Day Trip 2: St. Albans

I''m behind with updating this blog again, but as I want to keep a record of what we have been doing I'm writing late and assuming I will eventually catch up. On Tuesday we drove to the city of St. Albans in Hertfordshire (about 40 minutes away) for a picnic lunch, a wander round the city park and the cathedral, and a bit of shopping (mainly for TG's benefit, though it turned out to be very useful). 

 

The cathedral is a gem. In the Middle Ages St. Albans Abbey was one of the largest and most important Benedictine monasteries in England. It held the shrine of the first English martyr, St Alban, and was home to 13th century chronicler Matthew Paris, whose writing is one of the most important sources for the history of his century. Unlike so many of the great medieval monasteries here, the church of St Alban survived the Reformation by becoming the cathedral of a new diocese - the monastic buildings have all now disappeared, but within the church itself even some of its 13th century medieval wall paintings can still be seen.  

St. Albans was once the Roman city of Verulamium, and it still has some impressive Roman remains and a  good museum. TG remembered visiting the museum when she was at lower school, but as TG and M can only manage a limited amount of history in one day, we only visited the cathedral and ignored the Romans. If you look closely at the picture below, you may be able to see that the tower and part of the walls are built with small red bricks - these were recycled by the 12th century builders from the ruins of the Roman town.  

We parked near the Roman museum and walked through the city park and round this lake on the way to the cathedral and the town. I love it when I manage to catch a good reflection in a photo. After the cathedral we ambled round the city centre. We stopped for a coffee and we did some birthday shopping for H, who turns 23 next week - I got some Le Creuset items for her kitchen (I know she loves their stuff, though most of it is prohibitively expensive!), and TG bought her a candle from Anthropologie. We left St. Albans at about 4 and drove home via Milton Keynes to get dinner at Nandos on the way. 

Wednesday was mostly a lazy day at home, though I went to an orchestra rehearsal in the evening. Gardeners came in the afternoon to cut the tall hedge round our back garden. We used to do it ourselves, or with my brother's help, but it is a heavy physical job and we have reached the point where paying someone else to do it is worth every penny! Thursday was another day-tripping day - more about that in the next post.