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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Saturday 19 June 2021

Saturday Walk Wakes Colne to Bures - along the Colne Valley

Book 1, Walk 46 - Wakes Colne to Bures

Length: 17.7 km (11 miles)
Toughness: 5 out of 10


London Liverpool Street:   10-02 hrs   Greater Anglia service to Ipswich      Stratford: 10-09 hrs
Arrive Marks Tey:  10-57 hrs   Change trains
Leave Marks Tey: 11-01 hrs     Greater Anglia service to Sudbury (Suffolk)
Arrive Chappel and Wakes Colne: 11-07 hrs

Note: Greater Anglia usually hold the Sudbury service for up to 10 minutes if the London train is running late. If you miss the connection - it's a taxi to Wakes Colne.

Return 

Bures to Liverpool Street (changing at Marks Tey):  33 min past the hour  (journey length 1hr 13)

Rail ticket:  buy a day return to Bures  (pronounced "Bewers")


Covid-19 Compliance: please note the current guidance on this website and observe social distancing. You should all come prepared to exchange contact details for track and trace purpose. You can either pre-register for this walk (not essential ) by e-mailing me at swc-marcus@walkingclub.org.uk  or, if you prefer, please write your name, e-mail address and contact 'phone number on a small piece of paper for handing to me on the train or when we assemble at walk start. Thank you.  


This walk in northern Essex is a bit of a contrast to the Lewes-Seaford walk also on today's menu.  Starting at Chappel and Wakes Colne station, which doubles up as the East Anglian Railway Museum (worth a quick look) you head down to the village and are soon crossing over fields and along field edges on the Colne Valley path to the village of Earls Colne via Chalkney Wood. You next pass Colne Priory and walk around a golf course before heading over more fields and through light woodland to the village of Colne Engaine, with its impressive church ( a picnic spot ) and its usually excellent watering hole - the Five Bells pub, which I hope is serving lunch today (worth booking ahead). 

After lunch the walk continues over a mixture of open farmland, pastures and through woodland. Two hours later you should arrive at the outskirts of the town of Bures, which straddles the Essex and Suffolk border. If you have time to kill before your once an hour train from Bures station, for refreshments the first pub you come to down the road, the Eight Bells, is in Essex. Cross the nearby town bridge into Suffolk and you come to the Three Horseshoes pub. 

The gentle undulating countryside in the middle of nowhere on this walk makes for a relaxing, undemanding outing.
T=1.46

Walk Directions are here:  L=1.46

1 comment:

Marcus said...

Last Wednesday it was uncomfortably hot for walking - for some of us. Today it was more than 10 degrees C cooler, which was welcomed, although the day was w=overcast-with-threatening-skies, with drizzly rain in the afternoon. The sun having worked overtime on Wednesday did not make an appearance all day.
Just n=2 of us showed up for this outing on the Essex-Suffolk border. The countryside was very green - and damp - having received a months rain over the the previous twenty four hours. Some paths were muddy and others were very overgrown, making progress at times hard work. But it did not matter as the walk was familiar to us and much liked by both of us. Just beyond the Earls Colne golf course my companion opted to recce a new route to Sudbury, bypassing Bures, so I continued on my own to Colne Engaine, where I enjoyed an excellent lunch at the Five Bells - still one of the best pubs on a SWC walk. Well fed and watered I continued on, trying to book check now in drizzly rain, and latterly encountering some very overgrown paths. I passed up on tea on reaching Bures and I was in good time for the 17-33 hrs service to Marks Tey and the connection for the London train. I was home in good time for the footie, having enjoyed a good day's walking in lovely, remote countryside.