Latest news with #Hertfordshire
BBC News
11 hours ago
- General
- BBC News
Appeal after driver standing by van dies on M1 in Hertfordshire
A driver standing by his van on the hard shoulder of the M1 has died after being struck, police have victim's silver Vauxhall van and a silver Chevrolet were on the hard shoulder of the M1 near Hemel Hempstead, when they were involved in a crash with a silver Saab at about 16:30 BST on Friday, Hertfordshire Police driver, a man in his 20s, suffered serious injuries and died at the scene of the crash close to the southbound slip road at junction 8.A man, 58, from Luton, was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, driving while unfit through drink or drugs and failing to stop at the scene of a collision, and remains in custody, the force said. Det Sgt Ben Heath, from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Serious Collision Investigation Unit, said: "Our thoughts are with the man's loved ones at this difficult time."Our inquiries are continuing, and I am appealing for anyone with information to please come forward."Did you see what happened, or witness anything before the collision?"I would like to take this opportunity to thank the public for their patience whilst we put road closures in place."Anyone who saw the crash, has information or dash cam footage has been urged to contact the police. Det Sgt Heath added that any material could be uploaded on to the force's said the victim's family was being supported by officers. Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Telegraph
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Hawk that attacked bald men is adopted by a bald man
A Harris Hawk that attacked bald men in a village has been adopted by a bald man. The bird of prey, nicknamed 'Bomber Harris', attacked over 50 people in Flamstead, Hertfordshire, during a four-week reign of terror in March. A falconer who helped trap the hawk previously told The Telegraph the bird 'saw bald men' and attacked them because it was 'hormonal'. But the bird has now been adopted by Wayne Housden, a falconer who has recently had a buzz cut. The 58-year-old village warden told The Telegraph that Bomber had changed – pointing to the fact he could shave his head without fear of attack. 'If you looked at me now, you'd say, 'he's bald',' Mr Housden said. 'I'm not worried about him. I've shaved my head and, when I shaved it, it was to the bone. 'But I go into his aviary and he doesn't attack me.' Mr Housden, who lives near Flamstead, described his new friend as 'really tame', adding: 'He wasn't terrible. He was more scared than anything when he was caught. 'I can kiss him on the head. He nibbles around my neck and on my chin... He's so friendly to me. He's obsessed with me.' For four weeks last year Flamstead ground to a halt. Postmen stopped delivering mail, fearful scaffolders left work unfinished and villagers would not dare leave their homes without a hat, umbrella or hooded coat to protect themselves. The siege was finally brought to an end when Steve Harris, 40, threw a cage over the bird after it followed him into his back garden. The physiotherapist and father-of-two, who had been returning from a run, told The Telegraph that he and his children had not been in their garden for 'weeks and weeks' because of the attacks. Mr Housden, who also owns another falcon, said that he had decided to adopt the bird after the police contacted him for help. Bomber is now housed in a new £1,000 aviary which was built by Mr Housden. The falconer said the idea that the bird might attack someone again was 'always in the back of your head' but added that 'he's got to go loose'. He said that he has already started taking Bomber on excursions, including a visit to his friend's house. 'He's calmed down', Mr Housden added. 'He needed to calm down.' Asked whether he thought the bird was misunderstood, he said: 'Yes he was. 'He's going to be going to a scarecrow festival in Flamstead and he will end up meeting everyone that he's hit on the head, so they will all see how he's changed.'
