A day like today is perfect for walking- mild and sunny with a gloriously fresh breeze. Accordingly I took a bus from Hitchin to Pirton and headed for the hills. By which I mean the chalk hills where the Chilterns slope down into Bedfordshire. I passed by Knocking Hoe...

 ... then over the Pegsdon Hills. I stopped at the trig point, my usual spot for a flask of hot tea and a cheese sandwich. The Icknield Way -that ancient track from Wiltshire to Norfolk- is nearby. I followed a section of it then turned off at a bridleway to Lilley from where I caught a bus back to Hitchin. A pint sitting outside the Lilley Arms was most welcome.

 Knocking Hoe and the Pegsdon Hills are fragments of a landscape much older than the modern arable fields that surround them. They reveal their past and present in layers like a living palimpsest.