 Hello, thank you for joining me. I'm out on my daily exercise. It's a pretty cold day. You can see all the mud on the ground is frozen so you can basically go home with rather clean boots still, which is what I quite like about this cold weather. So I'm on the very edge of Chalmers & Peter Strait, Chalmers & Jarls, and as we come to this road here, well you'll see there's a quite a rare footpath science here. Look at this. It's a public ride away. It's the Chiltern Way. It's a Chiltern Heritage Trail. So yeah, quite a few interesting things. We're not doing any of them today. What we're going to do first is we're going to go into Newlands Park Estate down the public footpath. So the Newlands Park Estate is where the Chiltern Open Air Museum is. So we're not going to go to the Chiltern Open Air Museum today. We're going to go across the border to the Hartfordshire Village of Heron's Gate. I'll explain more when we get there, but this is the Newlands Park Estate. You can just about see up there the Newlands Park mansion, but the footpath takes us over here. So I can't go and show you that today. But one day what we'll do will come to the Chiltern Open Air Museum perhaps when it's open and have a look around there because it really is very interesting museum. It's well worth a visit. So this is the Newlands Park Estate. You can just see that little gatehouse there. It's got scaffolding around it. So the footpath will take us across here. What I'm going to do when we get to the border at Hartfordshire, I'll show you a little bit more from then on. So I'm going to carry on walking across these fields. I've just come across the field from where we were at the gatehouse to show you. It feels quite cold. Look, there's a pond with a load of ice on it. And it might make the video exciting, but I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to try and walk across the ice. But you know, sort of thing I have done in the past, not today though. Anyway, as we get to here, here we have a big area of development going on. Now, this video isn't actually meant to be about Newlands Park, but since I've got to walk through Newlands Park to get to where we're going, I might as well show you and we'll have a little look what's going on. So there used to be a university up here which closed a few years ago. And about a year ago, up until the year ago or so, there was loads of forms of residents here and they demolished them all. And I'm not sure what's going on, but it looks as though. They're building like a load of Nissan huts that you'd see in the wall. So, very strange and interesting development. So if anyone knows what is going on up here at Newlands Park, please do comment and tell me. Because admittedly, I've not done any research on what's going on here because this isn't subject to today's video. What I need to do now is follow the footpath, get off the Newlands Park estate, cross the border into Hartfordshire, and then I'm going to take you to a rather different English village. So let's get on with a walk. So I've worked my way right the way around the Newlands Park estate. Still on public footpath, but we are soon going to leave the estate. Look at this there. This is the, well it's all fenced off, so we can't get in. This isn't one of my abandoned video, so we're certainly not going. Well, this is a bit abandoned, see like an abandoned driveway. This must have been one of the main gateways to the Newland Park estate, but as I said, we're not going any further, can't go any further. But perhaps one day, I don't know. We'll definitely do children have an earmick, see. Whether we'll ever get to see any more of the estate other than the footpaths, I can't say at this stage. I don't know what the future is going to bring or what the developments are, whether we will be allowed to go and have a look, we might be. Okay, I'm currently, seems to be standing in goal, but I haven't got to worry about missing the goal because no one's playing football. We are about to leave the Newland Park estate, and in so doing, we will also leave Buckinghamshire. It's where we'll cross to Hartfordshire. So when we get to here, you can see there's a gateway. I'm going to go through this gateway. Once we come onto this path here, now this path here, looking that way, this is Old Shire Lane. It's the boundary between Buckinghamshire and Hartfordshire. As we come into here, we are definitely now officially in Hartfordshire. So that that lane is not really a lane anymore. So a footpath is called Old Shire Lane. It runs from Denham, or the edge of Denham to Chawley Wood. So perhaps what we'll do, maybe some point, well, perhaps soon, I'll go and do a video on that. We'll just walk the whole of Old Shire Lane. And literally, if you walk it, one leg's in Buckinghamshire, the other leg's in Hartfordshire. But we are now fully in Hartfordshire, up over there, well, up over there is Greater London and Harefield. So we're kind of where Buckinghamshire, Greater London, Hartfordshire meet, but we're not going to be going into Greater London in this video. So Old