Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 65, Saturday 13 July 2024

The Samaritan Woman … originally part of a 17th century supply of fresh, clean water in Hoddesdon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and tomorrow is the Seventh Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VII).

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection in connection with this week’s USPG conference;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The Samaritan Woman once stood on the corner of the High Street and Conduit Lane in Hoddesdon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Matthew 10: 24-33 (NRSVUE):

[Jesus said:] 24 “A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master; 25 it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

26 “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. 27 What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28 Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

32 “Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.”

A plaque remembers where the Samaritan Woman once stood in the centre of Hoddesdon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

This morning’s reflection:

I spent much of this week at the High Leigh Conference Centre on the western fringes of Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire. The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 13 July 2024) invites us to pray as we reflect on these words in Saint Matthew’s Gospel: ‘For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me’ (Matthew 25: 35).

I spent much of this week at the USPG annual conference in the High Leigh Conference Centre in Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire. During one early morning walk into Hoddesdon this week, I saw the 17th century statue of the Samaritan Women in the grounds of Lowewood Museum in Hoddesdon but that originally once stood as a fountain in the centre of the town.

Sir Marmaduke Rawdon (1582-1646), a wealthy merchant, built Rawdon House in the centre of Hoddesdon in the early 17th century. He invested in the nearby New River and in 1631, when he provided a conduit from his estate at Rawdon House to Hoddesdon to supply clean, fresh water for the people of the town. Water poured from the pitcher in the Samaritan Woman’s arms into a small pond below.

Sir Marmaduke Rawdon also assisted in building a Market House in Hoddesdon. His son, also Marmaduke Rawdon, built the Grange. The Rawdon family were royalists during the Civil War and their fortunes suffered considerably.

Over the years the statue has been located in various places, until it was taken into storage and restored. It was relocated in 1986 to the gardens of Lowewood House and now stands in the museum grounds.

Lowewood House was built around 1750, and members of the Warner family lived there from 1835 until 1935. The house was bought by Douglas Taylor who gave it to the town in 1936 for use as a public library and museum. The library was relocated in 1977 and since 1982 Lowewood House has been the home of Broxbourne Museum. The museum has been managed by the Lowewood Museum Trust since 2021 and is open on Fridays and Saturdays.

The statue of the Samaritan Woman has been cleaned and restored recently and a blue plaque at the corner of the High Street and Conduit Lane marks the original location of the statue of the Samaritan Woman. The plaque celebrating the statue and the fountain was unveiled last month (24 June 2024) by the Mayor of Broxbourne, Councillor Sherrie McDaid, as part of the Love Hoddesdon Midsummer Festival.

There is a similar figure in the fountain on the lawn at High Leigh. It is one of outdoor features the gardens created by the Pulhams, a family of landscape gardeners in nearby Broxbourne. I wonder whether it was inspired by the Samaritan Woman in the centre of Hoddesdon and, indeed, whether it too was ever known as the Samaritan Woman?

The Samaritan Women now stands in the grounds of Lowewood Museum in Hoddesdon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 13 July 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘United Beyond Borders.’ This theme was introduced last Sunday with reflections on this week’s USPG conference by Rachael Anderson, Senior Communications and Engagement Manager, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 13 July 2024) invites us to pray reflecting on these words in Saint Matthew’s Gospel:

‘For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me’ (Matthew 25: 35).

The Collect:

Merciful God,
you have prepared for those who love you
such good things as pass our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love toward you
that we, loving you in all things and above all things,
may obtain your promises,
which exceed all that we can desire;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

God of our pilgrimage,
you have led us to the living water:
refresh and sustain us
as we go forward on our journey,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Creator God,
you made us all in your image:
may we discern you in all that we see,
and serve you in all that we do;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of Trinity VII:

Lord of all power and might,
the author and giver of all good things:
graft in our hearts the love of your name,
increase in us true religion,
nourish us with all goodness,
and of your great mercy keep us in the same;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The fountain in the gardens in High Leigh has many similariities with statue of the Samaritan Woman in Hoddesdon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition copyright © 2021, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny (Matthew 10: 29) ... watching a mother swallow feed her chicks in a nest in the ceiling of Aghias Anna Church, Maroulas, near Retymnon in Crete (Patrick Comerford)

Back in High Leigh for a USPG conference after a journey through Bedford and Cambridge

A return visit to Sidney Sussex College in this afternoon’s summer sunshine in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I am on my way this evening from Cambridge to Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire and to the High Leigh Conference Centre at Hoddesdon, where the annual conference of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is taking place this week.

I caught an early bus from Milton Keynes to Bedford, and during a brief stopover I went to see the rowing clubs by the River Ouse and in search of the sites of the mediaeval Jewish community and the later 19th century synagogues on High Street, before catching a connecting bus to Cambridge.

I was last in Cambridge in June 2019, on my way to and from that year’s USPG conference in High Leigh. This afternoon’s visit to Cambridge was an opportunity to refresh old memories, to return to Sidney Sussex College, to see the last of the summer wisteria there, to see the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (IOCS) at Wesley House and Westcott House on Jesus Lane, to stroll by the Backs and to visit some churches and some of my favourite bookshops, before catching a train to Broxbourne, the nearest station to Hoddesdon.

Looking for the last of this year’s wisteria in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I arrived at High Leigh late this afternoon, in time for dinner, and may go for a stroll back into Hoddesdon later this evening.

I was first in High Leigh 18 years ago when I was the chaplain in 2006 at the annual conference of the Friends of the Church in China and the China Forum of CTBI (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland). Since then, my journeys to and from conferences in High Leigh have offered opportunities to explore nearby towns such as Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire, Saffron Walden and Newport in Essex, to visit Rye House, the venue of the Rye House Plot in 1683, or to return to Cambridge.

