Route Britannia, the Journey South: A Spontaneous Bicycle Ride through Every County in Britain

by Steven Primrose-Smith

  I cycled back through the Thankful Village and then skirted another called Heath and Reach, which, prosaically, had once been two villages, one called Heath and the other Reach. I passed through another town whose name is less interesting than it sounds, Leighton Buzzard, and then, without even realising, came inches from the site of the Great Train Robbery at Bridego Bridge, where Ronnie Biggs helped nick the equivalent of £49 million in today's money with the help of, if memory serves, Phil Collins.

  The origins of Slapton's name were more telling. It means “farm by the slippery place” and I'm fairly certain the slippery place in question is the Quantum Energy Health and Wellness Centre, an organisation in the village following the Deepak Chopra policy of tagging on to a name the word 'energy' or 'quantum', or in this case both, as though it actually adds something meaningful. The Centre offers an entire smorgasbord of nonsense, including aura chakra imaging, polarised light therapy and a platinum ionic aqua detox. The aqua detox is a particularly interesting scam. It's basically a low-voltage foot bath in which the water turns a murky brown. Look at all the toxins we've removed from your body! It's a con. The brown colour is actually caused by corrosion of the electrodes in the water bath and the liquid would discolour whether or not your feet were in it. But you'll find testimonials all over the web describing how having a session improved someone's life. So, even though it doesn't work, if you believe it works then it works. Just like religion.

  But today I had some genuine magic to see and it was a few miles away in Tring. It was finally here! Today was Mexican flea day. If this were an audio book, you'd now be hearing the “Ay! Ay! Ay!” and wild trumpet of a Mariachi band.

  Lionel Rothschild, a member of the family so wealthy that the internet can't even think of a number big enough to describe their riches, liked his animals. From the late 19th century he employed a team of explorers and professional collectors to amass for him one of the world's greatest zoos. It's one in which no creature suffers and the animals never hide in their dens waiting for the gawping thousands to leave. The Natural History Museum has four thousand species, expertly stuffed, and each rat, wolf and snake looks as good today as the day it died, in some cases probably better because their tongues are no longer awkwardly lolling out of their mouths.

  As you know, I'd been looking forward to seeing the museum's fleas, mostly because the idea that someone would dress them was so bonkers as to be fascinating. But when I saw them and read the attached story I was even more impressed.

  The museum's two fleas, tiny as they are, are viewed through a microscope. And given the limitations of the human eye I would have thought that whoever clothed these insects would have needed a microscope too. But that seems unlikely. They were dressed by a woman in Mexico in 1905, who, to kill time of an evening once the kiddies were in bed, would catch the fleas from the family dog and then make costumes for them. She would have been creating these clothes by candlelight!

  Don't think this place is just about fleas. It's got every animal you can think of and a lot more besides, including a royal antelope the size of a chihuahua and a giant – and I mean really giant – armadillo. You could ride the thing. Go and see it.

  As I was on my way out of the door I was stopped by a student doing a survey.

  “Is there any specific reason why you came here today?”

  I looked at him with widened eyes.

  “Yes, there was!” I said emphatically.

  I left my statement hanging, expecting him to say, “Oh, obviously you mean the fleas” but he looked at me blankly.

  “The fleas?” I added.

  He shook his head.

  “You don't know about the fleas?” I asked.

  “No. What fleas?”

  He'd never heard of them. The world needs to know about the fleas.

  Only a few miles down the A4251 is Hemel Hempstead, which featured heavily in hit TV programme “When Road Builders Do Smack”. On first approach, new town Hemel Hempstead's Magic Roundabout is horrifying. I'd come this way during the first week of my all-Europe ride but even on a second approach it's bloody awful. The first time I saw it I thought it was just a big roundabout and rode across it oblivious to the cacophony of angry car horns. This time, knowing what it really was, I was more cautious.

  The sign for the roundabout is beautiful, like a simplified diagram of some ancient piece of jewellery, a series of six circles set inside a larger one, but it doesn't even hint at the confusion ahead. The first thing you notice as you approach the roundabout is that some cars appear to be going the wrong way around it. They aren't, of course. They are merely negotiating the nearest of its six mini-roundabouts. This is why it was voted the second worst roundabout in Britain. I got off and pushed.