Shire Lane's over there. We're now in Buckinghamshire. The camera's not going to, sorry, we're in Hartfordshire. The camera won't pick it out, but I can see some towers in the distance over in London. They are right over there. We're going to, there's a horse up here. We're walking through a field with a horse. We're right past this horse. So I wonder what the horse is going to think about being featured in my video. So as well as coming into Hartfordshire, we're in an area of Hartford Shire, known as the Free Rivers District. It's basically covers Rikmansworth, Chawleywood, below and above Watford. It doesn't cover Watford. The town of Watford, largest town in Hartfordshire, is a different administrative area. Hello horse. Hello. Very cold, isn't it? I can see you've got your coat on. He's got some nice dinner. So I'm going to leave the horse to his lunch, because I'm sure he's more interested in his lunch than he is being featured. Goodbye. So yeah, he's not even going to say goodbye. Anyway, so let's continue this footpath. We're heading for those woods over there. That's going to take us where we're going. So Free Rivers District, the one thing I think is quite funny was I was talking to some Americans once and I just casually mentioned the Free Rivers District and they said, oh yeah, yeah, we've heard of the Peak District and we've heard of the Lake District, but we've never heard of the Free Rivers District. What's the Free Rivers District like? And I was thinking, I can just imagine in their minds, they're imagining these three really idyllic valleys of three different rivers to then meet up at some really amazing town where there's a nice cathedral and a heritage railway and no pandemic. And that's what they were probably imagining. I was just like, yeah, it's just near outside London. It's pleasant, but it's no national park or anything. Perhaps we should make this the Free Rivers District's national park. Maybe not. Anyway, we're going to go through those woods. We're heading for that village over there. It's called Heron's Gate. I'll explain more when we get to the other side of the woods. So here we are, we're in the woodlands. It's called Bottom Wood and there is a fallen tree. So I'm going to be a child and because I never really grew up, I'm just going to walk across it for fun. Can I balance? Never done balancing out like this. Holding a camera, but the fact I'm only like two feet above the ground. I'm not too worried about falling off. There we go. Just had to do that. Some ways I just never grow up when I see things like that. That one's not quite as exciting to walk across because that one's literally on the ground. Anyway, so this is Bottom Wood, quite a pleasant woodland, very wintery place to go, quite deserted. When you go out for your walks, especially in lockdown, sometimes everywhere you go, there's just people everywhere. You go to woodland sometimes. There's more people than trees, which it's lovely to see that so many people want to go out and about. That's great, but sometimes it's just nice to come to woodland and feel like you're the only one here. It's just a sense of you and the trees and maybe a few squirrels and not a lot else. So what we're going to do, we're going right down into the valley. We're going to go up the other side to Heronsgate, which is this village I've been mentioning. This village, it's a bit of a different village. It's not your typical English village. It was originally called O'Connorville. Interesting name. I'll explain why in a moment. Then it became Heronsgate, but now it's known as Heronsgate. It's a very pleasant place. It's just on the edge of Chorleywood. We're not going to go as far as Chorleywood today, because that really would be quite a long walk. So I'm just going to walk up to Heronsgate and then I'm going to turn around and head back, maybe a slightly different route. But I just like to make my walks as varied as possible. Yes, they get a bit longer sometimes because I sometimes find I'm always going down the same footpaths over and over again. It's like one of my favorite ones I did in another video. Have a look at the link on screen now, where I walk down over all the way. That was a footpath. I do a lot in lockdown. I'm not walking on this log too high because that's the one disadvantage. You did fall off a log like this in a woodland where there's no one else about. No one's rescue if you get hurt. So we come to a junction down here. I have been down here a couple of times during the lockdown in towards the end. Well, yeah, when we had the first lockdown last year and the weather was really nice and my walks got a bit longer. I did come down to these woodlands on a couple of times. And then another time I did go to Heronsgate, but I didn't come this way. I think if you go down that footpath, that'll take you out to a lane, which goes to Maple Cross, which is a small village near, well, kind of between Haerfield and the Chow Fonds really. So I'm going to in a moment show you once we get out of the woodlands where we're going. You might just be able