Yesterday I had a rest day with my brother, his wife and family. An opportunity to catch up on the latest news and wash my clothes properly. This morning I was back at Ickleford to continue my expedition. Following the signs I crossed a railway line and then a track across open fields. There I met a man looking up at a tree, or rather a small bird in a tree. It sounded like a dunnock to me but he thought a meadow pipit. After a few words on long distance walks I left him to continue into Letchworth.
The town is a "Garden City", indeed it was the first one, being created in the early years of the 20th century. As such the whole of the "city" was planned as a single project to include the best of town and country, with clean air, good drainage, bright houses and gardens and, it was hoped, high wages. The original well spaced houses and tree lined streets are a pleasure to look at and no doubt live in. Standards continue to be maintained by the Garden City Foundation. My route took me by the Spirella corset factory, a stylish building from the 1920s which now seemed to house offices. I deviated from the Icknield Way for a coffee in the town centre, by a wide, largely pedestrianised street. On the eastern side of the town the Icknield Way went by car show rooms, light industry and some very modern housing. A contrast to those built in the 1900s, these were closely packed with solar panels on their roofs. Crossing the busy A1(M) motorway the urban landscape continued in Baldock. There were older houses near its centre, the high street was a wide boulevard.
From there to Royston I crossed large, open fields and a few small villages, of which Wallington contained a thatched house once occupied by the author George Orwell. It was here he wrote of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War in "Homage to Catalonia", experiences that would greatly influence his later work and influenced me when I read the book in my youth.
Now that the clouds had cleared the gentle swellings of large fields of grass or stubble were encompassed by wide blue skies. On one mild summit a shooting party had collected, its attendees all dressed in green jackets and Wellington boots, men in flat caps, guns in leather carrying cases, eager bright eyed spaniels and retrievers with greater gravitas ready and waiting.
At Sandon the church looked massively built with sloping buttresses, inside was an interesting brass commemorating John and Elizabeth Fitzgeffrey from 1480, a liked the little dog at the base of Elizabeth's dress. After the village the Icknield Way went back and fore on tree lined tracks used by horse riders. The lowering sun lengthened shadows, softened the landscape in its yellow light, and painted the top of steel grey, gathering clouds a shade of pink. As I walked I alarmed pigeons roosting in the trees, who took to the air in great flapping, flurries. After turning back on itself many times, after Therfield the track made a run for Royston.
The key attraction of the town was a boulder called the Royse Stone, a glacial erratic brought from hundreds of miles away by a moving ice sheet in the Ice Age. It had a depression in the top that may have once been filled with vinegar, used for disinfecting coins in times of plague. A cross may also have stood on the rock. The other attraction of the town, closed when I arrived, was the Royston Cave, a man made subterranean chamber with religious carvings of unknown purpose. I walked down one of the streets lined with shops to the Old Bull where I had reserved a room. A room with ancient, black beams and rafters running through my bed and bathroom. Now I am full of food and beer, thinking of another day on the trail, pushing ever eastward.
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