My first USPG conference was in Swanwick in Derbyshire in 2008, and I have been at USPG conferences in Swanwick and High Leigh almost every year since then. I missed last year’s conference in Yarnfield Park in Stone, Staffordshire, on the theme of ‘Justice and the Church,’ because I was in Dublin working on a television documentary with a production company from Montenegro. But it is hard to believe that is now two years since I have been at High Leigh and at a USPG conference.

This year’s conference theme in High Leigh is ‘United Beyond Borders’ and the guest speakers and contributors include Bishop Anderson Jeremiah of Edmonton, the Very Revd Dr Kelly Brown Douglas of Episcopal Divinity School, Bradon Muilenburg who is working with refugees in Calais and Bishop Dalcy Badeli Dlamini of Eswatini (Swaziland), who is leading the Bible studies each morning.

The conference is an opportunity be inspired, encouraged and refreshed, and to hear about USPG’s support work with refugees in northern France, where they need hospitality, support and care, to engage with topics such as gender justice and racial justice, and the intertwined legacies of slavery and racism, colonialism and empire. They are topics that are also timely and sensitive given the rise of the far-right in elections in recent days in both the UK and France, fuelled by racism and intolerance towards refugees and asylum seekers.

I am looking forward to the opportunities the conference brings to meet many old friends, to hear from the guest speakers and to engage with workshops and Bible studies. And I am also looking forward to walks in the countryside and by the rivers in a part of East Anglia that I have now known for almost 20 years.

Walking by the River Ouse in this morning’s summer sunshine in Bedford on the way to High Leigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Hoddesdon and Broxbourne are in a part of Hertfordshire that typifies the English countryside and picture-postcard English towns and villages. As a travelled on the train from Cambridge to Broxbourne I enjoyed the views of the fields and countryside described by Betjeman as

… Clothed, thank the Lord, in summer green,
Pale corn waves rippling to a shore
The shadowy cliffs of elm between,

Colour-washed cottages reed-thatched
And weather-boarded water mills,
Flint churches, brick and plaster patched,
On mildly undistinguished hills

In his poem ‘Hertfordshire’, Betjeman recalls trudging through these fields in his childhood, and he returns to this area, perhaps at this time of the year, to find some of those fields are still there, but the Hertfordshire he knew as a child has been devastated by the spread of urbanisation,

Its gentle landscape strung with wire,
Old places looking ill and strange.

One can’t be sure where London ends,
New towns have filled the fields of root ...

Tall concrete standards line the lane,
Brick boxes glitter in the sun …

But in the sunshine and ‘summer green’ this week, I expect to enjoy some walks through these “mildly undistinguished hills” and lanes, and through welcoming fields, to find some timber-framed houses and pubs, and, perhaps, some ‘Flint churches, brick and plaster patched.’

The White Swan on the High Street in Hoddesdon … a timber-framed Hertfordshire pub rated by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘visually the most striking timber-framed inn in the district’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Hertfordshire’ by John Betjeman

I had forgotten Hertfordshire,
The large unwelcome fields of roots
Where with my knickerbockered sire
I trudged in syndicated shoots;

And that unlucky day when I
Fired by mistake into the ground
Under a Lionel Edwards sky
And felt disapprobation round.

The slow drive home by motor-car,
A heavy Rover Landaulette,
Through Welwyn, Hatfield, Potters Bar,
Tweed and cigar smoke, gloom and wet:

“How many times must I explain
The way a boy should hold a gun?”
I recollect my father’s pain
At such a milksop for a son.

And now I see these fields once more
Clothed, thank the Lord, in summer green,
Pale corn waves rippling to a shore
The shadowy cliffs of elm between,

Colour-washed cottages reed-thatched
And weather-boarded water mills,
Flint churches, brick and plaster patched,
On mildly undistinguished hills—

They still are there. But now the shire
Suffers a devastating change,
Its gentle landscape strung with wire,
Old places looking ill and strange.

One can’t be sure where London ends,
New towns have filled the fields of root
Where father and his business friends
Drove in the Landaulette to shoot;

Tall concrete standards line the lane,
Brick boxes glitter in the sun:
Far more would these have caused him pain
Than my mishandling of a gun.

High Leigh: a house with connections with a missionary family

High Leigh, once the home of the Barclay family, could easily be a setting for any TV period drama (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

The High Leigh Conference Centre on the edges of Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, where the USPG conference took place this week, is a beautiful Victorian country house, set in extensive parkland and landscaped gardens.

The garden at High Leigh is set with 40 acres of some of Hertfordshire’s most beautiful countryside, and the parkland is dotted with formal areas, woodland, lawns and ponds. Some of these features were created by the Pulham family of landscape gardeners in Broxbourne, just over a mile from High Leigh. The house could easily be a setting for any TV period drama.

The house was built in 1853 by Charles Webb, a gold lace manufacturer, and was bought in 1871 by Robert Barclay, a member of a well-known banking dynasty and a committed Christian, who renamed it High Leigh.

For generations, members of the Barclay and the Pulham families had been leading Quakers, and they may have attended the same Friends’ Meeting House on Lord Street, leading from Hoddesdon out to High Leigh. Although the Barclay family were once one of the leading Quaker families on these islands, by the time they came to live at High Leigh they were committed Anglicans, and their family story also has interesting links with Anglican mission work in the Far East over a century ago, and with the Diocese of Lichfield.

The impaled Barclay coat-of-arms with an episcopal mitre at High Leigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

On the stairs to the room where I was staying in High Leigh this week, the walls are lined with Victorian photographs of the Barclay family and their staff, and a stained-glass window in the original parts of the house shows an impaled Barclay coat-of-arms that has a bishop’s mitre as one of the two crests.

Robert Barclay was born on 13 December 1843, in Walthamstow, Essex, the son of Joseph Gurney Barclay and Mary Walker Barclay. Over the generations, his ancestors had married into many other prominent banking families, and he was responsible for merging 20 banks into Barclay and Company Ltd.