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
‘Never think you're too old': Meet the world's fastest 75-year-old woman
Along a sun-dappled canal towpath in picturesque Hertfordshire countryside, a grey-brown bob rises and falls with the effortless bounce of a lithe, spectacled figure gliding her way past dog-walkers and afternoon ramblers. There is a watch – one of those smart-technology devices capable of producing all sorts of unnecessary metrics – on Sarah Roberts's wrist, but she has forgotten to switch it on. Roberts, a grandmother of five, tends not to take note of such things. Advertisement When she does go for a run – an occurrence of surprising infrequency – she prefers to be guided by feel; distances and times forgotten upon return to her front door. The fastest 75-year-old woman in history – a multiple world champion and world-record holder – possesses no training logbook, no coach and, most intriguingly, almost zero running pedigree for most of her life. Asked by the hastily stretching Guardian journalist – foolishly attempting to keep pace for a few miles – how she is capable of launching straight into a run without any semblance of a warm-up, she reveals she only stretches before races 'so that I don't look unprofessional'. Her Great Britain Masters singlet reveals taut muscles and supple limbs that would never have been employed for their current purpose were it not for a holiday to South Africa eight years ago. Trips there had been a frequent occurrence long before a Cape Town-based friend asked whether Roberts and her husband George would like to join their regular Saturday morning parkrun – the wonderful innovation that welcomes all comers to undertake 5km at whatever pace they choose. Sheltered under trees at the foot of Table Mountain, they savoured this one at no more than a pleasurable amble. The following week they went again, only this time Roberts ran small segments. On their return to their Hertfordshire home, the couple decided to sign up to their local parkrun. For three years, almost every Saturday morning involved a 5km run, with Roberts converting from running novice to regular attendee, whittling her time down from just shy of 30 minutes to less than 23. Just a few weeks off her 70th birthday, she then took a plunge by joining her local athletics club, Dacorum, and signing up for an 800m race at the end of the summer. Advertisement 'I was discovering I was really quite good,' she explains after our canal run, while sitting in front of an antique mantel clock in a living room adorned with furnishings from decades gone by. 'That made me think I ought to see whether I could do other things, so I put myself in for an 800. I'd never even been on a track before. The gun went and all I knew is I had to go round twice. 'The only other people in the race were either under-17 or under-15, and then there was me, almost 70. These girls just shot off in the distance looking like gazelles and I ran round. I was way last and didn't know what time I'd done, but someone told me it was rather good for my age.' The Covid pandemic dashed almost all running opportunities over the next two years, aside from irregular parkruns when permitted. So, it was not until early 2022 that she was able to contest another 800m, unexpectedly taking the scalp of a multiple global age-group champion in the process. 'Nobody had heard of me or expected me to do anything,' says Roberts. Advertisement By 2023, she was a double British champion in the 70-74 age group. The following year she won three world titles over 800m, 1500m and 5,000m, before adding four more indoor golds this March. 800m outdoor: 2min 58.12sec 800m indoor: 2.57.32 1,500m outdoor: 6.06.20 1,500m indoor: 5.58.15 Mile outdoor: 6.40.32 3,000m indoor: 12.28.82 5,000m outdoor: 22.40.15 5km road: 21.33 10,000m outdoor: 45.59.81 10km road: 44.33 Since her birthday last October, she has swept the board of 75+ world records over every track distance from 800m to 10,000m indoors and outdoors, as well as 5km and 10km on the road. Last weekend, she added mile and 10,000m world records to her bulging haul despite less than 90 minutes between races. It is a staggering array of accolades for someone whose running experience never previously extended beyond chasing primary school friends around the playground. Upstairs in their smart detached home, off a hallway lined with photos of their children and grandchildren, sits a room that used to function as an office but is now primarily occupied with Roberts' late-blooming running career. Surrounded by cardboard boxes marked with such mundanities as 'sewing', 'Scrabble' and 'wrapping paper' lie an assortment of athletics paraphernalia, from certificates to printed race results, and photo albums to a frankly overwhelming number of medals. Advertisement How much does running now occupy Roberts' life, I wonder? 'Only 95%,' says George, joking, who happily travels around the country and abroad to watch his wife of almost 54 years race. By this point, there is an obvious question that needs answering. How on earth does a woman who had never run until she was 67 become the fastest of all time? Despite not taking part in any organised sport beyond the briefest of social netball stints many decades ago, Roberts has always been a keen gym goer. Initially just the odd circuit class here and there during her days working as a solicitor and raising two children; latterly, post-retirement, every day and all conceivable options, from boxing to Zumba, and yoga to legs, bums and tums. A few years ago, when her gym held a contest to see who could hold the longest plank, Roberts, then just shy of her 70th birthday, tapped out victorious after 10 minutes and 15 seconds. Only boredom, and a lack of genuine challengers, made her stop. Advertisement Recently, while hoovering up world titles in Florida, she was approached by researchers who asked to conduct some tests on her. They found her resting heart rate drops as low as 38 beats per minute and her VO2 max, which measures the body's ability to use oxygen during exercise, is 54 – both comparable to an elite athlete generations younger. She awaits full MRI results, but the radiographer who conducted the scans was instantly stunned by the lack of fat running through her legs. 'I feel fitter than I've ever felt before, which is fantastic,' she says. 'You don't expect to feel that when you're 75.' Her formal running training remains minimal. Other than a track session on Mondays and intervals on Tuesdays, her only other regular outing is the trusty Saturday morning parkrun. The remainder of her fitness is cultivated through those daily gym visits. Remarkably, given her advancing years, she is only getting quicker, so far improving her best times every summer since starting to compete. 'Whatever I'm doing seems to be working,' she says, smiling. Having braved that initial 800m race at an age when most would never consider it, she hopes her story may inspire others. What unknown talents lie dormant, just waiting for a chance to emerge? Advertisement 'I'd like people to think that they should always try something,' she says. 'You never know what you can do until you try it. Never think you're too old. Give it a go. You will surprise yourself at what you can do if you really try to do something.' Earlier, as we left the towpath and wound our way through the village towards home – one of us sweating considerably more than the other twice his age – two scenarios sprang to mind. One was the thought of what she might achieve with the aid of a properly conceived full-time running regime – a suggestion that Roberts gives short shrift, fully content as she is, with sufficient honours to validate her current approach. The other was what might have been. Given her apparent physiological advantages – and notwithstanding the paucity of middle and long-distance events open to women until the latter decades of the 20th century – does she wonder what she could have accomplished if made aware of her running prowess at a younger age? 'No, I don't,' she says. 'I'm just very grateful that I've discovered it now. I've had a good life and enjoyed whatever I've done in the past. I don't go into what-ifs because all the other factors would have been different anyway. But I'm very happy for the current situation. 'I'm just amazed really. I could always run for a bus, but I never thought I would ever be anywhere near the best in the world. It never would have crossed my mind.'
