Stour and Orwell Walk Part 1.

 

I am walking the Stour and Orwell Walk as a consequence of  The Essex Way.

The River Stour had been my companion during the early stages of  The Essex Way section walk.  It was only normal to think about the far bank and what it would be like to walk it.

It is the way of things, how would the subtle differences reveal themselves, what would be the same.  Crossing the river crosses a county boundary, I have left Essex and entered Suffolk.  How different these are in public perception.

As luck would have it the Stour and Orwell walk runs along this coastline.  Begins at Cattawade, finishes at Felixstowe some 40 odd miles later.

I very much like coastline, it is the edge of the map, essentially there is no more to walk beyond that line.  Land meets water and there is a palpable tension between these most fundamental elements.  It does not hurt that a good deal of map reading is done for you.

Walking a coastline is part of “The Ragged Edge” tour.  I used to be associated with a business that transported rock’n’roll groups about the place, the equipment and sundry people needed to make it all work.  It was here that a fondness for naming events took hold.

Walking a coastline, anyone can do, “The Ragged Edge Tour” now that is something else.  The only downside was I can sometimes spend rather a long time berating myself for never becoming a rock-god.  The odd thing being, I never wanted to be one.  It is the sort of thing which happens when your mind slips into neutral.

After some deliberation I decided this was the right category.  It might have gone into the “Trinity Tour”.  These are walks with three similar/related subjects within them.  On this occasion it was three churches with towers.  The walk started and ended with such a church with a church in the middle.

I find it appealing to have some sort of framework within which to place a walk, or to plan one.  Going from A to B with no sense of why, beyond, “that’s nice” is basically a dog walk.  A trinity framework is often used, beginning, middle and end.  Three is an important number.

Some web research to give me a sense of history when I got there and to make sure I was suitably impressed with something or other.  Nothing worse than tripping over a stone, not giving it a second thought, coming home and discovering local legends about it being the devil’s bun loaf dropped by Lucifer himself as he fled the local Priest.

The day was set fair, not something to be missed.

As planned the walk was 21km long (there and back again) but turned out to be 24km due to the wiggly bits and the fact I parked about a km from the start of the walk in Brantham.  These little “that’ll do” events take their toll.

Dog 2 and Dog 3 were in attendance.  Brantham Bull is home to one of the lamest ghost tales around, misty grey man, voices in the cellar variety.  This is a definite, “must try harder” in the end of term report, you are not getting on local news too often with this tourist attraction, not even on Halloween.

So dismissing Brantham Bull, the Church is the initial destination.  The lychgate is my primary interest here.   The internet says it was designed by E.S Prior (1857-1932), a primary mover in the Arts & Crafts movement, it is a bit special.

The interior of the lychgate is carved elaborately and traces of paintwork remains.

The church cannot compete with this.  Medieval, the Victorian improved it.

An orderly graveyard presents itself as I walked down the lane towards the River Stour.  Robert Brundell is the “grandfather stone” here as far as I can tell, died 1708 at the age of 69. You are a long time dead.

On another day with another agenda, Brantham would be all about the Xylonite Works, but thankfully the Stour Valley Walk will enable me to turn that over in my mind.  It is on my list of things to do.

The River Stour is soon stretched out before us and the familiar site of the warehouses of Manningtree dock can be seen on the far bank, a church steeple poking out of the tree canopy a little further on.

The path is very close to the waters edge, the tide is going out and the day is hot.  There is the smell of decaying matter you get in such circumstances.  It is not unpleasant because it is familiar.  It is just part of the ebb and flo of coastal margins.

Erosion has nibbled into the path in places.  Along the route trees are struggling to maintain a grip on land.

The pink structure of Stutton Mill comes into view.  A building of considerable age it commands lovely views of the river, sitting as it does on Newmill Creek. 

You tend to know you are looking at something old when it has the prefix “New” on the OS Map.  They have not built mills recently.

The owners dogs are in playful mood and bark and carry on attempting to chase my dogs off their land.  It is all fun, but the size differential worries the mill’s owner, he wonders if I am going to kick up a fuss.  His gardener pops out to see what the commotion is about.