  Hemel Hempstead may get a savaging over on ilivehere.co.uk but, if you're into that sort of thing, it has Britain's classiest ghost. As well as being a new town, Hemel Hempstead is a very old town. Legend has it Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, in the days when she still had a head, used to visit the place to hunt, sometimes having more than a swift half in the local alehouses. Tales are told of ghostly laughter in one of the hostelry's bedrooms and so some believe it to be Henry VIII. Obviously.

  I got lost not far out of Hemel Hempstead. In fact I think I took the wrong exit of the 95 available options from that bloody roundabout. Eventually I stumbled across a cycle path that said it was fifteen miles to St Albans. My map told a different story. I stuck to the roads and got there in five. The campsite was out the other side of town, as campsites always are, and it was well-hidden. Without my phone I'd never have found it, into an industrial estate, down a little lane and over a bridge until, along a rough track, I came to a large house beside a huge field.

  I rang the bell on the pillar of the metal gates and a young Asian fella came out and walked me to the field.

  “It's just twenty pounds,” he said nonchalantly.

  “That's expensive,” I said.

  “Well,” he said. “It costs £20 for one or two people, £30 for three or four, and £40 for five or six. See that six-man tent there. For them it's mega-cheap. They're only paying about seven quid each.”

  “Yeah, that's what I paid last night near Bletchley.”

  What was I supposed to do? Replicate myself five times? And I couldn't believe he hadn't given the six-man tent an even better deal. It was part of a colony of about ten others.

  He showed me the minimal facilities.

  “And this is where you wash your pots if you have a barbecue or something. Are you having a barbecue?” he asked.

  “I can't. You've taken all my money,” I said. “I was going to have venison but now I suppose it'll just be crisps.”

  He didn't break a smile but I know he had a sense of humour. There was a smashed up car in his driveway, probably the result of an accident caused as he laughed all the way to the bank.

  Despite the size of the field I was told to limit myself to the edges because that colony of tents belonged to a Mexican frisbee team – a Belgian team would be arriving later – here for some nearby plastic-disc-throwing event.

  I cycled off to do a bit of shopping and reached Radlett before I found a supermarket. I'd heard how this place had a reputation for affluence - its average house price is over a million pounds – but you'd never tell just by looking at it. What good is all that wealth if you're trapped within the M25's ring of urban misery?

  Tomorrow I would begin my journey north and I couldn't wait to start.

  *

  It rained all night. It was like trying to sleep beneath a loud white-noise generator and so I didn't.

  For a twenty-quid campsite you'd probably expect the Glastonbury-style lavs to include toilet paper. The frisbee teams certainly did, but they were out of luck. The paper was all gone. It was probably just penny-pinching on the greedy owner's part, but perhaps there was a darker explanation. Maybe the British Frisbee Association had slipped our landlord a few quid to deny their competitors the necessarily fac
ilities. Perhaps this afternoon, while the UK team was leaping and diving and catching their frisbees with gay abandon, the Mexicans and Belgians would be stumbling awkwardly around the field with gurgling stomachs and clenched buttocks.

  Toilet paper wasn't the only missing feature of this site. The lazy sod hadn't even provided any bins. On any other site I'd have taken my rubbish with me but his blatant profiteering had annoyed me. I left a full carrier bag at his front gate. Maybe the Mexicans could have a root through it and find something to wipe their arses.

  Today I was meeting Lucy. All I knew about Lucy was that she was going to cycle with me today. The original plan was for her to travel across Bedfordshire into Hertfordshire, but because I'd buggered up the order of my original counties – we were already in Hertfordshire – I didn't know what was going to happen now. We met at a café in the little village of Wheathampstead.

  Lucy had two jobs. For half of her time she ran an HR company and for the other half she worked for Inventor Tom.

  “Who the hell is Inventor Tom?” I asked.

  “He won The Apprentice in 2011. He invented the curved nail file.”

  “Is that useful?” I asked. “It doesn't sound very useful.”

  “Not for me. I bite my nails.”