Robert was an Anglican, and his immediate family played key roles in the life of the Church of England. He married Elizabeth Ellen Buxton (1848-1911), a granddaughter of the 19th century reformer and campaigner against slaver, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and they had a large family that included CMS missionaries.

One son, Joseph Gurney Barclay (1879-1976), was born at High Leigh on 9 February 1879 and was baptised in Stanstead Abbots, Hertfordshire. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and married Gillian Mary Birkbeck (1882-1909) in 1905.

Joseph entered the family banking empires. But he left Barclay’s Bank to be become am Anglican missionary. Joseph and Gillian were in Japan with the Church Mission Society (CMS) when Gillian died in Kobe in 1909.

Joseph remarried and returned to England in 1926. He was working on the staff of CMS in London while he lived in Rose Hill, close to High Leigh. When he died on 15 April 1976 at Troutstream Hall in Chorleywood, Rickmansworth, he was buried in Saint Augustine’s Churchyard, Broxbourne. His obituary in The Times was written by his nephew, Bishop Robin Woods of Worcester.

Joseph Gurney Barclay’s son, Sir Roderick Barclay (1909-1996), was born in Kobe, Japan and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. A career diplomat, he was the British Ambassador to Denmark (1956-1960) and Belgium (1963-1969).

The house at High Leigh faces onto open, rolling Hertfordshire countryside (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Another son of Robert Barclay, the Revd Gilbert Arthur Barclay (1882-1970), was born in High Leigh, baptised in Stanstead Abbots, and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a vicar in Cumbria (1912 -1915), and during World War I he became an army chaplain in Flanders (1915-1916) and a hospital chaplain in London and Leicester (1916-1919).

Later he was a vicar in Leicestershire and a rector in Essex. His wife Dorothy Catherine Topsy Studd, who was born in Chin Shih Fang, Luanfu, Shanxi, was the daughter of pioneering missionaries in China, Charles Thomas Studd (1860-1931) and Priscilla Livingstone Stewart (1864-1929), who was born in Belfast.

A daughter of Robert Barclay, Rachel Elizabeth Barclay (1885-1932), who was born in High Leigh, worked as a CMS missionary in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). She is buried at Saint Augustine’s Church in Broxbourne.

Sir Jacob Epstein’s sculpture of Edward Sydney Woods, Bishop of Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Rachel Barclay was a sister of Clemence Rachel Barclay (1874-1952) married the Right Revd Edward Sydney Woods (1877-1953) in Hoddesdon in 1903. He was a son of the Revd Frank Woods, but also had a long line of Quaker ancestors through his mother, Alice Octavia Fry, a granddaughter of the prison reformed Elizabeth Fry.

Edward Woods was the Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge and Suffragan Bishop of Croydon, before becoming the 94th Bishop of Lichfield (1937-1952). Their daughter, Josephine Priscilla, married the Revd John d’Ewes Evelyn Firth in Lichfield Cathedral in 1939.

The war-time story is told of how Bishop Woods survived a German air raid by hiding under a dining room table with Ann Charteris, the future wife of Ian Fleming.

Clemence and Edward Wood were the parents of an archbishop, a bishop and an archdeacon.

The Most Revd Frank Woods (1907-1992), who was born in Davos, Switzerland, became the Archbishop of Melbourne (1957-1977) and Primate of Australia (1971-1977). He died in Melbourne in 1992.

The Ven Samuel Edward Woods (1910-2001) was the Archdeacon of Christchurch, New Zealand. His son, Canon Christopher Samuel Woods (1943-2007), was a Canon of Liverpool Cathedral.

The Right Revd Robert ‘Robin’ Wilmer Woods (1914-1997) was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was the Archdeacon of Sheffield, Dean of Windsor and Bishop of Worcester.

Robert Barclay continued to live at High Leigh until he died in 1921. His family then sold the property on favourable terms to First Conference Estate, a company he had been a director of, so that the house could become a Christian conference centre. The generosity of the Barclay family is celebrated in a plaque in the Oak Room, where I was taking part in two workshops on Tuesday afternoon.

A plaque in the Oak Room recalls the Barclay family’s connection with High Leigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

A day of two very different journeys in East Anglia

Early Spring in the countryside between Broxbourne and Roydon this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Anyone who has missed a train and been left waiting at Limerick Junction, knows how public transport in England is far better.

Despite excuses of ‘leaves on the line,’ complaints about trains that do not run or that overcrowded, and the biting cuts and mismanagement that are consequences of negative Tory attitudes to the needs for public transport, commuter trains and provincial buses still run regularly and are far more reliable than their counterparts in Ireland – with, perhaps, the notable exception of the Luas in Dublin.

But when something goes wrong with public transport, it really goes wrong.

When I am taking part USPG trustee meetings in London, I usually catch the first morning flight from Dublin to Stansted, allowing ample time to get to Liverpool Street Station and to have breakfast long before a meeting begins. I then catch a late flight back from Stansted, leaving me time to network, or to take time off to visit and photograph churches in the London area.

These plans fell apart this week, however.

I thought I was going to catch a train from Stansted to Liverpool Street early on Wednesday morning [13 February 2019]. But I was left sitting on the train for almost an hour and a half. Passengers were told constantly that we would be kept updated. But telling us we would be updated is quite different to being updated practically.

There was an ‘incident’ on the line, somewhere between Stansted and Bishop’s Stortford. After a time, the power was switched off, the train got colder, and we were left in the dark in every sense of the term.

The descriptions and location of the incident varied, but it took an hour and a half before passengers were told buses were available to take passengers to the train station in Broxbourne.

The scramble was unseemly, signs and guidance were not helpful, and the queues for the buses had already lengthened. We must have looked like a scene set up for one of those disgraceful Nigel Farage Brexit referendum posters.

