Thinking back to Midsummer's Day. An evening walk along a mile or two of the Icknield Way, that ancient track across the chalk of England. Considered to be part of a longer 'ridgeway' connecting Lyme Regis and Hunstanton. Probably one should speak of ridgeways plural rather than one definitive route. It passes near my home town of Hitchin where the Pegsdon Hills and Knocking Hoe merge with the flatter expanse of East Anglia. Hereabouts the Icknield Way is a track.

 A month or so later I walked a rather different stretch that cuts through Letchworth. Here it is a road (which passes by my secondary school as it happens). The Way is not simply an historic footpath. In places it still functions as a highway in general use. Heading East from Letchworth it is the route of the A505 between Baldock and Royston. The Romans straightened this section; they were quite happy to co-opt the tracks of the Ancient Britons and we continue to do so.