  Lucy was a good laugh and we were getting on when today's big topic raised its head. It was Thursday 23rd June – Referendum Day – after all.

  “I know what your opinion will be,” she said.

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah, you travel all around Europe. You'll be Remain. But don't try to change my mind. I've had it all from Lord Sugar.”

  Ah, you little name dropper, you!

  “You've spoken to him about it.”

  “Yeah. He said it was a no-brainer, but, well...”

  She didn't finish her argument. It didn't matter. She had better names to drop though. Her husband worked in security, but I don't mean he's the sort of bloke you'd find strolling around dark warehouses on the edge of town with a little torch.

  “He works on films. He did the new Star Wars.”

  “I'm sure it wasn't his fault,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “Yeah, he said it was rubbish too. And he's just worked with Brad Pitt. He has to keep the paparazzi at bay.”

  But we could only talk razzmatazz for so long. We were soon talking about cycling.

  “Have you learnt anything on this trip?” she asked.

  “Yeah. That I'd rather not be in the south-east.”

  Screw positivity!

  “I know what you mean. It's not great, is it?”

  Time was getting on. We'd been sitting there for half an hour.

  “Shall we set off?” I asked.

  “Alright.”

  And we did. And three miles down the road, just after a sign for a left turning, she said that this was where she was leaving me. Maybe it had never been her plan to cycle far, or maybe she hated me.

  Travelling north alone, I entered Bedfordshire. I would describe it for you but I have no memories of the leg. It was entirely forgettable. But then again maybe I should have been on my toes. After all, and although possibly missing the point of how this capital thing works, in 2015 the Daily Mirror announced that the entire county of Bedfordshire was the murder capital of Britain. But before you make a detour and avoid the place next time you're in the vicinity, have a look at the numbers.

  In a population of 617,000, the 33rd most populous county in Britain, Bedfordshire saw 12 people murdered in 2015. That's 1 in 51,400. Compare this to Washington D.C., with a similar population and, according to the most recently available numbers, 131 murders. That's 1 in 4,600.

  Whatever faults Britain might have, you're unlikely to be murdered. Out of 218 countries, Britain's murder rate comes 188th. France's is a third higher. Finland's is nearly double. Little Liechtenstein's is three times as high, although that was because its population is tiny and a single person was iced. Don't trust statistics. But the numbers don't lie when they state that the US's rate is over four times that of Britain, Lithuania's six times, Russia's ten times, and Honduras, the dodgiest place in the world, has a rate nearly one hundred times higher. Sleep easy, Britons!

  I cycled through Cardington, past Britain's largest aircraft hangars, the home of the HAV304, the world's longest airship, described classily by the Daily Mail as “the flying bum”.

  The weather was looking ominous and I wanted to stop and find somewhere to stay but I'd been told of something in Bedford I was sure to find interesting: the house of Jesus Christ. Normally you'd have to cycle all the way to Galilee to find such a place but not today. Jesus is a Bedford lad.

  The Panacea Society was founded in 1919 on Bedford's Albany Road and it is number 18 on that street, an end-of-terrace house, that has been prepared for the return of Jesus after his Second Coming. Previously, the religious cult had believed the world was going to end at the turn of the millennium and that their own god, Octavia – God's daughter rather than that mangy-looking ostrich off Pipkins – was going to return, although what exactly she was going to return to if the world had ended is anyone's guess. When the year 2000 turned out to be disappointingly unapocalyptic the Society recast their predictions and decided to fit out the house with all the mod cons the Son of God might need. To begin with they hesitated to install a shower because He would have “a radiant body” but even Jesus wouldn't stay radiant for long trudging the sticky carpets of Bedford's Wetherspoon's converting the town's sinners. I'm not sure how else the house is furnished. Obviously it'll have a sofa and stuff but it probably wouldn't have a pool table. It would be difficult to play with stigmata. The cue would keep slipping through His palms. Anyway, if you're interested, then go and ask the current tenants of “The Ark”. They are on a two-month rolling lease just in case He does turn up.

