After an extended break, welcome back to the blog and we hope everyone is continuing to stay safe and well! Like a lot of people, I have not travelled much in the last couple of years due to COVID – I can count on one hand (possibly two hands, depending on your definition of city boundaries) the number of times I have been out of London since March 2020. However, I recently travelled to St Albans for a weekend trip.
What/who is St Albans, many of you might (very reasonably) ask? The name comes from Alban, the first British saint. He was a martyr from around 200-300 C.E. and allegedly when his execution was about to/had happened, caused a water spring to appear and an executioner’s eyes to pop out of their head. St Albans Cathedral’s current location is meant to be where the execution site was.
My trip was an overnight one – we arrived after lunch on Saturday, and left before dinner on Sunday. I think the length of the trip (one night and around one day) was a good one – I’m not sure, without being really keen on walking or exploring the countryside, that I would want to spend more time in St Albans. We managed to see quite a lot of St Albans without a car in that time, taking taxis/Ubers (and public bus options are available) where needed.
Transport from London
St Albans is a city just outside of London (in Hertfordshire). It is a popular commuter town, as – with one of the fast trains – it is under half an hour away from central London. You can get one of the Thameslink trains from the London Bridge, Blackfriars, City Thameslink, Farringdon or St Pancras International stations in central London.
If you are travelling from central London, take care not to take a slow train – it is not that much slower, but it does make a difference (and the trains that stop at more stations do tend to be busier). The same train route that connects central London to St Albans also provides connections from Luton and Gatwick Airports.
What to do
I thought the highlight of the trip was visiting St Albans Cathedral. We got very lucky with the weather being good, so got to appreciate the exterior, walking around the whole cathedral (it is quite big) and the nearby grass / greenery. The inside, despite being quite busy, felt very peaceful. It is well laid out for exploring at your own pace.
A particular favourite of mine (but not a favourite for my travel companion) were the different poems that they had throughout the cathedral on slightly random topics – I think the cathedral was compared to a large hadron collider and also described as a first date location – not something I’ve seen before, and I’m not sure how many places of worship have their own poets in residence.
Also, I was a fan of the St Albans Museum and Gallery. It is not the largest gallery, but you get to visit the old cells in the basement and can go up the stairs from the cells up to the dock in the old courtroom (which has now been converted into a cafe). I don’t think I’ve ever had the chance to do that before (and very much hope that I don’t do that except when exploring historical museums and the like)! The Assembly Rooms (historically used for dancing – assemblies) were also beautifully restored, and the relatively small (but thoughtful) exhibits were great.
I enjoyed the views from the first floor exhibits, and I was really enamoured by an exhibit about old manuscripts, where there were also videos and displays about the making of the coloured inks, gold and other things required to decorate the manuscripts.
I was somewhat disappointed by the Verulamium Museum. It wasn’t as though it was particularly small, but it didn’t tell as strong or thoughtful a story as I hoped in terms of the artefacts on display. Perhaps it was aimed at a younger audience, or perhaps we were a bit tired from our train journey and hilly walk from the station (it was the first thing we visited)? Still a good one to see though, as many of the excavated treasures are on display here, including some mosaics which were my favourite part of the museum.
Verulamium Park is also nearby, and you can go and see the Hypocaust and Roman Theatre within / near the park too. A hypocaust is a system of central heating, and apparently is unique in Britain as the only example of a theatre with a stage rather than an amphitheatre. Gorhambury Estate, which is where the Roman Theatre is and also includes some historic properties and walking tracks, is also not too far (a sub-1 hour walk from the centre of St Albans) although we did not manage to visit.
Just outside St Albans is the De Havilland Aircraft Museum. There are buses which will take you there, or we managed to get taxis / Ubers there and back (although there is something of a wait for them). It was fairly interesting and the volunteers, who are there helping to restore the aircraft and so on, are keen to chat – I did learn a lot about aeroplanes and got to see the interiors and exteriors of some old aircraft, but it was possibly a bit more information about aviation than I would hope to get on a Sunday morning! Nonetheless, I still found it a valuable visit (although the overall impression I was left with was that aircraft from the earlier part of the 20th century were quite dangerous and unfortunately led to quite a few fatalities / casualties).
Food / drink
We did not stay long in St Albans, so did not explore much of the ‘food culture’, such as it were. There is a good range of options, including the usual chain-restaurant suspects (we stayed at a hotel next to a Cafe Rouge), and we went for an Italian dinner near the centre of town (also home to the St Albans Traditional Street Market).
I also had an exciting G&T (with some mango and peppercorn gin) from a van on the street, and got an indulgent cronut (a hybrid between a croissant and donut – they seem to be all the rage now) from The Pudding Stop.
Shout out to St Villa, where we had a fantastic Sunday lunch. My companion had a Sunday roast (pork). The pork roast looked really good, but not necessarily the same huge portion size you get at some pubs. Not that that was a problem, as I was struggling to make my way through the ribs and fried camembert that I got – I went for two starters thinking that it would be less filling, but I was wrong. They were both tasty dishes.
The weather was warm, the sun was out – so much so that some of the diners in the igloos (we were just on the terrace) had to vacate them as the igloos were acting as greenhouses. It was a relaxing lunch, and particularly stress-free as we walked in without a reservation.
Accommodation
We booked this trip very last-minute (on the Thursday night before arriving Saturday), so we had limited accommodation options available. However, we still managed to get a room at the Clarion Collection hotel, which was very central – just opposite the cathedral. There was ongoing renovation work, but it wasn’t noisy on the weekend and the benefit of that was that we were staying in some nicely and recently re-done digs (the room looked pretty much new).
The Vocal Local
Wilkie grew up in St Albans.
Must do: The Cathedral (known locally as The Abbey) and the various Roman sites (the Hypocaust, the Amphitheatre and the Roman Wall) are all worth seeing. I always enjoyed a lazy afternoon in Verulamium Park, overlooking the lake and the Abbey. Further afield in neighbouring Hatfield is Elizabeth I’s childhood home, Hatfield House.
Must eat: Set in an old watermill, the Waffle House is a local favourite. Try to sit upstairs by the wheel if you can. Tabure on Spencer Street does excellent Turkish fare. If you’re travelling to/from the station, stop in at deli Buongiorno Italia run by the peerless Tony.
Must drink: St Albans claims (slightly dubiously) to have the most pubs per square mile of anywhere in the country. Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, in between the Abbey and Verulamium Park, makes the similarly questionable claim to be one of the oldest pubs in the country, and is one of the more charming pubs around. The Verulam Arms is also a favourite haunt with good food. For cocktails, try Suckerpunch on George Street.
FORUM HOPPING 