Day 7 - St Albans

I spent nine years in St Albans and Harpenden after leaving Harrow at age 19. It's a beautiful City with a lot of history, pubs and Indian restaurants. St Albans was named Verulamium in Roman times and still has a few remains. There are many stories of residents digging up their garden to plant potatoes or build an extension only to find some Roman coins or the floor of a Roman Spa!
On this Thursday morning we dropped off Jake, Raif and Gabe to school and Lisa, Rhys, Jemma and I drove the 35minutes to St Albans.
We parked up at the high street and wandered down the hill to the Abbey church. St Alban was the first English Christian martyr in about AD300. Christianity was still illegal in these days and punishable by death. Ironically, it wasn't long after St Alban was beheaded that Rome converted to Christianity.
We had just walked in to the cathedral when an enthusiastic tour guide informed us that a tour would begin in 10 minutes. The guide was very informative and explained the entire history of England, all it's kings and queens (or so it seemed) over the next hour.

 St Albans Abbey and Cathedral

 Amazing stained glass

 Gothic style architecture

Fully saturated with the rich history of the Abbey, or was it a church?, we headed off to find a pub for some grub. I had a vague memory of the location of The Ole Fighting Cocks, an ancient pub and reputed to be ( it's in the Guinness Book of Records) the oldest pub in England. One thing I do know is the beer I had and the bangers and mash were none like I had ever had before! Fantastic! I'm sure they would have been as good if we had not got lost and tracked half way across St Albans in the wrong direction for the previous half hour.

 Lunch in the Ole Fighting Cocks

My old house in St Albans

After lunch we trekked back up the hill in a circuitous fashion to the car and headed back to Amersham to collect the kids from school.

That evening we had an Indian delivered (in Canada that means East Indian food) and enjoyed the hottest Madras I have had in three decades. Holy mackerel was that hot!  I basically didn't taste any of the other 9 or 10 dishes.