St Albans; Sunday, 12 July, 2020

Another grab-bag breakfast and then off out into the city centre to have a wander around.

I had originally intended on visiting a couple of the city museums – but these had not yet reopened following their Covid closures so that was not possible. Instead I headed back down the hill, past the cathedral and into Verulamium park. The park sits on much of the land that was once occupied the Roman town and includes several remaining bits of the old city wall.

The other end of the park, and across a busy road, are the remains of the Roman Theatre of Verulamium and that is where I was headed for my midday booking. I arrived a few minutes early, but due to the lack of anyone else being around I was able to go straight in and look around the site.

The archaeological remains are the largest and most complete for a Roman theatre in Britain and show the whole space of the auditorium and stage as well as some neighbouring stores buildings. There is also the remains of a 2nd century town house located on the edge of the site.

After spending quote some time looking round the theatre I then wandered back through the park, stopping off at the café to grab a socially distanced bacon butty and well-earned bottle of pop. I wandered past the large block of the city walls that sit in the middle of the park and show quite how big a difference there was between the inside and outside of the walls with the outside side being significantly lower the inside.

From there I walked on a little further to the site of the London Gate. Today all that remains are the outlines of the footings of the gate – two large curved towers and two roadways running between them – but even from these it is clear to see this would have been an impressive structure. The gate itself was located at the Southern end of old town and would have been on Watling Street – the key Roman road running from Dubris (Dover) through Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans) on its way towards Viroconium (Wroxeter) and eventually onto Deva (Chester)

Running up the hill away from the gate is another large 300m portion of the city walls, so I followed that up the hill, where it ends with the footings of another small tower.

From the Roman ruins I had a wander back down into the park and then along the river Ver towards the slightly more modern ruins of Lee House. These are the remains of a Tudor house that itself was built on the ruins of Sopworth Nunnery.

After looking round the ruins I headed back through the residential streets, stopping off for a well-deserved pint in a nice pub, before getting back to the hotel. Originally I had planned to just leave my luggage with the hotel when I checked out on Sunday morning, but due to the space behind their reception the hotel wasn’t able to offer luggage storage whilst they had their Covid-Secure measures in place. They’d also been unable to offer a late checkout as their cleaners all finish work at 2pm, so instead they had done me a deal on having the room for an extra night at a heavily reduced rate on the condition I was checked out before 10pm.

This meant that I was able to grab a take-away from the local Nando’s and take that back to my room to dine in whilst I downloaded the photos from my camera before finally checking out and walking back down the hill to the station and my train ride home.