Berkhamsted lies in a narrow chalk valley cut through the Chilterns, with the Grand Union Canal, the River Bulbourne, the railway and the old main road all squeezed into the bottom together, and beech woods rising on both sides. It is a prosperous market town of around twenty thousand people, with a long high street of old coaching inns and shops, and it makes a fine last stop before the run back into the outskirts of London.
The castle is the history lesson. Only grassy earthworks and fragments of flint wall remain, but the moat is still there, and the site matters: after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the English leaders came here to submit to William the Conqueror before he went on to be crowned in London. Later the castle passed through the hands of royal favourites and was the seat of the Black Prince. Graham Greene grew up in the town, where his father was headmaster of the school, and he wrote about the canal and the common in his memoirs.
A word of honesty about the water. This is not swimming country in the way the label might suggest: the canal is for boats and towpath strolls, not for a dip, and the Bulbourne is a small chalk stream. What the valley offers instead is cool shade and green, and on a warm evening the canal path, with narrowboats tied up and moorhens fussing in the reeds, is a calm place to sit for half an hour.
The riding around here is good in a very English way. Up on the ridge to the north, the Ashridge Estate is a great sweep of National Trust beech woods and commons, with the Bridgewater Monument rising above the trees and herds of fallow deer that wander across the lanes, especially at dawn and dusk. The roads twist through the woods with blind bends, steep dips and sometimes leaves and mud in autumn, and they are full of cyclists and walkers at weekends, so ride with patience. On a sunny late October afternoon, when the beeches turn copper and the light comes through sideways, it is as good as any woodland in the country.
Berkhamsted has fuel, pubs, cafés and everything else, and Chesham and Bovingdon are close if you need more. From here, the A41 is the quick way back towards the M25.