Waltham Cross takes its name from one of the most moving things a medieval king ever built. When Queen Eleanor of Castile died in 1290, her husband Edward I had her body carried from Lincolnshire to London, and at each place the funeral procession stopped overnight he put up a stone cross. Only three of the twelve survive, and the one at Waltham Cross, with its carved figures of the queen and its pinnacles, is the most complete. It stands in the middle of the high street, among bus stops and cafés, and most people walk past it.
The town sits on the River Lea and the old Roman road, Ermine Street, on the line where Hertfordshire meets Essex and Greater London. Close by, in Waltham Abbey, are the ruins of a church said to have been where King Harold was buried after Hastings, and the Royal Gunpowder Mills, which for centuries produced explosives for the Navy and the army and are now open as a museum and nature reserve. The M25 crosses overhead at a busy junction, so the noise is constant. Further north the Lea Valley has reservoirs and wide marshes, with herons and kingfishers.
For a rider this is an edge place. It is where the suburbs finish and you can head north into the Hertfordshire lanes or east into the quiet Essex farmland around Epping, and equally the point where the fast roads, the A10 and the M25, take over for the journey home. The streets in the centre are mostly one-way, often congested, and not much fun. The reward is behind you: the cut-through lanes toward Cheshunt, Goffs Oak and Theobalds Park are short and shady, and on a weekday morning they are good practice for a slow, steady pace.
A couple of kilometres away you are in Enfield, with about a hundred thousand people, so fuel and food are everywhere. In Waltham Cross itself there are a number of cafés, takeaways and a big supermarket with a fuel station, and the pubs along the high street serve a Sunday lunch to bikers and cyclists alike. It is not a place for contemplation, but the cross is worth thirty seconds and a photo.