The owner never quite gets his dogs under control and they lollop around with him in puffing pursuit.  I have to stop so he can catch up, the exact opposite of the effect his dogs wish to have.  I chat about the cricket to the gardener while this is going on.  The gardener likes his sport, it is time well spent, the sort of conversation that only happens outside of towns.  Within town this would have been far more confrontational probably involving raised voices and recrimination.

We walk behind some trees, the track sandwiched between a field of barley and the river.  A gentle breeze ruffles the barley, it gives it more movement than the river appears to have.  Thistles grow and in the warm still air butterflies dance and chase one another, breeding is on the agenda.

The scale of the Painted Lady explosion is evidenced here.  Where-ever I look bushes hold three, four, five of them.  Simply everywhere.  Peacocks try to grab my attention, more strongly coloured, they glide past buzzing me closely.  The Meadow Browns and Gatekeepers just cannot compete.  I take a good many pictures, perhaps the Painted Lady will be back in such numbers again, but it would be foolhardy to expect it.

 

Sampling some blackberries, they have a considerable distance to go before they reach the edible stage, even the ones that look the part.  The cherry plums on the other hand, simply delicious.  The sloes I have the good sense to leave on the bushes.

Stutton Hall can be seen in the distance across the crop fields.  The older OS maps suggest a good deal of park land or wooded area has been sacrificed to these crops,  disjointed woodland remains.  The hall I see in the distance now is the modern rebuild.  A mere 500 years old.  This is an ancient landscape which has managed to evade the heritage industry.

Turning sharply inland at the remains of a wharf, a reminder of industry which could not compete with the shifting moods of the Stour.  Heading towards Stutton itself, but first past Creeping Hall.  There is a schoolboy delight in this name, a name to conjure with.

Stutton Hall, Creeping Hall, Crowe Hall and they mean it, these are no faux-manors of the nouveau-riche, well not of the last few hundred years.  These are buildings which stood when people understood the class system existed.  Not this modern hash of “celebrity class” five minutes on ready-steady-cook will create.

Stutton is a delight.  One road in, one road out, no pavements, buildings opening straight out onto the street.  A small bowl with a water container next to it sits outside “Ancient House” the sign says it is for dogs to drink from.  If that was not hint enough, a few yards further on a woman drops her gardening instruments and steps across the road to give the dogs a darn good tickle.

“Ohh they are lovely.  How old are they?” etc.

We stop and chat in the middle of the road.

“Don’t you worry about the road?” She asks

There is less motorised traffic than on the pavements back home.  The curse of the drug addled incontinent rushing to get home in their motorised wheelchairs has made walking on pavements a perilous business in recent years.

As we get nearer the church, we are in the area of the “big house”.  Gates are the only hint of property, gravelled ways disappear, the houses not seen.  Signs on the gate trumpet “Private property”.  Is it the owners that are thick, or do they imagine their houses are somehow more private than other peoples, those of lesser wealth.

A laminated identikit dog snarls from the gateposts.  “Dogs running loose in the grounds”.  After passing the third sign, the effect is wearing off. Dog 2 wanders up to the gated property and with great show cocks his leg on the brickwork.  Dog 3 is drawn like a magnet, he has to get in on this act of lower-class rebellion, the irony being they are better bred than the posters.

The final house has let the cat out of the bag, same sign, but the gates are open, have the hounds fled, are they about to burst upon us?  Nothing happens, we wander past, the signs are the usual empty threat to ward off the easily impressed.  I don’t like the implication I have any interest in their property.  If they invited me in, it would be a polite chore to walk over the threshold.  I want to talk to the people that leave a little bowl outside marked “dog water”, they are made of the right stuff.

Next door is reputedly the oldest house in the village, Quarhams, 15th Century, the same century as the church.

Stutton Church deserves some comment.  As someone else has done the work for me, I’ve no intention of passing it off as my own.

The church is on the edge of the village, the footpath continues on.

The next bit of the walk is dominated by the Royal Hospital School.  I mean dominate. 