  The history of the Panacea Society is interesting in itself. They were the custodians of Joanna Southcott's box, which isn't as naughty as that sounds. Joanna, an 18th century mystic announced she was pregnant with the new Messiah. The box in question contains Super Jesus's satin slippers. The Society was founded by a vicar's widow who made a slogan of “Crime and Banditry, Distress and Perplexity will increase in England until the bishops open Joanna Southcott's box”. But, as everyone knows, you can't get a bishop anywhere near a woman's box.

  The Society once had a membership of thousands but the final two survivors were Ruth Klein and John Coghill, both now deceased, who attributed their longevity to “divine water”, which “is good for all ailments while you live and, when you die, you go to Uranus to await the second coming.” So presumably that's where Ruth and John are now, sitting up there on, ahem, a huge gas giant with no actual surface. Or maybe they've moved closer to Earth now. Perhaps John is that old moon fella off the John Lewis Christmas ad. In any case, they won't be around if Jesus does clock in a second time and so there'll be no one to tell the current tenants of 18 Albany Road to sod off.

  There would be no room for me at Jesus's inn and so I headed out of town, passing rowers practising on the River Great Ouse, towards Willington and its Matchstick Wood campsite. Unfortunately no one in Willington knew what the hell I was talking about and the postcode of the campsite coincided with the Danish Camp, a café that definitely wasn't a campsite.

  I'd already cycled around fifty miles today and so to discover the next nearest campsite was another twelve miles away was a bit annoying, especially when the skies opened and stayed open. After an hour on splashy country lanes I arrived in Henlow and was given the last available space for a whopping £25.50.

  “Well done!” I said to the woman behind the desk. “You're the most expensive campsite in Britain.”

  “Yeah,” she replied, “but we're more than just a place in a field.”

  And she was right. This site offered something else. It was a place in a muddy field.

  The reason the campsite was so full was because tomorrow was the start of a special weekend. It was their m
usic festival. For seventy quid you could watch a load of great acts. Sort of. They were tribute acts and so basically you were stumping up a wodge of tenners for glorified karaoke. If you stuck around you'd get to see pretend versions of Madonna, Mick Hucknall, Robbie Williams and Queen. I'm sure a lot of people would think otherwise but I wouldn't pay seventy quid to see their real versions. Well, maybe Queen would be interesting with a now-zombified Freddie Mercury up front.

  But that was tomorrow. Tonight there was real entertainment. The referendum votes were being counted. I'm a sucker for the seemingly endless coverage of an election – I think it started with the joy of watching the Tories crumble and the smug grin on Michael Portillo's massive head collapse on a huge screen at an election party in 1997 – and so I tried to stay the distance. But by half eleven it was in the bag. Nigel Farage made a statement to say he thought the Remain campaign had shaded it. Well, if he had chucked in the towel, we were safe.

  I feel asleep. They would talk about Brexit on the radio tomorrow and then it would all be over. It would be forgotten, a footnote to history. I snuggled into my sleeping bag content in the knowledge I could return to Spain at the end of this trip, or to anywhere else in Europe, and not suffer at the hands of a deflated pound – the kicking it had taken in the run-up to the referendum would quickly sort itself out – knowing I could live and work anywhere in the EU without hassle, that reciprocal medical arrangements would remain in place, that I could travel without a visa, that if I ever decided to continue with my studies I'd still have 28 countries' universities to choose from.

  The lies of the Leavers had fallen flat. The entirely fictitious £350,000,000 a week that Boris Johnson had promised to redirect from the EU to the NHS hadn't conned anyone. All that stuff about reducing immigration had been ignored. After all, everyone knew we needed young immigrants to prop up the pension scheme, otherwise we'd lose it completely simply because we don't produce enough young of our own. The worries that a pro-EU Scotland would tug itself free of an anti-EU England had been enough to convince voters to stay EU-friendly. And Northern Ireland too was safe. It wouldn't join Scotland in leaving the union or be forced to erect some sort of border with Ireland, reintroducing the ghosts of The Troubles. We hadn't voted for some nebulous concept like “to take back control”, removing the power from the generally pro-worker EU and handing it willingly to the Slytherin Tories who had, since the late 70s, generally done everything in their power to wring the working man dry. No, none of those things had happened. It was all going to be alright. I slept the sleep of a contented man.