Rediscovering the Past
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0 REDISCOVERING THE PAST Martin Gurdon takes a trip into yesteryear in INFINITI’s 0 crossover, revisiting memorable places from his youth on a journey around the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire countryside Some roads are perfect for driving, whereas others are simply a vegetarian co-educational boarding establishment. Towards playwright and thinker George Bernard Shaw made his home charming. But some of the lanes near Ayot St Lawrence, the end of an inglorious school career I, along with some other for 44 years until his death in 1950. where George Bernard Shaw made his home, and where teenage reprobates, would make illicit sorties to the local pubs I was visiting on a circular drive from St Albans into the in nearby Willian village. Seeing some of these places again NATIONAL TREASURE Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire countryside, were both. with adult eyes would be interesting. My starting point had been St Michael’s Church and the Within minutes of leaving a busy, well-ordered urban This slightly guilty nostalgia was still some way off, as Verulamium museum site in St Albans. I’d last visited landscape, you can find yourself in dense woodland, nosing I nosed the 0 towards Ayot St Lawrence, and Shaw’s Verulamium on a school trip a very long time ago, when I’d your way along twisting, narrow lanes. Often set low between Corner, location of the Arts and Crafts house that Irish wandered around this national treasure with adolescent grass banks, these human tributaries probably started life as tracks for people on foot or using horse-drawn carts. They’re slightly mysterious, and suck you into places that are often DREAM-LIKE beautiful and feel surprisingly remote. The Cloisters was I was driving a British-made and engineered INFINITI 0. built in 1907 This was a compact five-door with a willing 2.2 litre diesel engine (which was barely ticking over as I trickled through the countryside), a smooth, rapid seven-speed automatic transmission and four-wheel-drive. The INFINITI’s interior, with its fabrics, leathers and soft-to-the-touch surfaces had a cocoon-like quality that was comfortable but not excessive, something which applied to the rest of the car, whose distinctive body was compact enough to make negotiating single-track lanes with passing places thought-provoking rather than anxiety-inducing. I’m a motoring journalist invited to try the 0 by the Glyn Hopkin INFINITI Centre St Albans, and decided to use the car to take a drive for pleasure rather than necessity. It would combine interesting roads with interesting locations. I’d also rediscover a part of the world where I have connections, but actually don’t know much about. I’d spent part of my 1970s childhood in a village near Bedford, in an era when it was still peppered with brick factories, creating an unusual urban/rural landscape that, now those factories have closed, is properly rural again. This was quite a drive from St Albans, and as I’d decided to spend QUIET DRIVE about an hour-and-a-half behind the wheel, too far away to Bedford has changed visit. However the circular route I’d chosen, which would take dramatically since me to Letchworth Garden City, did dip into Bedfordshire. the 1970s In Letchworth, I’d been an inmate of St Christopher School, indifference, so this time decided to put this right when I came back from my travels. But first, some serious driving needed to be done. I’d driven through Wheathampstead, home of the amusingly named Wicked Lady pub, and possessor of a picture-postcard high street. Soon, I was on the rural Codicote Road, trickling around bends and enjoying the lush countryside, before the precise, female tones of the 0’s sat nav sent me onto the very attractive, very narrow Bridge Hall Lane, which pretty well took me to Shaw’s Corner. Open until the end of October and looked after by the National Trust, its house and gardens are little changed from when George Bernard Shaw lived there, and the place still has the feel of someone’s home. It also has a tiny writer’s hut on a revolving base, so that its occupant could catch the sun. Here, Shaw wrote many plays, including Pygmalion. Apparently the hut was christened ‘London’, so that when its owner was writing, unwanted callers could be told “he’s in London”. London was getting further away as the INFINITI and I eased once more into the country lanes, often passing under tunnel-like canopies of trees. We ambled along gently and I dropped the driver’s window to better enjoy my surroundings. On Kimpton Road, woods gave way to a rather gorgeous rural vista of big, brown-earthed