But at least the journey through the Essex and Hertfordshire countryside and villages, and close to the Lea Valley, was pleasant in the warm, early Spring sunshine. I am familiar with Harlow, Roydon, Hoddesdon, Broxbourne and much of this region through attending USPG conferences almost every year at the High Leigh Conference Centre near Hoddesdon.

It took almost an hour to get to Broxbourne, only to be told that the next train had been cancelled. Eventually I got to Liverpool Street by 12 noon, about 4½ hours after my flight had landed at Stansted.

I finally got to the meeting of USPG trustees at 12.20, in time for the last ten minutes of the morning part of the meeting – without breakfast, but just in time for lunch.

The meeting ended at 3 p.m. Worried that there might have been a knock-on effect on train timetables for the rest of the day, I stopped in the afternoon to see only one Wren church in the city. I had seen Saint Stephen Walbrook, beside the Mansion House, before, and this was my first time inside.

On the way back to Stansted, the trains were on time and the journey back through East Anglia countryside was beautiful in the warm Spring sunshine of mid-February.

When it works well, public transport can bring its joys and its blessings, and – despite Brexit – England remains a ‘green and pleasant land.’

A summer afternoon by the river in rural England

The Fish and Eels by Dobbs Weir, close to the Greenwich Meridian Line (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

There was a Q&A section in The Guardian many years ago in which a reader posed a dilemma along these lines: is it better to live in an ugly house with a beautiful view, or in a beautiful house with an ugly view?

After the USPG conference ended in High Leigh yesterday, I had time on my hands before catching a late evening flight to Dublin, on my way back to Limerick and Askeaton.

Instead of catching the first available train to Stansted, I decided to go for a walk in the Lea Valley by the New River, which supplies water from Hertfordshire to North London.

I have described this before as a ‘Wind-in-the-Willows’ land, with houses whose gardens slope down to the river bank, where the branches of willows brush their tips against the surface of the river water.

It was a short walk of no more than 3 km or so, along the river bank, by Admiral’s Walk Lake across the railway line and crossing the Greenwich Meridian Line from West to East to Dobb’s Weir, where the Fish and Eels is a pretty pub on the river bank by the weir and on the borders of Hertfordshire and Essex.

To answer that question in The Guardian many years ago, the Fish and Eels is both pretty to look at from the weir and a pretty place to sit on a summer afternoon watching life on the river.

Like the Hedgehog in Lichfield, the Fish and Eels is a country pub in the Vintage Inns chain, with rural charm and rustic character. Its picturesque surroundings provided me with the perfect setting for a much-need afternoon break enjoying a glass of wine on the deck looking out onto the river.

The Fish And Eels dates back to the 17th century, when it was one of the inns known to Izaak Walton, the author of the Compleat Angler and the biographer of John Donne, Richard Hooker and George Herbert. Later it was owned by the Christie family brewery, and from here they sold Christie’s ales, brewed in Hoddesdon on the site of the Bell Inn on Burford Street.

This became a popular Victorian riverside inn and had had many landlords down the years. The most notorious or celebrated – depending on your point of view – was probably the Revd Samuel Thackeray who, was defrocked when he took to inn-keeping in the 1900s.

Thackeray shocked his clerical colleagues when he decided to become the landlord of the Fish and Eels, at Hoddesdon. Thackeray was educated at Cambridge and in 1872 he became the headmaster of Dartford Grammar School and curate of Bexley Heath. Subsequently he was the assistant chaplain at Tilbury Fort and held curacies at Saint Luke’s, Victoria Docks, All Saints’, Newington, and Christ Church, Greenwich.

Until 1906, he was the chaplain of the Gordon Road Workhouse in Camberwell, and while he was there he applied for the licence at Fish and Eels Hotel.

It was said he seldom visited the workhouse, except on Sundays, despite being paid £110 a year, and left a manager in charge of his pub on Sundays. He later conducted services in his inn on Sundays, and sometimes on weekdays. He claimed he wanted to promote temperance, as opposed to total abstinence, and quipped that he had brought together the publican and the sinner.

‘I shall be the publican behind the bar, the sinners will be in front of me, and Christ, I hope, will be in the midst of us,’ he said on his arrival in 1907.

But the Bishop of Southwark and the Camberwell Guardians objected strongly and asked him to resign his chaplaincy. Thackeray declined, and guardians went to court for an order to remove him from office.

A Christian Socialist, he was a member of the Independent Labour Party and published a book, The Land and the Community, in which he argued for the nationalisation of land. Thackery was also an accomplished musician, and soon after becoming a publican he obtained a licence for music and dancing in his pub.

Owing to ill-health, he eventually gave up his tenancy of the Fish and Eels and later became a curate in East Peckham.

Blackberries coming to full fruit on the side of a country lane on the Meridian Line near Hoddesdon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Meanwhile, the blackberries are ripening along the sides of the country lanes and the narrow roads in this corner of Hertfordshire and Essex.

Perhaps it is because of the late winter followed by the strong sunshine of recent weeks.

I grew up thinking of late August and early September as the time to go picking blackberries. The blackberry season in Britain and Ireland begins in June, but it reaches its peak in August and continues until the first frosts in November.

At the end of the season, we are always warned as children by a more superstitious older generation not to go picking blackberries after Michaelmas (29 September). But at the other end of the season, I think it would have been unusual to find full, juicy blackberries in the mid-July.

People in East England argue whether these parts of Hertfordshire and Essex are really part of East Anglia. The purists say Norfolk and Suffolk alone – the North Folk and the South Folk – constitute East Anglia; others are willing to extend the boundaries into Cambridgeshire and parts of Essex of Hertfordshire, albeit with an air of condescension.