to faintly hear the M25. I'm not sure if you can or I can just hear it because I know it's not that far away from us. So that could give you, we're going to come up close to the M25 soon. We're not actually going to cross the M25. So I'll explain that in a moment. Yeah, we are now coming to the end of the woodlands. So I will have to walk through the woodlands to go back there. So I haven't finished with woodlands to date, possibly for this video if we have. Anyway, we get to here. And I'm going to go up that hill. And the village of Heronsgate is behind those trees over there. So I'm going to go up the hill. And I'll show you more when we get there. So when we were back in the woods, I did say you might be able to hear the motorway. I'm sure you can hear the motorway now. There's the M25. And there's the direction sign saying Rickman's Worth, Maple Cross, slightly further field, Amisham, Watford and Stansford Airport. I had the idea of going on holiday. That sounds such a distant thing. Well, I suppose you wonder why is even any point in the sign still being there. But anyway, I'm sure that's a bit too pessimistic. I'm sure fairly soon, you know, we will be able to go to airports and go on holiday again. And I'll be able to make videos all around Europe. So do look forward to that. But anyway, for the time being, I'm making videos in the Free Rivers District and Buckinghamshire and yeah, around here really. So we're now coming to the edge of Heronsgate. Far and unaware, the village never went any further this way. So I didn't have to demolish any of it to put the motorway through. We get to here and there's a gate. We go through this little gateway here and this will take us into Heronsgate. So we can leave the motorway behind and by the way, probably only about less than a mile that way. This way it goes over the Metropolitan Line, which was a subject of one of my other recent videos. So do have a look at the link on screen now and you can see what it looks like where the Metropolitan Line goes under the M35. Anyway, Heronsgate, here we are. Here is the first of these very typical Heronsgate houses. So I'm going to have to tell you now a little bit about the village. This village was set up by an accountant called Fergus O'Connor. Hence the reason the village was originally called O'Connor'sville. It was set up in 1846 and it was all kind of finished by 1847. The idea was that people who worked in factories could come and have their own plot of land and get away from working in the factories, get away from the cities, live out in this rural countryside and generally improve their lives. And in some cases it meant they had the right to vote. So the people would have moved out to this area. It was a cooperative of a village so everyone put something in, everyone got something back. So yes, it's a very pleasant place. So this is the end of one of the residential roads. It's kind of on a grid system or a very small grid system. There's this road here which is dead straight and then there's another road over there, a little stud farm here. There's another road on the other end of the stud farm and then there's one road that goes down the middle which is where the church is. There's a village hall which I'm not, I have been there once because funny enough, I've talked about the right to vote. It was election day and I was going, it was at a time when I was involved with the local Ramblers and they were meeting at a pub in Charlie Wood and I didn't know where the pub was and I probably didn't have internet on my phone in those days. So I went into the, I saw it said polling station. So I went into the polling station in the village hall here to ask them where this pub was. So yeah, things you do, let's have a look at that. Charterist cottage, nice car too. So look at that, 150 years. So this must be where one of perhaps the more important people of Heronsgate lived. Anyone watching who lives in Heronsgate or knows more about Heronsgate than I do, you know, do please feel free to comment and tell me. So this is another one of those Heronsgate style houses. So there's a few of those blue plaques around. So what I'm going to do, I'm just going to continue walking up here because it does go on for quite a while, even there's not actually that many houses because they're nicely spread out. So it probably is a really nice place to live this village and you're about a mile away from the railway station at Charlie Wood. So I'm going to carry on walking until we get to the village centre. So I've come about a quarter of a mile and I'm still on the same road and this is basically the centre of Heronsgate. Laurel hedges everywhere. We are going to go down there because that's where the church is but I'll just show you this. So Nottingham Road south, where we've just come from, but now we're going to go down Nottingham Road north. So we're going to head north, up Nottingham Road north. We're not going to Nottingham. Not today anyway, maybe another day. I haven't been down this road. Well I haven't been down this road before for not for a