Crinkle Crankle Walls

The most peculiar brick wall you'll ever walk past runs through the Hertfordshire countryside near St Albans - and there's genuinely good reason for its bonkers S-curve design. Crinkle Crankle Walls, that wonderfully daft local name, were built this way intentionally. The wavy brickwork is stronger than a straight wall and uses less material, which made perfect sense when Georgian landowners were trying to protect their kitchen gardens on a budget. What you're looking at is proper 18th-century efficiency dressed up as something from a fairy tale.

Walking the length of it takes maybe twenty minutes, though you'll probably stop to puzzle over why someone would bother building curves into a wall. Photographers love it - that undulating red brick does something nice against green fields or grey sky. It's free to visit and open whenever, since it's just sat there doing its job in the landscape. Not a tourist attraction with a cafe and gift shop, mind you. It's a wall. A very good wall, but still just a wall.

For a park-based holiday around here, Cherry Green Trees or Commons Wood work well for a base. This visit slots in nicely during a morning walk from either site - you're talking a gentle fifteen-minute drive from most of the Hertfordshire caravan parks. History types will find it genuinely interesting; families might manage five minutes before kids start asking what's for lunch. Go when the light's low across the fields. Worth the detour only if you're already in the area or you're the sort who gets properly excited about vernacular architecture.