that it implied that the northern (i.e. Bedfordshire) Chiltern Way extension rejoins the main route here, whilst the map shows the junction just slightly further on. It's not a big deal and happily, it looks as if it should be possible to park a car near the pub if and when we walk this extension [we completed the northern extension in May 2020, but didn't need to park in Peter's Green as we had found a good car park in Whitwell]. Meanwhile we turned right and then left out of Peter's Green, past the entrance to Lawrence End, a big house with rather irritating "private" signs (not that we wanted to walk down their drive). All very "nice" apart from the noise of planes which were today coming in to land at Luton Airport from our right, and for the next few miles we could also hear the noise of them reverse-thrusting after landing, and the roar of engines preparing for take off. It was interesting for one day of walking, but I wouldn't want to live here.

After swapping maps from OS Sheet 182 (St Albans and Hatfield) to Sheet 193 (Luton and Stevenage) and stopping to tighten the laces of my walking boots, we took a path through Wandon Green Farm which led onto a track. The runway of Luton Airport might be less than a mile away, but this was glorious undulating countryside. There was a somewhat pungeant smell and we could hear the noise of something that we couldn't identify; it turned out to be a muck spreader, but fortunately it was away getting more muck when we walked past the place where it was operating - having had muck spread on us on previous walks, we knew this to be good news! The route we took diverged slightly from the one shown on the map and we have no idea whether our route was "right" or not; we initially thought not because a couple of dog walkers behind us headed across the field whilst we'd walked around the edge of it, but they took a different route at the hedge boundary, so who knows. We turned left along the hedge boundary then, now clearly back on the correct route (from both the map and a "Chiltern Way" signpost) turned right across a field and climbed quite steeply. Out of breath at the top of the hill, we stopped to get our breath back and to admire the view back the way we had come. Sorry readers, I'm about to turn a little lavatorial, by talking about the need to stop from time to time when out walking. It's not usually a problem in the countryside, but on this occasion, as we'd climbed we'd been running parallel with a row of houses. However, before we reached the road, there was a section that was shielded from view of anyone on the ground, so I stopped; unfortunately I had reckoned without the plane that flew directly overhead, very low...I hope the pilots were concentrating on the runway ahead!

The road took us towards Breachwood Green, with excellent views to the left of the runway approach and planes taxiing and preparing for take off. We turned then onto a delightful wandering and undulating path, which we followed for a kilometre or so before emerging onto the road near Wandon End, just in time for the double glazing salesman to ring about the new windows we are buying for the flat. Fortunately, the path left the road very shortly afterwards, so I was able to get off the road; the path then followed alongside a field-edge parallel to the road, right up to Wandon End Farm, which is apparently now home to "WaggWorld", incorporating " WaggNBone" (Day care for dogs), "WaggNWash", and "WaggNGroom".

We crossed a road and took a track past two cars whose drivers were chatting and then past some cottages, most likely the car-drivers' homes. The path took us alongside a lovely and presumably ancient hedge before emerging alongside a field close to the edge of a modern estate. This is Luton, which had sprung upon us unawares. We sat in the field to eat our lunch, then continued close to the edge of the lovely Bricklin Wood.

We reached a minor road which took us through the two adjacent villages of Cockernhoe and Mangrove Green, which even have matching villages signs. A little further on we reached and walked alongside a long wall which was not in the best of repair; trees growing close to it had caused parts of the wall of collapse. It looked like the edge of a country estate, but which? It was Richard who worked out that we were at the edge of the estate of the house that is now the University of Befordshire's Putteridge Bury Campus (and which, in addition to other things, is a conference centre and wedding venue, as so many old houses seem to have become).

There were good views to Lilley Church, about a mile away to the north-west, but we didn't follow a direct route. Instead, after crossing the delightfully named Lilley Bottom, we headed further east, before passing underneath the A505 then climbing up Lilley Hoo ("hill"). We had realised that we'd end the day with a climb and then a descent to Lilley, and had muttered a bit about this, but the view down to Lilley from the top of the hill (which is best admired from the other side of the hedge at the top) was superb. This was a lovely approach and, more generally, my previously negative views of Lilley and its environs (from the John Bunyan Trail) seem to have been most unfair; I now think it is a very pleasant village.

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