But wherever that boundary falls, the countryside around the High Leigh Conference Centre, on the fringes of Hoddesdon and on the borders of Hertfordshire and Essex, provided some welcome opportunities for short country walks this during breaks from the USPG conference.

The fields are green and golden under the broad blue skies, and as I strolled through this rural idyll it was difficult to concede that I was just a short distance from the commuter belt for many people who work in Greater London.

There are woodlands and parks nearby, and as I walked through these fields of green and gold this week, I thought of the wheat and the tares that we are reading about in our Gospel reading next Sunday. And I wondered too how farming in England is going to survive after the calamity of ‘Brexit.’

Boats on the river between Hoddesdon and Broxbourne, where East is East and West is West, and Essex and Hertfordshire are divided (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

‘A fantasy we create about people and places as we’d like them to be’

The Gates of Paradise in Cambridge at Owlstone Croft, once known as Paradise Garden and now part of Queens’ College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

The song “I’ve Never Been to Me” is probably better known by its chorus line: “I’ve been to Paradise, but I’ve never been to me.” This ballad, written by Ron Miller and Kenneth Hirsch in the 1970s, became a hit for the American singer Charlene when it was re-released in 1982, and the song went to top of the charts in the US, Canada, Australia, Britain and Ireland.

The song tells the story of a singer or star who addresses to a desperate wife and mother who would like to trade her prosaic existence for the jet-setting lifestyle the song’s narrator has led. The narrator recalls the many hedonistic episodes in her life, including times on the Greek islands. She describes our images of Paradise as “a lie” and as “a fantasy we create about people and places as we’d like them to be.” Instead, now that it is too late, she realises that Paradise is found in holding a baby in your arms, or being with the people you love and the people who love you.

And while she concludes that she has “been to Paradise,” ultimately she has failed to find self-fulfilment: “I’ve been to Paradise, but I’ve never been to me.”

But earlier today, I was in another, different and pleasant Paradise in Cambridge. I was at the morning Eucharist celebrated by the Revd Anna Matthews in Saint Bene’t’s Church, beside Corpus Christi College in the centre of Cambridge. There was a Baptism too, and it was enjoyable to return on a Sunday morning to the church that I have come to feel is my own parish church each year in when I am staying in Sidney Sussex College at the annual summer school organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies.

“How shall I sing that majesty?” ... Coe Fen in the sunshine earlier today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Saint Bene’t’s and Corpus Christi College are close to the corner of Trumpington Street and Silver Street, and after a very late breakfast I found my way down to the River Cam at Scudamore’s, below Silver Street Bridge, and strolled on along the west bank of the river, with Coe Fen to my left on the other side, through Sheep’s Green, passing Crusoe Island and Crusoe Bridge, before eventually a small bridge to reach Paradise Nature Reserve.

Paradise can be a fantasy we create ... but it is also an island on the River Cam south of Cambridge on the way to Grantchester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Today, Paradise is a small island in the nature reserve on the west bank of the River Cam, south of Sheep’s Green and west of Coe Fen. But at one time Paradise referred to the whole area up to the Lammas Land.

Paradise nature reserve is a meadow that has been left to turn into woodland, with huge willows and towering alders. In its informal, unkempt state this is an attractive area for walkers and anglers. Some open areas have a variety of fen plants, such as Stachys palustris, and there is an important collection of different species of willow too.

A recent report recommended Paradise should be maintained and not allowed to get further overgrown, and it said Cambridgeshire Wildlife Trust had taken this in hand. It also said new pollard trees should be started along the river bank to replace trees that had fallen into the river. The paths which can be muddy in winter, are the nearest rough ground to the middle of Cambridge and should not be levelled or hardened, the report said, but broadwalks would be useful in places to prevent erosion.

The references to Paradise go back a long time. The earliest mention of bathing in Cambridge records that while he was a student at King’s College, the son of Walter Haddon was drowned in 1567 “while washing himself in a Place in the River Cham called Paradise.”

While he was at Corpus Christ College, the 18th century antiquarian, William Stukeley, wrote in 1704: “I used to frequent, among other lads, the river in Sheep’s Green, and learnt to swim in Freshman’s and Soph’s Pools, as they are called, and sometimes in Paradise, reckoning it a beneficial exercise.”

Byron’s friend Charles Skinner Matthews became entangled in weeds and drowned in the River Cam at Paradise Island (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

It was here too, on 3 August 1811, that Lord Byron’s brilliant but enigmatic and libertine friend, Charles Skinner Matthews became entangled in weeds while bathing and was drowned.

Paradise Garden was once the name of the larger area now called Owlstone Croft, and it now provides post-graduate accommodation for Queens’ College. In 1740, Paradise Garden was taken over by a Mr Rowe, who had introduced to Cornwall a system of force-growing early vegetables for the London market. At Paradise Garden, he produced them in a scientific way.

Rowe’s son Richard became associated with a Dutch bulb grower, outstripped all competitors in the production of beautiful flowers, and invented the hyacinth glass for growing bulbs in water only.

Owlstone Croft ... once known as Paradise Garden and now part of Queens’ College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015

By 1802, the site was known as Owlstone Croft and in the Grantchester Parish Enclosure Award that year it was described as a garden of 2.24 acres, owned by Mary Harrison, “in the Occupation of R[ichar]d Row.”

The streets now known as Grantchester Street, extending to Paradise Island, and Grantchester Meadows are the only streets shown on that map, along with a branch from Grantchester Street to what is now Owlstone Croft. This branch survives today as a track for part of its length, connecting to the south end of Owlstone Road, which did not exist then.

Paradise is a meadow that has turned into woodland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The branch road connecting Grantchester Street to Owlstone Croft was then described as: “One other private carriage and drift road of the like breadth of twenty feet leading from … [Grantchester Street] and extending … through and over an allotment [now part of Paradise Nature Reserve], hereinafter awarded to the said Master, Fellows and Scholars of Benet College [Corpus Christi] into the said garden ground [Owlstone Croft] belonging to Mary Harrison, now in the tenure of Richard Rowe ...”

