We stepped cautiously through the gloomy tunnel out into South Oxhey but there was no one around. We walked briskly up the road between south Oxhey and Oxhey village, with the golf course either side of us, then along a residential road until we reached a main street into Watford.
The houses were mostly nice detached properties but if you looked closely, you could see the smashed window or door that indicated it had been broken into and ransacked. The junction was blocked with the wreckage of a car crash, people had obviously tried to go round them and been trapped by the metal railings, blocking the road further, and forming lines of abandoned cars in all directions. We turned right looking for the track to the cricket club. It was overgrown but remarkably free of rubbish. It wasn’t the path that google had suggested, so I guessed that people leaving London would have used the main streets instead. We reached a small bridge and jinked right onto a footpath that lead us up onto the old dismantled railway line; the Ebury way.
The walking was flat and easy, and within fifteen minutes we had reached Croxley industrial park. I had been a bit worried that people would be camping here, but a quick google search had assured me that apart from the mail delivery office most of the warehouses were small businesses or factories, not food warehouses. Soon the heath appeared on our right and as soon as we could, we crossed inside and stopped for a short break.
The morning sun was rising and, as we sat quietly, drinking from a flask of hot chocolate, rabbits began popping into view. It was a lovely scene, apart from the morning in the snow, I hadn’t been out walking since the outbreak. Frank and I sat peacefully, watching the rabbits play. Suddenly the morning quiet was shattered by a series of deep barks and yips. A trio of dogs raced towards the rabbits, following them as they scattered.
We watched as they raced around until, very quickly it seemed, one of the dogs had a rabbit in its mouth. The other dogs quickly ran in until all three were tugging at it. The rabbit was making sharp screaming noises, then it went quiet. Frank and I looked at each other and simultaneously stood to leave. The dogs dropped the rabbit and stared at us.
This did not look good. The dogs were standing over the bloodied corpse and they did not look friendly; their bodies were rigid, tails up but not wagging and as we stood there, one of them began to growl, its lips pulling back to show its very sharp, pointed teeth. We stood unmoving.
‘Um Frank, ‘I whispered, ‘what do we do?’
‘Nothing… let’s just wait them out.’
We stood there frozen in position, but then a second dog began barking and snapping it teeth. I took a step back. Then another.
‘Frank!’ I said.
Frank stepped back also, whilst the dogs continued to snap and growl, but then the third dog looked down at the rabbit and picked it up. Immediately the others were distracted. We continued to back away as they worried the rabbit between them. When we reached a path we turned and walked rapidly away, not quite running, but not far off.
At the other side of the heath we climbed the steps up to the footbridge, crossed over a small river and the canal, and then stepped down onto the towpath.
‘Feral dogs,’ I said shakily.
‘I thought you were being overdramatic when you mentioned them,’ said Frank.
‘I was, I’ve never seen any evidence of them before,’ I swung my walking stick; it seemed rather flimsy ‘let’s just hope we don’t meet any more.’
The weeds hadn’t started into growth yet and the towpath was passible. We walked until we could see the railway line above us then started looking for a path to Croxley Green. The map got a bit complicated at this point and we had quite a few false starts, but eventually we found a track that crossed over the railway and we headed up past a large secondary school until we were back on paved roads in the town centre.
The road we needed was straight ahead, beside us loomed a tall stone church with enormous stained glass windows high up in the wall. They were unbroken; an odd sight in this new world, I looked closer and saw that the whole building seemed sound. There was a bench in the garden behind, and although it was in the cold shade, Frank sat for a bit whilst I had a poke around. With the flask lid of hot chocolate in my hand I wandered around the whole building.
It was incredible, all the windows were above head height and the walls reached up at least three stories, dwarfing the surrounding houses, which were not small by any means. The stone arch of the porch had enormous, solid wooden doors behind, and the edges of the building were all thick solid stone; the place was a fortress.
As I made my way round back to Frank, I passed a tiny walled courtyard. The door opened and someone stepped out behind me. I whirled around, but it was a lady, in her late fifties perhaps with greying hair. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘can we help you?’
‘I was just admiring your church,’ I replied, my brain racing, ‘We were just taking a break on our walk.’ I stepped back so that I was now visible to Frank from his seat on the bench.
‘Would you like to come in and see the inside?’ she asked.
‘That’s ok,’ I said, she seemed harmless, but we were carrying everything most important to us and who knew how many people were inside and what they would do. Frank came up beside me and nodded to her.
‘Good morning,’ he said, with his impeccable manners ‘thank you for your kind offer but my companion and I should be on our way.’
As Frank was speaking, a man appeared at the end of the lane beside us. His waxed jacket looked almost new, but his wellies had mud splashes almost all the way to the top.
‘Good morning Anne,’ he said to the lady, nodding to Franks and me, ‘here are the eggs, some kale from Tony, leeks from Anita, and Judith put in some of her carrot cake.’
He looked at us appraisingly as he passed over the small open crate he was carrying, with an egg box, the veg he had mentioned, and a Tupperware container that looked like it was big enough for at least half of a good sized cake.
‘Thank you John,’ said the lady, ‘These visitors were admiring the church, I was just inviting them in to look around’
I looked at Frank, these people seemed ok and it would be good to talk to others and get a feel for what was going on outside. We had been isolated so long; I had just assumed that society had completely collapsed except for the settlement camps. It looked like I was wrong.
‘We wouldn’t want to impose,’ said Frank, with his most charming smile.
‘Not at all, we love having visitors; it’s so unusual nowadays to see an unfamiliar face.’
She turned to go back through the door and Frank and I followed. The courtyard was bare except for a narrow stone bench that ran around two sides. In the third was a big iron studded oak door. Anne lifted the latch and the door swung open silently.
Inside the church was split down the middle into two areas; one side filled with dark wooden pews, the other had a long U-shaped table with a white tablecloth that could easily seat thirty. The far end was laid with places for a meal.
‘We all try and eat lunch together,’ said Anne, indicating the table. ‘Meals are much more varied when everyone adds a little something.’
I looked around, there were signs of projects in progress all around, the pews were filled with bric-a-brac; half sorted into piles. In one corner was a half built wooden frame, surrounded by woodworking tools, next to it was a bookcase with books stacked up beside it, ready to be shelved. A pile of knitting sat on a chair, it looked like a church, but also a bit like a junk yard. And over it all the morning sun shone through the east facing stained glass window, spilling colour across the stone walls.
‘it’s amazing,’ I said, ‘we’re from Carpenders Park, there isn’t anything like this on the estate, everyone just slowly disappeared until it was only us left.’