The oldest military school in UK, but the timeline is fractured by the fact it moved from Greenwich in 1933 to where I see it now.  So although the history goes back to 1712, this is a modern growth.

The bells in the bell tower rarely seem to let up, announcing all manner of time fractions, 3 minutes late by my reckoning.  The frontage of the thing is colossal.  As I walk past the noise of privilege and class wash over my proletariat ears.  A game of cricket is in progress, sight screens, pads, caps, gentle applause as Brown junior bowls his googlies.  It’s great.  The bum note, the unbroken voices of the sportsmen needing to encourage Brown junior every moment.

“Good bowling”
”Keep it up”
”That’s it”

So the rote goes, the pace determined by the claps from the encouraging fielder.  All this because of stump microphones on TV coverage.  Now only the absence of this blether is a concern, the moronic pronouncements just so much background noise to be ignored.

Lucky me to witness such things, even if the soundtrack is modern cliché, this is old school.

On we travel, peaking from behind the sight screen, the tree cover was weak, I was glad to be making my way behind the batsman, I would not wish to put him off his stroke.  From what I saw the bowlers were going to have their work cut out.

Along the foreshore are reminders of the trade that ran up and down this river.  Wharf timbers stick out of the sands, ghosts of past industry.  There is a romance to the wood, its from the age of sail.  It now stares accusingly at the ugly scar of success glimpsed on the horizon, the concrete and steel of Felxistowe.  The scale of operations just got too big, the river here is too small to hold the profit ambition of the modern world.

This days coastal walk is coming to a close.  I turn sharply inland once more following a stream which is eventually going to take me to Holbrook Mill.  The remains of an old brickworks are hidden in the trees, google earth reveals the secret.  A few yachts bob in the inlet.

Dragonflies zoom in the weedy margins of the small channel.  It is my chance to take a picture I have been promising myself for most of the summer.  Dragonfly lake (actually a carp fishing pond I used to enjoy) has been closed off to me since the death of the owner and I have missed those lazy days watching dragonflies.

Butterflies are tricky, dragonflies near impossible if you don’t intend to dedicate considerable time to the exercise of photographing them.

I make do with this, after nearly ending up in the water.

The journey ends with Holbrook Church.  It has too for the “Trinity Tour” aspect of things and the third church.

Really though I could have done without it.  The road was busy noisy and the pedestrian given very short thrift.  The Mill was one side of the road, its vast pond the other, but there was not room or opportunity to take anything more than the most meagre of pictures and no opportunity to imagine a past when this building had relevance.

After such an enjoyable walk in an unspoilt countryside this was a charmless end.

For a moment I nearly got sidetracked by a very tempting footpath sign that said it was heading towards Alton Water, but it was time to head for home.  I was looking forward to repeating the whole journey again, but in reverse.

Technorati Tags: Walking,Ramble,Hike,Suffolk,River Stour,butterflies,insects,dragonflies,cricket,england,village,church,river,sea,holbrook,stutton

From extrovert to introvert.

 

Those salad days of youth when being seen was about the most important thing.  How stupid I looked was a very distant second place.

Moving forward, not being seen is about the most important thing on the agenda.  How I am perceived is of even less interest to me now, I know I look daft.

In halcyon days of long lost summers the external frame backpack (rucksack was not a term in my vocabulary) was the thing.  It was blue and vile, built to survive nuclear threat, I was not built to survive it.

But the key point was, lots of places to tie stuff.  I must have been quite an event walking through quiet villages, a one man band clanking through.  Small children knowing only marginally less than me would stop, stare and point.  Elders would cast nervous glances, I was too young to be a vagrant, but still, just maybe…

My backpack had travelled through Seth Brundle’s teleporter and come out the other side inside out to all intents and purpose.  It was all hanging and swinging off the backpack frame for legitimate reason.

Naturally the bright yellow rollmat did not fit in, so it was strapped to the exterior.  The tent spars were too large to fit inside, so they lived on the outside.  Given this it made sense that the tent might as well live on the outside as well in its own bag.  After a bit of use the tent had all the form of a bag of unwashed clothes strapped precariously on the pack.  You could compare it with the wet clothing hanging off the bag to dry.