When it was sold at auction in 1879, the site plan was headed: “Plan of an Estate at Grantchester, Cambs, known as ‘Paradise’.”

The Chief Constable of the Cambridgeshire County Police, a Major Calvert, bought the estate in 1879, when the grounds were described as “not to be surpassed in the neighbourhood for growth and beauty,” with “choice fruit trees.” The house was rebuilt, with cottages for a coachman and a gardener, in 1881.

The site, now described as Owlstone Croft, Grantchester, was sold again in June 1892. By 1914, it was a girls’ school. From the 1920s to the 1940s, it was owned by Theodore Fyfe, Professor of Architecture at the University of Cambridge.

In the late 1940s, it was bought by Addenbrooke’s Hospital as a nurses’ hostel and training school. But when Addenbrooke’s Hospital moved out of the centre of Cambridge to a new site south of Cambridge, the use of Owlstone Croft declined. When the training school closed, it was leased in the 1980s to the Social Services department of Cambridge County Council, and for a period, students of CCAT, now Anglia Ruskin University, had rooms there.

Owlstone Croft was bought by Queens’ College in 1988 to provide post-graduate accommodation.

The walk to Grantchester begins at Paradise Island (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Paradise House in Grantchester Street, near the entrance to Grantchester Meadows, was built ca 1780 and is the earliest house in the area, but is almost invisible on a tree-covered island in the river.

At one time, there were tennis courts known as the Paradise Courts on the University Hockey Ground. This hockey ground, located at the junction of Barton Road and Grantchester Street, has since been developed for housing, but this area is the opular starting point for walks to Grantchester for aesthetes and tourists interested in the life and writings of the poet Rupert Brooke.

I hope to be in Grantchester later next month. But after walking through Paradise today, I walked back across the Fens and on the Cambridge Rail Station to catch the train to Broxbouurne, the nearest station to Hoddesdon and the High Leigh Conference Centre, the venue for the the annual Us Conference.

In previous years I have walked from High Leigh to Broxbourne, but this afternoon I waited for taxi, and noticed a pick-up mini bus for Paradise Wildlife Park.

This other Paradise is about three or 6 km south-west of High Leigh, and was once a zoo with a poor reputation. But it has been transformed since it was bought by the Simpson family over 30 years ago in 1984. Today, it is a family-friendly place – and I believe it even has, appropriately, a special corner for Birds of Paradise.

The Irish TV puppet Dustin the Turkey, who is anything but a Bird of Paradise, re-worked the lyrics of the hit song “I’ve Never Been to Me” on his album Unplucked, bemoaning that he has been to Paradise but he has “never been to Meath.” But the, he has probably never been to Paradise in Cambridge either.

Punting past Paradise from Cambridge to Grantchester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

I’ve never been to me

Hey lady, you, lady, cursin’ at your life
You’re a discontented mother and a regimented wife
I’ve no doubt you dream about the things you never do
But I wish someone had a talk to me like I wanna talk to you
Ooh I’ve been to Georgia and California, and anywhere I could run
Took the hand of a preacher man and we made love in the sun
But I ran out of places and friendly faces because I had to be free

I’ve been to Paradise, but I’ve never been to me

Please lady, please, lady, don’t just walk away
’Cause I have this need to tell you why I’m all alone today
I can see so much of me still living in your eyes
Won’t you share a part of a weary heart that has lived a million lies
Oh I’ve been to Nice and the isle of Greece
Where I sipped champagne on a yacht
I moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed ’em what I’ve got
I’ve been undressed by kings and I’ve seen some things
That a woman ain’t s’posed to see

I’ve been to Paradise, but I’ve never been to me

Hey, you know what Paradise is? It’s a lie
A fantasy we create about people and places as we’d like them to be
But you know what truth is?
It’s that little baby you’re holding, and it’s that man you fought with this morning
The same one you’re going to make love with tonight. That’s truth, that’s love

Sometimes I’ve been to cryin’ for unborn children
That might have made me complete
But I, I took the sweet life and never knew I’d be bitter from the sweet
I spent my life exploring the subtle whoring that cost too much to be free

Hey lady, I’ve been to Paradise, but I’ve never been to me

I’ve been to Paradise – never been to me
(I’ve been to Georgia and California, and anywhere I could run)
I’ve been to paradise – never been to me
(I’ve been to Nice and the isle of Greece
While I sipped champagne on a yacht)
I’ve been to Paradise – never been to me
(I’ve been to cryin’ for unborn children )
(Fade)

Solidarity with Greeks (5): eat out in a local Greek restaurant

A taste of Mykonos … an image of Mykonos on the wall of Mykonos, the Greek tavern in Dame Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

As the Greek debt crisis continues, I continue to find suggestions of ways to show solidarity with Greece. This morning I suggest showing solidarity with local Greek communities by eating in a local Greek restaurant.

Many Greeks living on these islands are worried about their families and friends at home. Many are collecting for charitable efforts back in Greece. Many have parents and grandparents who depend on remittances from sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, who have emigrated.

Emigration has been a brain drain for Greece, depriving the country of innovators, entrepreneurs, intellectuals and political activists.

There are about 500 to 1,000 Greeks living in Ireland. Many feel isolated at the moment, and many struggling to send money home.

A few are involved in running restaurants. But others include academics, dentists, business people, lawyers, IT professionals – indeed, they work in all walks of life.

In recent weeks, members of the Hellenic Community in Dublin has gathered in two Greek restaurants in Dublin to discuss what can be done to help people at home: Mykonos, which opened in Dame Street recently, and Corfu in Parliament Street.

