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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Saturday, 5 August 2023

Saturday Walk - The Greensand Ridge, the ‘Cathedral of the Chilterns’, a motte-and-bailey, the Icknield Way past Hitchin Lavender to THE Garden City: Arlesey to Letchworth

Length: 25.4 km (15.8 mi) [for a longer or shorter walk: see below]
Ascent/Descent: approx. 200/156m
Net Walking Time: 5 ½ hrs
Toughness: 5 out of 10 
 
Take the 09.41 Peterborough train from Kings Cross (Finsbury Park 09.54), arrives Arlesey at 10.25. 
Return trains: 16.00, 16.52, 17.00, 17.48, 18.00, 18.50, 18.50… 
Buy a return to Letchworth Garden City. This should also be valid for the Hitchin - Arlesey stretch.
 
This long but not too challenging walk in the Bedfordshire/Hertfordshire borders leads straight from the platform into the wildlife-rich riverside meadows of the Hiz River, a meandering high quality chalk stream, followed for a few km. It then leads west along field boundaries and through RAF Henlow Camp to the linear hilltop village of Meppershall, past its manor house and a motte-and-double bailey. The following stretch offers far views south to the Chilterns and north to the Greensand Ridge, before heading to the imposing hilltop church in Shillington, dubbed the ‘Cathedral of the Chilterns’ by John Betjeman.After lunch green lanes lead to the pretty village of Pirton, with more impressive remains of a motte-and-double bailey and traces of an abandoned medieval village.
The Icknield Way then leads you past one of the very few British lavender farms and its excellent barn café to the World’s first and Britain’s best Garden City: Letchworth.
 
Walk Options:
An optional – flat – Extension right at the start adds 2.2 km (consider taking an earlier train and meet up with the group for their start)
Mutually exclusive Shortcuts around lunch reduce the length of the walk by either 3.0 or 1.4 km. 
An infrequent bus service (lines 79 and 89, Mon-Sat only) gets you from Meppershall, Shillington and Pirton to Henlow Camp, where you can connect to the more frequent service to Hitchin. That bus can also be caught 5 km from the end, on the A600.
 
Lunch: The Crown in Shillington (11.3 km/7.0 mi, food to 14.30) or The Musgrave Arms just after (12.9 km/8.0 mi). There are also The Motte & Bailey (food to 14.30) and The Fox in Pirton (about 16 km/10 mi, no food just now). 
Tea: the café at Hitchin Lavender (open to 17.30, and - apart from ice cream and cakes – also selling all things lavender) as well as a vast range of pubs and cafés en route to and in Letchworth, starting with the Pirton pubs mentioned as late lunch options (for more details see page 2 of the pdf).
 
For walk directions, route map, height profile, some photos, and gpx/kml files click here. T=swc.233

1 comment:

Thomas G said...

n=1 off an earlier train than the one posted by me. so I'm told by him.