fields rippling towards a tree-lined horizon. Our next destination was Knebworth, famous for the splendid Knebworth House and the seminal rock gigs that have taken place there. The INFINITI and I made for bigger, faster roads along a lane that twisted and skirted its way through this distinctive agricultural landscape, and I had fun using the 0’s speedy, steering wheel-mounted gear selection paddles. With Knebworth Country Park to our left we passed through Old Knebworth and slipped under the A1(M), about five minutes later joining it at junction seven and heading north. INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE The A1(M) is efficient, but it’s not especially interesting, so why was I using it? The generic term is cheating. Letchworth and Willian village were in my sights, and this fast-flowing road offered the speediest route. It also allowed the 0 to display relaxed, low-revving refinement when cruising. Letchworth was conceived at the start of the last century as a Utopian coming together of the countryside and industrial progress, so there’s a mix of cottage housing with good-sized gardens and grander Arts and Crafts homes, and what was probably Britain’s first industrial estate. Letchworth was also the first place to have a green belt and in 1909, the UK’s first roundabout. I found this at the end of the tree-lined Broadway, and the INFINITI took a celebratory twirl round it before we headed back into town to seek out the Spirella Building. To call this an old corset factory built from 1912 to 1920 is rather insulting to its elegant structure, which has been reborn as a ballroom, offices and fitness centre. During its undergarment-making years, workers had access to a gym, optician, and even a bicycle repair workshop. Having spotted the Art Deco Broadway Cinema, I weaved the 0 though tree-lined backstreets to Cloisters Road, passing a fabulously eccentric building with crenellated towers and exposed spiral staircases. This is The Cloisters, dating from BREATHTAKING 1907 and the creation of Annie Lawrence, who allegedly saw The rural roads how the building would look in a dream. This housed a sort of are a sight to Edwardian hippy commune, with semi open-air bedchambers behold where housework was undertaken ‘by earnest young men in robes’. Today it’s a wedding venue and Masonic hall. Willian village lies about 10 minutes away from this agreeably bonkers structure and makes an interesting contrast. Since a lot of Letchworth was built at the same time, it’s perhaps slightly uniform, but Willian has a more organic mix of houses and is properly rural. There’s a tin tabernacle village hall and a pond where generations of grown ups have fished while their children caught tadpoles. This sits in a field with a footpath. The gate leading to it had a sign warning that cows with calves sometimes grazed the field and that parental protectiveness could lead to bovine head butting. Villagers have the choice of two pubs, the Three Horseshoes and The Fox, which was a traditional sleepy boozer when your correspondent sneaked out of St Christopher School – sited next to The Cloisters – for a weedy half pint of lager. Now the Fox is a busy gastro pub. In the car park was an immaculate Vincent motorcycle, with a fuel tank shiny as a black beetle’s wing case. Its owner said it was a Black Knight, dating from 1952, then roared into the countryside. Before following him and heading for Great Wymondley and some roads I knew would be fun, I chanced upon the wooden lych gate of All Saints Church, put up as a memorial to villagers who fell in the Great War. Six of the nine were members of a single family, the Bedfords. I should have been looking for another memorial when I said goodbye to Willian and opened up the 0 on the straight, but undulating Wymondley Road that makes for the FASCINATING Visit the former home of George Bernard Shaw THE INFINITI STAYED FIRMLY PLANTED, RIDING WITH SURPRISING COMPOSURE villages of Great and Little Wymondley. This is a driver-friendly also an entertaining place to drive, and I elected to change my stretch of tarmac, and the INFINITI duly picked up its skirts and A505 own gears as the INFINITI did its thing. stayed firmly planted, riding with surprising composure until Having entered East Hyde beneath its impressive brick Willian we reached Great Wymondley, which is actually smaller than arch railway bridge, I realised that St Albans wasn’t far Hitchin Little Wymondley. away. Passing close to Childwickbury Manor, where film Great Wymondley It’s also about two miles on from a small stone roadside director Stanley Kubrick once lived, I tracked my way back obelisk that I’d sailed past but had intended to see.