December 9th, 2015, was a day of glorious winter sunshine that tempted me out for a walk in the Essex countryside. I've been showing you my progress over the last two days so we'd better get moving again. Is your rucksack packed and your boots laced?
You can see the first part of the walk here:
http://bystargooseandhanglands.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/a-walk-from-darkness-to-light.html
And the second part here:
http://bystargooseandhanglands.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/a-walk-from-beautiful-to-ugley.html
We're leaving the village of Ugley, which wasn't ugly. "Pretty Ugley" you could call it! But now we have to cross the M11 motorway which is a lot less attractive. Luckily there's a bridge for us to pass under so we don't have to risk our lives. Then we turn off our minor road to an even more minor road, though we're not clear of the twenty-first century just yet.
The road that we're following is one of those that gradually peters out; road becomes lane, the lane becomes a track, the track becomes little more than a path. Two cars passed me in the space of a minute but then nothing else. Must have been the rush-hour!
On the right hand side of the road, as I walked up it, there's what appears to be a ditch flowing with clear water. In fact it's the headwaters of the River Cam on its way to Cambridge and thence to the North Sea. We're going to follow it almost up to its source.
The track goes as far as the farm up ahead. It's so quiet up here that it's hard to realise that big trucks are thundering along the motorway just a couple of miles away.
Some of the farm buildings have seen better days, though other parts of the operation seemed modern and efficient.
The path was far from smooth and efficient though! Actually after this tricky section the conditions underfoot improved and I was able to wander along taking notice (and photographs) of all the little details that enrich such a walk.
The mild autumn we've had this year means that we're still in the fungi season. I'm pretty certain that these are Shaggy Ink Caps, though fungi are notoriously difficult to identify. (See Louise's comment below for a more informed opinion).
A fallen log in the "river" reminded me of an elephant! I must be getting tired to start hallucinating this early in the day.
These are the berries of a plant called Black Bryony climbing up in clockwise spirals. A welcome splash of colour in the hedgerows.
These I really can't identify. They were growing on a rotten tree stump beside the path.
A small flock of sheep in a field - a rare sight in the arable lands of East Anglia these days. On the map I can see we're getting near to places called Mole Hall and Swaynes Hall, but they'll have to wait till tomorrow.
How's the old feet? I'm taking this walk very slowly for you. I hope you're enjoying some of the variety to be found in this little corner of England. See you tomorrow.
Take care.
On Monday we had one of those perfect Autumn days so I headed down to Suffolk to visit a little visited bit of country. There's a cluster of interesting country churches in the area which I'll share with you by and by. But first lets enjoy the autumn footpaths, by-ways and quiet roads that I walked along, all of which were resplendent in their autumnal finery. And, as we go, I'll tell you a bit about these paths which are one of Britain's often overlooked glories.
Someone, with a lot more time on their hands than I've ever had, once calculated that there are 140,000 miles of public footpaths in England and Wales. I have no idea how they worked it out but you get the impression - plenty of scope for those of us with permanently itchy feet.
Through woodland, alongside fields, across meadows, up mountains, beside the sea, over moors......even through gardens and underneath people's washing lines! And every mile mapped with fanatical accuracy by the Ordnance Survey, which was only set up because Britain feared an invasion - which never came!
I'm not talking here about national trails leading for miles, but little tracks pottering from one village to the next. Though of course there's such a dense network of these paths that anyone with a good map and a little imagination can link them together to make a walk of whatever length is desired.
But how did we come by this marvellous network?
From medieval times up until the mid eighteenth century Britain was mostly farming country. In southern England each village had two or three huge "open fields" which were subdivided into small strips. Each farmer would have many strips dotted around in various parts of the parish. This meant that there had to be paths from the village, where the farms stood, to the outlying fields.
There would also be tracks to neighbouring villages and market towns. Nobody ever did much to maintain any of these tracks and, as most folk travelled on foot, it didn't really matter too much. And, anyway, if one track became impassable you simply used another.
Of course a few people did travel longer distances either on horseback or by stagecoach and those who left an account of their journeys had a great deal to say about the state of the roads.
But things were about to change. The Enclosure Acts consolidated the old strips of land into farms as we know them today. Farmhouses were built outside the villages, if that's where the landholdings happened to be. The multiplicity of old trackways was simplified to create a more modern efficient system of roads. Turnpike trusts were set up to create toll roads; the tolls paying for the upkeep of the roads.
However, England being England, the law upheld the rights of citizens to wander where they had wandered since time immemorial, even if it be over the newly created farmlands. Thus "rights of way" came into being.
And that's all a public footpath is today - a right to pass along a line on the map. There doesn't need to be any actual line on the ground to follow. But no one can block or obstruct a right of way. Stiles and gates mark where the route crosses field boundaries but in between there is often just a faint trod to follow or, if the route is rarely walked, nothing at all on the ground.
Of course sometimes the way will be blocked no matter what the law says. Broken stiles, impassable bramble thickets and bulls in fields can all add to the adventure. But things are improving, at least in this part of the country, as more and more people don their boots of a weekend.
It was this web of ancient trails then that I was making use of to traverse the Suffolk countryside on this fine autumn day. To link it all together you will see that I sometimes had to take to the narrow winding lanes that count as roads in this rural setting. In the next post I'll share with you some of the delightful little churches that lie hidden in the depths of this bucolic maze.
Take care.