The Guardian
15 hours ago
- Health
- The Guardian
‘Never think you're too old': Meet the world's fastest 75-year-old woman
Along a sun-dappled canal towpath in picturesque Hertfordshire countryside, a grey-brown bob rises and falls with the effortless bounce of a lithe, spectacled figure gliding her way past dog-walkers and afternoon ramblers. There is a watch – one of those smart-technology devices capable of producing all sorts of unnecessary metrics – on Sarah Roberts's wrist, but she has forgotten to switch it on. Roberts, a grandmother of five, tends not to take note of such things. When she does go for a run – an occurrence of surprising infrequency – she prefers to be guided by feel; distances and times forgotten upon return to her front door. The fastest 75-year-old woman in history – a multiple world champion and world-record holder – possesses no training logbook, no coach and, most intriguingly, almost zero running pedigree for most of her life. Asked by the hastily stretching Guardian journalist – foolishly attempting to keep pace for a few miles – how she is capable of launching straight into a run without any semblance of a warm-up, she reveals she only stretches before races 'so that I don't look unprofessional'. Her Great Britain Masters singlet reveals taut muscles and supple limbs that would never have been employed for their current purpose were it not for a holiday to South Africa eight years ago. Trips there had been a frequent occurrence long before a Cape Town-based friend asked whether Roberts and her husband George would like to join their regular Saturday morning parkrun – the wonderful innovation that welcomes all comers to undertake 5km at whatever pace they choose. Sheltered under trees at the foot of Table Mountain, they savoured this one at no more than a pleasurable amble. The following week they went again, only this time Roberts ran small segments. On their return to their Hertfordshire home, the couple decided to sign up to their local parkrun. For three years, almost every Saturday morning involved a 5km run, with Roberts converting from running novice to regular attendee, whittling her time down from just shy of 30 minutes to less than 23. Just a few weeks off her 70th birthday, she then took a plunge by joining her local athletics club, Dacorum, and signing up for an 800m race at the end of the summer. 'I was discovering I was really quite good,' she explains after our canal run, while sitting in front of an antique mantel clock in a living room adorned with furnishings from decades gone by. 'That made me think I ought to see whether I could do other things, so I put myself in for an 800. I'd never even been on a track before. The gun went and all I knew is I had to go round twice. 'The only other people in the race were either under-17 or under-15, and then there was me, almost 70. These girls just shot off in the distance looking like gazelles and I ran round. I was way last and didn't know what time I'd done, but someone told me it was rather good for my age.' The Covid pandemic dashed almost all running opportunities over the next two years, aside from irregular parkruns when permitted. So, it was not until early 2022 that she was able to contest another 800m, unexpectedly taking the scalp of a multiple global age-group champion in the process. 'Nobody had heard of me or expected me to do anything,' says Roberts. By 2023, she was a double British champion in the 70-74 age group. The following year she won three world titles over 800m, 1500m and 5,000m, before adding four more indoor golds this March. 800m outdoor: 2min 58.12sec800m indoor: 2.57.321,500m outdoor: 6.06.201,500m indoor: 5.58.15Mile outdoor: 6.40.323,000m indoor: 12.28.825,000m outdoor: 22.40.155km road: 21.3310,000m outdoor: 45.59.8110km road: 44.33 Since her birthday last October, she has swept the board of 75+ world records over every track distance from 800m to 10,000m indoors and outdoors, as well as 5km and 10km on the road. Last weekend, she added mile and 10,000m world records to her bulging haul despite less than 90 minutes between races. It is a staggering array of accolades for someone whose running experience never previously extended beyond chasing primary school friends around the playground. Upstairs in their smart detached home, off a hallway lined with photos of their children and grandchildren, sits a room that used to function as an office but is now primarily occupied with Roberts' late-blooming running career. Surrounded by cardboard boxes marked with such mundanities as 'sewing', 'Scrabble' and 'wrapping paper' lie an assortment of athletics paraphernalia, from certificates to printed race results, and photo albums to a frankly overwhelming number of medals. How much does running now occupy Roberts' life, I wonder? 