Hertfordshire Way: Bricket Wood to Radlett

I'm not sure whether my previous walk had actually been a resounding success, but it had certainly proved a basic framework for country walks in a relevantly time efficient fashion given where I live in London: I essentially picked two stations somewhere north of London which looked on the map liked they had a bit of countryside, and hopefully a nice country pub, between them. So I repeated that formula again today, and somehow came to the decision to walk from Bricket Wood to Radlett.

Bricket Wood had seemed like an attractive starting point because it would mean leaving London from Euston - which is easy for me to get to by the Northern line, then changing at Watford Junction and getting on a funny little branch line, an idea which appealed to me. Then, being a small station more or less in the middle of nowhere, the idea was I'd be directly into the countryside, rather than having to spend the first 20 minutes or so walking through urban sprawl.

This was the case, and just a minute or two after leaving the station I was in the woods. Albeit a decidedly damp and grey area of woodland, which despite it nominally being April, still felt rather wintery given the weather today.

I imagine Bricket Wood Common must look nice in spring though.

From Bricket Wood Common, I think I vaguely followed the Hertfordshire Way down towards Aldenham. It crossed an area of park land (around Munsden House?) which looked particularly bleak and wintery.

It was also raining a fair amount by this point - having started, if I recall correctly, as more of a light drizzle, it was now definitely in the realms of proper rain. I did have a waterproof coat with me, but it didn't have a hood.

Beyond the parkland, I reached some sort of outpost civilisation - an odd, seemingly unnamed housing estate in the middle of nowhere, where I paused beneath some sort of shelter for a bit to take a break from the rain. Whilst there I took a picture to document just how soaked I was.

The rain wasn't showing any sign of letting up, so I pressed on for another 20 minutes to the Round Bush near Aldenham, which was a very welcome sight indeed. I squelched in was very glad of their hospitality (not to mention the fact it was warm and dry).

It would probably have made sense to just head straight to Radlett from there, but despite the inclement conditions I chose to take a slight detour down to Letchmore Heath to see what it was like - I half considered popping into the pub there too, but somehow from outside it looked a bit too clean and tidy and I thought they might not appreciate me dripping all over the place. So from there I followed the road into Radlett, and was on a train back home not long after 2pm.