Thursday 6th June 2024

Aki up early to ready herself for a day trip to Bromley. I got up around 0900 and porridged. Slung a packed lunch together, then set off for Bishops Stortford...nice day for it. Stopped off at Birchanger Green service station and grabbed a coffee. Stop after Stortford was a little village near Baldock, called Ashwell. As I was nearing it, on the A10, I got a warning light on my dash stating that my rear left tyre was losing pressure. I managed to get to the next stop in Ashwell...parked up and I spotted a chunky looking screw head embedded in the rubber! There was no internet connectivity, so I couldn't google for mobile tyre replacement operations, but the tenant of the house I was looking at informed me that there was a garage a few hundred yards away. Managed to get them to take a look at it for me. I left the car with them, and ate my packed lunch on a bench overlooking the village cricket green, then ambled down the High Street in search of an ice cream. I came across a couple of signs detailing the fact that Ashwell was originally a Roman settlement, built around a spring...by Norman times it was a thriving market town. I enjoyed my ice cream on a bench in St Mary's churchyard, and found a footpath that lead me down to the springs. The water was astonishingly clear, gushing from chalk beds below the High Street...I had to cross the chalk stream via some stepping stones. Got back to the garage...they had managed to effect a repair, so only cost me £29, and I was back on the road. Drove down to another little village, near Hitchin, and on to my final stop for the day in east Stevenage. Headed back down the A1(M), getting home before Aki. I prepared a crab salad for dinner, which we ate on her return, around 1900. She'd enjoyed her trip to Bromley...the photos she'd taken showed a rather dated sheltered scheme, which didn't fire the imagination very much...fortunately, she hadn't put our names on the waiting list!