Day 41 – Linslade

This morning was a slow start catching up on emails etc, before Stephen came around to pick me up at 11am. He had arranged to have the day off work and to drive me around sightseeing for a few hours. We drove into Leighton Buzzard and went through to a village called Aldbury. The village is only small with a grass common and small lake in the centre of it. Next to the lake is an old set of stocks that were used in the old days of the town. I was also told there was a dunking chair there also for dunking witches.

The buildings in the village are beautiful, old style brickwork and timber beams and old slate roofs. We went into a pub called The Greyhound for a look and a cool drink and Stephen asked the barmaid if they had any different styles of coasters as well of the ones on the bar and he mentioned I was over visiting from Australia and I collect them. She replied that she is from Adelaide in South Australia and that she was on a working holiday. She had only been in the village for two weeks.

As she went to get me some coasters we looked around the pub a bit and it is a really old pub and I read that it was used in the movie Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason. I was able to get 6 different coasters from the Barmaid and after thanking her we left to move on to our next stop.

The roads surrounding the village are all narrow and winding and quite often you have to pull up to let other cars pass by you. Also today there seems to be a lot of people bicycling around as well which added to the slow trip. We headed through a few other villages and then stopped in the city of St Albans.

St Albans is a city that can be traced back to before Roman Times and was called Verulam by its original Celtic inhabitants. It became a major city in the Roman occupation when it was renamed Verulamium and was the second largest Roman city behind London. The roman ruins date back to approx. 275AD and are on the outskirts of the current city.

Stephen and I walked around the city including some narrow lane ways with buildings dating back to the 1500’s and visited the St Albans Cathedral and I took some photos of the exterior of the building. We then walked back up into the city area and stopped at a pub for some lunch before driving around some more of the city and then out into the countryside again.

We drove up to the highest point in the county and looked out over the countryside and a lot of the local villages. There were people flying in hang gliders from this point as well. We then went back to the house and I thanked Stephen for taking the time to show me some more of the local area and taking me to some places that I had not been to before.

Back at Doreen’s home we had a drink and then Stephen had to go. During the late afternoon I was able to catch up on some writing and sorting out my luggage. Doreen has given me some items to take home for my mother and I needed to safely pack them into my bags.

Doreen then made some dinner and we sat and ate before watching some television till about 10pm.  By this time I was getting tired and I was off to bed for the night.