Toughness: 4 out of 10
9.30 train from Liverpool Street (9.38 Stratford), to Manningtree, arriving 10.31.
This walk needs no introduction for many of you, but if it does, then suffice to say that if you had to pick just one Essex walk to do in your life, this would be it. Pretty villages, the landscape (and cloudscape) that inspired the famous painter John Constable, and a nice tea stop. What more could you want?
As on all our walks at present, we will very rapidly split into groups of six at the start and stay split, so any preliminary thoughts you can have on the train about who you plan to walk with would be useful. Last Saturday meeting up in the station car park rather than on the arrival platform worked well, as it gave us lots of space to socially distance while we formed (quickly!) into sub-groups.
Lots of you bring sandwiches for lunch these days, but if you are otherwise inclined, Dedham has two pubs and some cafe options. There are also later pub options in Stratford St Mary (it says here: probably best to check before relying on them).
There is a shortcut from Dedham to Flatford Mill, which reduces the walk to 13.3km (8.25 miles) and includes a very pretty section along the River Stour not otherwise covered on the walk.
To my great surprise (given the number of times it has let me down on the tea front this summer...), the National Trust says its tea room at Flatford Mill is open (till 5pm). Otherwise, the late tea option is the Manningtree Station Buffet, which is more like a pub than a station coffee outlet (though it does do hot drinks), a rare survivor from the days when lots of stations had such places. As far as I can see from its Facebook page, it is open till 9pm.
Trains back from Manningtree are at 02 and 53 past, the 53 being slightly faster. One quirk seems to be the 17.50 (not 53), which requires a change at Colchester.
7 comments:
Hi. Is this walk prone to flooding in bad weather? Thank you very much.
Let's hope not...
I've never done a walk in extensive rain, but I'm tired of being stuck indoors and am tempted to come! Any weather tips? I assume waterproof clothing is a must.
Waterproof jacket and trousers, yes :(
Station buffet bar is open til 9 pm.
There were two weather forecasts for today. One - believed by most walkers, I suspect - was for torrential rain. The other had the rain clearing to sunshine. In fact we had neither. It was w=cloudy-with-some-light-rain, the latter being in the morning (apart from one unsporting shower just before the end for three of us). It was hard under the grey skies to imagine the sunny scenes with fluffy white clouds painted by Constable. But we did our best, comparing a few famous scenes to dingy pictures on our smartphones. It was almost completely dry underfoot: no floods or gloopy mud.
There were n=6 of us, which made keeping within government guidelines easy. We had three men, three women, and one newcomer to the walks. We got to Dedham at midday and there was some discussion about whether to lunch there or later, but at least one of the pubs in Stratford St Mary later turned out to be shut and another was about apparently not doing food, so it was just as well we eventually decided to lunch at Dedham.
Two had sandwiches. The other four tried the Sun without success, but after much scanning of a tablet computer by the maitre d’ (or whatever we call these new pub greeter people), we were admitted to the Marlborough Head. The food came very zippily, probably because we were the first customers, and was very good. The sandwichers came in for drinks.
In the afternoon two got a bit separated from the others, and the others went the wrong way slightly, inadvertently taking a shorter route to East Bergholt. Getting to Flatford Mill, yours truly was aghast to discover that my three companions did not want to stop for tea. So I sat in the garden of the National Trust tea room alone - not just without companions but almost without any other customers, inside or out. I have never seen the place so empty, nor enjoyed the Haywain site in solitude before.
When I had finished tea it turned out that the missing two walkers were inside the tea room, so I hooked up with them for the final leg. We got to the station in time for the 4.53pm train and there met the other three who had been to the station buffet. I regretted not having time to buy a takeaway beer from the buffet to have on the train, but I needn’t have worried because - wonder of wonders - there was one on the train, a sparkling new train at that. The buffet guy very kindly urged us to sit in the adjacent first class, saying it was declassified, so very posh we felt all the way back to Liverpool Street, me with my can of Southwold bitter.
I did this walk yesterday as well but later than the group. I was intending to take the shortcut described in the instructions but by mistake took the second left instead of the first left at the fork in para 34, thus creating my own shortcut. That turned out to be quite fortunate because Fen Bridge is actually closed at the moment for safety reasons and it’s not possible to cross the river as described in para 41. The stretch along the Stour was one of the most beautiful bits of the walk and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss it.
Had tea at the Bridge Cottage Tearoom which got quite busy towards closing time, as did the path along the river. Lots of dog walkers.
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