while. It's more of the same style of houses. So you can see it's very uniform. It's not quite what's called the Garden City movement, you know, like Welling Garden City. It's not quite that sort of place, but you know it's similar in that how all the buildings are similar I suppose. This is that little village hall that I came to that time once to ask for directions to a pub when there was an election on, when it was being used as a polling station. So let's just have a look. Quite a cute little building, little village hall. So I don't think there's any shops or anything in this village. I guess Charlie Woody wanted to go shopping. I want to have a look at that as a blue plaque. So this was built in 1844. So that's older than what I thought Herrington Gate was, but the blue plaque you can see it says, in proud memory of O'Connorville. It was founded here in 1847 by Fergus O'Connor and he was an MP. He was a charterist, idealist and a social reformer. So that shows, it was founded in 1847, but the building says 1844. So the building must have been here first. So if anyone knows a bit more, what else was here in 1844 when it was just this building? Do please comment and tell me. I'll be very interested to know. There's a few more houses. The road carries on. I'm not going to go up there today, maybe another time. Yeah, cute little village hall. I'm going to head now back down Nottingham Road and we're going to go the other way. I'm going to go and find the church. So I'll leave you the village hall and I'm going to go and find this church. So I'm now going to take you into the church. My appearance has changed slightly. I've taken my hat off because I mentioned where hats in church. I've got very hat here at the moment and I've got my face covering on because you have to wear face coverings indoors now. Here is St John's church. Very cute little church. Let's go have a look inside. So it is open today. It's open on Sunday so there's no services on at the moment for very obvious reasons, but we can go in and have a look. Let's have a look in this little church. Here we go. Quite small, but pleasant still. Look at that. How the shadow of the light is reflecting on the wall. Quite like that. So this is St John's church. It's a church of England church. Walk up here on that tape so I won't go any further but you can see the whole church pretty much. It's a very pleasant little church. So yeah, there's something quite nice about small churches. Well to be honest I like any church. Big, small, ruined, you know, just so nice about being in churches. I think we'll do. So there's the font there. It says that they're not there but I'll just show you. It says church postcards 20p. Obviously they've taken them away for obvious reasons which is understandable but if this is a normal time I'll probably put 20p maybe a little bit more as a donation and have that church postcard. So that's a bit of a shame but I'm not complaining, you know, I'm grateful that we can actually be here in the church when I'm out on my day exercise but perhaps when things get back to normal I'll come here and I'll give them that 20p for the postcard. Let's go back outside and before. Nice little porch I've got here. Yeah, we know there. Right, as soon as we're outside my mask is flipping off I'm going to take it off then because I don't need it outside. Let's have a little walk around the outside and then I think it's time to end this video. Is there a graveyard on the back? Interesting. So it says garden of remembrance. Let's go from here. There's no, there's been no graves but it's obviously a garden of remembrance so maybe any parishioners here maybe they get buried in trolleywood I'm not sure. But anyway this is the back of this rather cute little church and I'll just take you around here where we'll get that classic view of Heron's Gate church and then I've pretty much shown you the sites of Heron's Gate and time for me to begin my long walk back. Oh and there is ice everywhere almost with a ball of ice. So yeah I've got to make sure I don't slip over it might be amusing for the viewers but it might not be best for me. Look at that lovely Wellingtonia tree just there. Well there is St John's Church. Oh and have a look at this Halifax Road north as I said it's a grid system so this parallel is Notting Road and there is Halifax Road south. So it's a very pleasant village I like it here up at Heron's Gate and if you wanted to go to the railway station or anywhere else then that's the only road out of the village that will take you to trolleywood which is about a mile away. I could walk to trolleywood but I'm not going to because that would make it maybe in the summer and I'm going to walk home now. So I hope you enjoyed this video from Heron's Gate thank you very much for watching please do feel free to like, subscribe and comment and oh postman. Didn't know the postman worked on a Sunday anyway yeah please do feel free to like, subscribe and comment thank you very much for watching from the lovely little village of Heron's Gate and St John's Church goodbye.