'Only 95%,' says George, joking, who happily travels around the country and abroad to watch his wife of almost 54 years race. By this point, there is an obvious question that needs answering. How on earth does a woman who had never run until she was 67 become the fastest of all time? Despite not taking part in any organised sport beyond the briefest of social netball stints many decades ago, Roberts has always been a keen gym goer. Initially just the odd circuit class here and there during her days working as a solicitor and raising two children; latterly, post-retirement, every day and all conceivable options, from boxing to Zumba, and yoga to legs, bums and tums. A few years ago, when her gym held a contest to see who could hold the longest plank, Roberts, then just shy of her 70th birthday, tapped out victorious after 10 minutes and 15 seconds. Only boredom, and a lack of genuine challengers, made her stop. Recently, while hoovering up world titles in Florida, she was approached by researchers who asked to conduct some tests on her. They found her resting heart rate drops as low as 38 beats per minute and her VO2 max, which measures the body's ability to use oxygen during exercise, is 54 – both comparable to an elite athlete generations younger. She awaits full MRI results, but the radiographer who conducted the scans was instantly stunned by the lack of fat running through her legs. 'I feel fitter than I've ever felt before, which is fantastic,' she says. 'You don't expect to feel that when you're 75.' Her formal running training remains minimal. Other than a track session on Mondays and intervals on Tuesdays, her only other regular outing is the trusty Saturday morning parkrun. The remainder of her fitness is cultivated through those daily gym visits. Remarkably, given her advancing years, she is only getting quicker, so far improving her best times every summer since starting to compete. 'Whatever I'm doing seems to be working,' she says, smiling. Having braved that initial 800m race at an age when most would never consider it, she hopes her story may inspire others. What unknown talents lie dormant, just waiting for a chance to emerge? 'I'd like people to think that they should always try something,' she says. 'You never know what you can do until you try it. Never think you're too old. Give it a go. You will surprise yourself at what you can do if you really try to do something.' Earlier, as we left the towpath and wound our way through the village towards home – one of us sweating considerably more than the other twice his age – two scenarios sprang to mind. One was the thought of what she might achieve with the aid of a properly conceived full-time running regime – a suggestion that Roberts gives short shrift, fully content as she is, with sufficient honours to validate her current approach. The other was what might have been. Given her apparent physiological advantages – and notwithstanding the paucity of middle and long-distance events open to women until the latter decades of the 20th century – does she wonder what she could have accomplished if made aware of her running prowess at a younger age? 'No, I don't,' she says. 'I'm just very grateful that I've discovered it now. I've had a good life and enjoyed whatever I've done in the past. I don't go into what-ifs because all the other factors would have been different anyway. But I'm very happy for the current situation. 'I'm just amazed really. I could always run for a bus, but I never thought I would ever be anywhere near the best in the world. It never would have crossed my mind.'
BBC News
16 hours ago
- General
- BBC News
Two men jailed after cannabis worth £500,000 found in Hertford
Two men have been jailed after cannabis estimated to be worth more than £500,000 was discovered at a Police found the drug in a building in Mimram Road, Hertford, on 9 April following reports of suspicious Makaj, 35, and Bylbyl Nezaj, 36, both pleaded guilty to the production of a Class B were both sentenced to three years imprisonment at St Albans Crown Court on 20 May. When officers arrived at the property, the men attempted to escape through the roof but were arrested and taken into police building had been converted into a cannabis factory and its power supply had been tampered with "dangerously", said Hertfordshire Police. Det Con Charlotte Bell, from the East Herts Local Crime Unit, said: "Cannabis factories, in particular, pose a significant risk to those living close by, as criminals often seek to access free electricity and set up unsafe wiring to power the lamps and fans needed to grow the plants."They will often knock down walls and block off ventilation to prevent the smell escaping, causing damp and structural damage which can affect adjoining properties."She added: "All drugs and the criminality associated with their use and supply can have devastating effects on local communities."They are often linked to acquisitive crime, such as burglary and theft, as well as violent offences, which leave innocent residents living in fear." Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