There are at least two other Greek restaurants in the greater Dublin area: El Greco at 73 Main Street, Bray, and Cape Greco in Malahide; and there are other Greek restaurants throughout Ireland, north and south, including Dollakis in Enniskillen.

Eating in Greek restaurants is a gesture of solidarity with the Greek community in any town or city. The restaurant probably sources much of its food locally, but wine, spirits and coffee may be imported from Greece, so your custom helps support Greek exports, and your custom helps a family here to send back money to Greece.

A taste of Greece in Corfu on Parliament Street in Dublin includes not only Greek food but Greek culture too (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

I know of no Greek restaurants in Lichfield, but there is a good taste of Greece and the Mediterranean in both Ego in New Minister House on Bird Street, overlooking Minster Pool, and in the Olive in Tamworth Street. In both places, Greek-sourced ingredients are often used in the preparation of meals.

Greek restaurants close to Lichfield include the Greek Restaurant at 80 Bolebridge Street, Tamworth, the Athos Restaurant at 24-42 Freer Street, Walsall, and Eleon, the Greek restaurant and meze bar at Maney Corner in Sutton Coldfield.

Eleon takes its name from the olive groves that have covered the landscape of Greece since the beginning of history. It is a family-run Greek restaurant and meze bar and the menu reflects the flavours and memories of hand-made family meals.

Further afield, there is a wide choice of Greek restaurants in Birmingham.

I know at least three Greek restaurant in Cambridge. The Varsity Restaurant on Saint Andrew’s Street, close to Emmanuel College, was a long-standing favourite. Sadly, it closed last January after a fire destroyed half the kitchen. Hopefully it will reopen soon, even if not before I am back in Cambridge next week.

The Olive Grove at 100 Regent Street – nearby landmarks include the Roman Catholic parish church, Church, Downing College and Parker’s Piece – first opened three years ago, with the long-standing culinary tradition of the Maniot Kontakos family from Greece.

The third Greek restaurant I know in Cambridge is the Gardenia at 2 Rose Crescent in the City Centre, close to Gonville Caius, King’s, Sidney Sussex, Christ’s and other colleges. As you can imagine, this place, owned by Vas Anastasiou, was long a student favourite and a popular late-night destination for town and gown alike.

Now, however, “Gardies” could soon be taking its last orders and may see its lease revoked. Students have made a number of complaints, including complaints that noise at exam time has disturbed their revision at night and their sleep. An email sent to students at Gonville and Caius College, the restaurant's landlord, confirms the lease is being reviewed.

Konaki near the British Museum ... authentic flavours of Greece in the heart of Bloomsbury (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In London, Greek restaurants I have enjoyed include Konaki in Coptic Street, close to the Penn Club, where I stay sometimes, and close to the British Museum, which still holds onto the Parthenon Marbles.

This restaurant has a curious mixture of faux Tudor black beams and Greek music, but it is still one of my all-time favourites in London, and has been on the scene since 1985. In summer time, the courtyard at the back of the restaurant is one of the most delightful places in London for lunch.

I also found a little corner of Greece in Ealing in West London, when I was studying Patristics and Latin in Ealing Abbey. Pitshanger Village is less than a 10-minute stroll from Ealing Abbey, and Pitshanger Lane has numerous small shops, several cafés, two pubs, two churches, a library, a school, an Anglican parish church (Saint Barnabas) and a Methodist church side-by-side, a park and – to my delight – a Greek restaurant named Atlantis.

The conversations around the table there have been about Athens and Thessaloniki, Olympia and Lesbos, Rhodes and Corinth, Crete and how to get to Kastellorizo.

I am in Hertfordshire next week for a conference near Hoddesdon and Broxbourne. Perhaps I should seek out the Woodman and Olive at 20 Wormley West End in Broxbourne. They have a midweek “Meze Special” every Thursday, Greek nights every last Saturday of the month, Greek barbecues every Sunday, and a regular “Greek Bouzouki Nights.”

Obviously, my favourite Greek restaurants are Greek, and there is no more authentic Greek food than the food in a restaurant in Greece. But I have eaten in Greek restaurants around the world, from Johannesburg to Brussels, Copenhagen and Orlando. But it does not have to be all bouzoukis and smashing plates to enjoy authentic Greek food in a Greek restaurant near you.

And you may get a taste not only for Greek food, Greek wine and Greek music, but a taste for Greece itself … and decide to go there on holidays., or lobby politicians to change their minds about restructuring Greek debt and about Greece’s place in Europe.

An image of Greece in El Greco on the Main Street in Bray (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Earlier postings on this theme:

1, A Facebook photograph of real Greek yoghurt – not Greek-style yoghurt – and Greek honey.

2, Picking a Greek football team to support as a gesture of solidarity.

3, Reading or re-reading the classics and re-discovering the foundations of European civilisation and culture.

4, On Sunday, I asked people to Pray for Greece, Pray for Europe.

It’s a ‘Wind in the Willows’ thing

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing”

Patrick Comerford

I suppose it’s just a childish thing. But ever since childhood, I have enjoyed the idea of messing about in boats on the river.

Perhaps it’s a throwback to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, which was essential childhood reading for everyone in my age group, with all those stories about Mole, Ratty (who is, in fact, a water vole), the donnish Mr Badger and Toad of Toad Hall.

In my teens, my father brought rowing on Lough Ramor in Virginia, but – despite having a good swimming pool at school – I never learned to swim until I was 35, and it is only in recent years that I have started to regret that I never learned to scull or row, or for that matter never learned to sail. When I am in Cambridge each year, I enjoy watching those who are rowing, sculling and punting on the Cam, and I have enjoyed being on a punt once or twice.

Broxbourne hosted the Canoe Slalom events at the Olympic Games last year (2012), and Hoddesdon was supposed to host other canoeing events at Dobb’s Weir, but the water was polluted and the events .were moved further south on the Lee Valley.

