River Beane borders Hartham Common- the view from my studio at Dicker Mill.
Some years ago the river was furnished with a new bridge, across the Beane, that joins Hertford via a pathway that leads all the way through to Ware.
Video of the waterways of Hertford
An interesting fact about the River Beane:
Alfred Russel Wallace came to live in Hertford at the age of 5. It was here in Hertford that he received his only formal education and where as a boy walking across the meads at Hartham Common that his fascination for bugs stemmed. He loved to walk along The River Beane and here almost drowned whilst playing with friends on the river bank- his brother rescued him.
I made another video that depicts his time living in Hertford and his later search for bugs and butterflies and particularly the elusive bird of paradise- whose call in the final clip seems to mock him from the echoes in the woods across the Meads.
The river has long been a part of my life from when I first came to Hertford in the Nineteen Sixties.
caryl beach MA 
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