Bovingdon Market is still Dacorum’s Saturday morning

Bovingdon Market is not a farmers’ market with hessian and a playlist. It is a large, unapologetic outdoor market on the edge of the old airfield, the sort of place where you go for a tool, a plant, a phone case and a cooked breakfast, not an experience.

That is why it survives. Hemel’s indoor offer has been through the Marlowes, the Riverside and whatever the next retail concept is called. Bovingdon remains a weekly habit for villages from Chipperfield to Flamstead, and for Londoners who treat it as a day out.

The village itself is more than the market. HMP The Mount sits to one side of the old airfield; XC Extreme and the remaining aviation uses sit on the other. Planning arguments about the airfield’s future will keep returning, because large flat land on the edge of the Green Belt always does.

Until then, Saturday is simple. Go early. Wear shoes that can handle a field. Do not expect the high street to have a spare parking space from 9am.