A Guide to the County of Hertfordshire, Naturally
Hertfordshire is one of the home counties, small counties surrounding London, home to affluent villages with churches and ponds.
St Albans: A City with its Own Patron Saint
St Alban’s is a beautiful small city, with its own patron saint, who lived around 305 AD. A former pagan, a priest who he sheltered made such an impression, he converted himself.
He is recorded as the first-ever Christian martyr (killed for his faith) and is apparently the patron saint of converts and torture victims. His prayer is often still said today:
I worship and adore the true and living God, who created all things’.
There is a story that St Alban’s execution was delayed, as the fast-flowing river that he could not cross dried up, allowing him to escape. When he was eventually beheaded, his head rolled down a hill and a spring immediately created fresh water.
The executioners were so surprised, they began to revere him as a saint, and the well still stands today at Holywell Hill. How can any reality TV compete with that?
The Chiltern Hills: Peaceful Trails and Hidden Valleys
The Chiltern Hills edge into south Bedfordshire, giving you endless walks, bluebell woods, and far-reaching views. It covers over 660 square miles in Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. Barton Hills National Nature Reserve stands out for its chalk grasslands and wildflowers.
Always follow the Countryside Code, to keep all creatures safe. Keep dogs away from bluebells and other spring bulbs.
This National Landscape is packed with outdoor adventures, pubs with roaring fires and historic landmarks. Nature thrives in the Chilterns. You’ll often spot badgers, deer, and foxes roaming hedgerows and fields.
Red kites, once rare, glide above the valleys most days.
These fork-tailed raptors are at risk from lining nests with shiny ‘junk’, road traffic (they often eat roadkill) and illegal poisoning. But these monogamous birds have friends in Bedfordshire, who have contributed to a conservation success story.
In recent years, parts of the Chilterns have been destroyed by the useless HS2 project, which will do nothing to help stop climate change, and which Barn Owl Trust says is a ‘very expensive way of killing owls’.
Local people have also said their landscape is changed forever, as flooding and dust has destroyed woodland and countryside to produce ‘fast trains’ that will kill 22,000 wildlife each year once built, based on comparisons with high-speed rail projects abroad.
One resident told a newspaper that both her father and father-in-law (late farmers) would never have believed what has happened. Parts of Grim’s Ditch (an iron age monument that runs through the Chilterns) has also been destroyed.
Bedfordshire is a small mostly rural county in East of England, not too far from London. It does have some towns (Bedford with its Italian heritage) and Luton (a history of hat-making). But mostly this is peaceful villages.
Hemel Hempstead: One of England’s First ‘New Towns’
New towns were built to try to accommodate more people, as London’s population grew. Hemel Hempstead is one such town, and also has the dubious title of being the first town to build a multi-storey car park. Thankfully today peer-to-peer parking spaces are taking over, to end these horrible monstrosities.
Once named ‘England’s ugliest town’, things are looking up, as it’s fallen off the list in a recent Telegraph survey (the ugliest town is now Slough in Berkshire, with Lewes in Sussex the prettiest).
Hemel Hempstead is also home to the Plough Roundabout, opened in 1973. It did not prove popular, bringing traffic to a stop, due to letting motorists turn left or right. Thankfully a new Dutch-style roundabout is soon to be built here instead, giving priority to walkers and cyclists.