I am in Hoddesdon this week for the .annual conference of the Anglican mission agency, Us, which is the new name for UPG, the United Society for Propagation of the Gospel. I am staying on the ground floor in a room near Willow Hall … perhaps I could just imagine staying at Toad Hall, even if I am not around for one of the 50-minute weekend river cruise available at from Dobb’s Weir.

There are some great stately homes in this area, such as Luton Hoo and Brocket Park, and they could easily have been inspirations for Toad Hall in The Wind in the Willows. There are castles, old waterside pubs, gazebos and a busy boating centre at Broxbourne with boats for hire, day trips and cycle hire.

The four-mile walk goes through some of the greenest – and bluest – spaces in the heart of the Lee Valley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

High Leigh is less than two miles from the railway station at Broxbourne. So, this afternoon I fulfilled a long-time dream of walking a four-mile riverside walk that starts and finishes close to Broxbourne Station. This walk goes through some of the greenest – and bluest – spaces in the heart of the Lee Valley. The surrounding reservoirs and marshes are home to many species of birds, some rare breeds and many parts of the Lee Valley have been designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

The River Lea, which rises at Leagrave in Bedfordshire, is 98 km (58 miles) long, and much of its last 43 km (27 miles) from Hertford was turned into a canal from 1767 by the engineer John Smeaton. Occasionally the navigation leaves the river to follow Smeaton’s new channels, and meandering stretches of the Old River Lea can be seen nearby.

The river’s name has at least 25 different spellings – in addition to Lee and Lea, the names Lay, Ley, Leye, Lyge and even Lyzan have been used in the past, and by 1520 the spelling was Lee. But in the 19th century the Ordnance Survey decided to use both Lee and Lea. Today, the valley is usually known as the Lee Valley, but the river is the River Lea, while the canal sections are called the Lee Navigation. Is it any wonder then that the River Lee Navigation and the River Lea are often confused?

The original River Lea was made wider, deeper and new courses cut during the Industrial Revolution to allow better access for cargo-carrying barges. Grain and malt were brought from Hertford down to the Thames and timber and other cargo were carried back north. The new route was then renamed the River Lee Navigation. But at times during the walk at Broxbourne it is possible to pick out the original River Lea running alongside the River Lee Navigation.

The story of the original River Lea can be traced back over 1,000 years. It figures in the Treaty of Wedmore between King Alfred and the Danes, and later still it occurs in the Domesday Book. What are now quiet waterways were once filled with barges carrying cargo to and from London. Today, this is a place for pretty narrowboats carrying only passengers on their leisurely journey through this blue corridor.

This stretch of the River Lee is rich in wildlife and is the home to many species of mammals, birds and insects including Canadian geese, mallards, blue tits, and dragonflies and the more elusive such as the water vole – there goes Ratty from The Wind in the Willows once again, although mink are making this creature an increasingly rare sight in England.

Fine houses and lavish gardens with their willow trees spill over onto the west banks of the New River (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

At the west side or back of Broxbourne Station we began our walk along the banks of the New River, where, fine houses and lavish gardens with their willow trees spill over onto the west banks. Here too is Broxbourne Pumping Station, a Grade II listed building, was built by the Victorians in 1886 to pump water from below ground to double the output of drinking water for London city.

The path continued for over a mile along the side of this constructed water course, built in the early 17th century to bring drinking water from local springs to London. Almost 400 years on, this river still supplies London with drinking water and also provides a beautiful environment for people to enjoy.

We were parallel with Hoddesdon when we turned east and made our way through the fields down a narrow path, crossed the railway line at a level crossing (gingerly), and after a quarter of a mile found ourselves at the Lee Valley Caravan Park. From there, it was a few paces to Dobb’s Weir, with its original sluice machinery.

On the west side of Dobb’s Weir, we were in Hertfordshire, on the east side we were in Essex, and we stopped at the Fish and Eels pub (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

On the west side of Dobb’s Weir, we were in Hertfordshire; as we crossed over to the east side, we were in Essex. There we stopped at the Fish and Eels pub, and we whiled away half an hour by the waterside, with glasses in hand, watching life go by.

The Fish and Eels is the departure point for 50 minute round-trips on the River Lee with the Lee and Stort Boat Company at weekends and on bank holidays. But there were no boat trips today, and we headed south along the tow path to Carthagena Lock.

East is east, and west is west, and the Greenwich Mean Line runs through Carthagena Lock (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1889:

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

The Greenwich Mean Line runs through the lock, dividing the eastern and western hemispheres of the world. We are away from everything here, apparently, yet at the centre of the world.

The Lady of Lee Valley and the Pride of Lee offer 50-minute pleasure cruises on the river (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

To the east was Admiral’s Lake, said to be one of the best feeding sites for bats in the Lee Valley. On the west bank, two passenger boats, the The Lady of Lee Valley and the Pride of Lee were moored with passengers disembarking after a 50-minute pleasure cruise that can be booked at the Lee Valley Boat Centre.

It was just another half mile south along the towpath to the Lee Valley Boat Centre on Old Nazeing Road and the beer garden of the Crown pub. The boat centre is an ideally place for exploring this part of Hertfordshire. From Easter to the end of the October, the centre offers Day Boats and the hourly hire of electric boats, rowing boats, pedaloes and a Canadian canoe. The centre also offers short breaks from three-four nights or weekly with three chalets with verandas overlooking the Mill Stream, a backwater of the River Lee.

The Crown pub ... at the end of this afternoon's walk (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

We finished our walk at the train station at Broxbourne, where the sun was still shining. From there we made our way back through Broxbourne and Hoddesdon to High Leigh.

On a warm summer’s day like today, I can agree with Ratty who says in The Wind in the Willows: “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing.”

Messing about on the river ... a pleasure on a warm summer’s day

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