Lea Valley Walk - Hertford to Home Park

27 June 2004

A walk from Hertford East railway station along the Lea Valley Walk to Home Park on the outskirts of Hatfield

A short walk from Hertford East brings us to near the head of the Lee Navigation, where walkers on the overflow weir look across Hertford Basin

Through Hertford and onto the trackbed of the closed Welwyn to Hertford railway line, opened by the Great Northern Railway in 1858 and closed by British Railways in 1966.

Poppies a little past their best

Just visible below the fence, the stone and bricks are the edge of the platform of Hertingfordbury station

Hertingfordbury station, now a private house

Flowers through the trees

More poppies, looking rather more cheerful

George on the Welwyn to Hertford Railway

The other station on this line was at Cole Green, and here too the platform remains to be seen

Once the route reaches the A414, it leaves the railway trackbed for a permissive path to Holwell Bridge. Unfortunately, it was quite impenetrable, as this and the next photo show.

Having struggled a mere 50 metres down the path, I decided that I didn't fancy another 600m or so of this, and so we backtracked and detoured along Deadfield Lane and along the roads to Holwell Bridge

After a sharp shower, George runs on ahead as we near the river again

Flattened grass and a stormy sky

At Cecil Saw Mill on the edge of Home Park, the waters of the Lea run out of The Broadwater towards Hertford, the Thames and the sea. The journey onwards towards the source of the Lea at Luton waits for another day.