My sleeping bag was enormous, comfort was important, it did not matter it was so wretched hot I seldom got in it.  Too large to fit in the backpack it was strapped on the top comfortably extending above my head.

This arrangement now caused issues with regard low hanging branches which was neatly resolved by hanging a large parka over the lot, blue with orange lining.  The parka, a sacrificial layer, it got snagged, not the sleeping bag.

All this strapped on with a bungee or two and yards of string.

Finally the cooking pot, much to dirty to live within the pack it was on the outside, rattling and clanging merrily with every stride.  It even annoyed me at times, but not enough to do anything about it.

Finally, and this must be the most absurd of all, a spare pair of boots.  The message to the outside world, I walked so far along such un-trodden paths I needed at least two pairs of boots to complete the journey.

I have no idea what was in the backpack itself, some food, but never enough and certainly not enough water.  Food and water was for softies.  I suspect there was all manner of gizmo’s that never got used and backups and spares for these un-used items.

This touches on the reason I wished for the recognition.  I was on a journey, perhaps an epic one, that few mortal men would consider and few in that number would live to see the destination.

I can laugh now, but then I didn’t.  The backpack was digging into my back in all manner of hideous ways as the load simply had no rhyme nor reason, it was heavy where it should have been light, light where it should have been heavy.

The whole shooting match swung precariously without any assistance from me, but as I wobbled and tottered under it I gave it plenty of extra incentive to upend me.

Travelling under low branches (or bridges even, but memory might be playing tricks on me here) I did not so much duck as sag at the knees to get under obstacles without ripping holes in parka and sleeping bag or dumping me on my back.

Getting this backpack on and off without some bit of equipment either dropping off or walloping me was an art to be mastered.

The process by which these items disappeared into the bag was slow.  But it has happened and only last year did I realise it was completed when the sleeping mat was replaced by a self-inflating mat which would live inside the rucksack.

Along the way for reasons of comfort the sleeping bag headed into the pack first.  Having got smaller and more manageable.  A bag was made for cooking equipment, an old pair of moleskin trousers donated a leg for the purpose.

The purchase of a bivvy bag meant the tent could be exchanged for a poncho tarp.

Now all that remains strapped to the exterior of the pack is a pair of walking poles, they look less daft there than they do in my hands.

There was still that nagging feeling this simply did not look the part.  Real men had stuff hanging off their pack, it was manly.  Fortunately Ray Mears came to my rescue.  You cannot doubt his manly credentials and everything is always neatly squared away in his rucksack (or in the landrovers).

Bush Tucker

 

Bush Tucker for me is exactly that, food found on a bush, or maybe stunted tree, easy reach material.  I am not going to be bringing down any deer with a rifle or blasting bunny with a shotgun or well aimed stick.

Although I claim if necessary I’d strangle a pig with my bare hands to get hold of p0rk-chops, its an idle boast, the local butcher has nothing to fear.

As for fungi, I like the advice of one expert, “all fungi are edible, unfortunately some only once”

I let the food chains worry about those details, nothing is tasty enough to die for.

I like the idea you can stroll out into the woods and eat yourself to death.  In an increasingly sanitized world this cannot be controlled.  The chemist is no longer the place to blithely buy poison to kill of friends relatives and most of the village, or drug yourself up to the eyeballs, such luxuries went the way of the Victorians, but you can wander into the woods and collect the means of death and destruction, it looks like a mushroom, even tastes good.

I am not suggesting for one minute buying poison or narcotics from a chemist was a good idea, or that killing your relations with mushrooms is a legitimate plan.  But it’s the same concept that allows cars to do more than 70mph despite the fact they are not allowed too.  It is good to know the option is there, we have not all been reduced to barcodes in a governmental plan.

My autumnal project is photographing as many different fungi species as possible.  They move less than butterflies so I am looking forward to this more relaxed pace.  The downside being, this has the potential to be exceptionally geeky if not controlled.  There might be over 1million forms of fungi yet to be recorded for example.  Apparently there are 22,000 types in the UK.  Most are brown and tediously tiny, nearly sub-atomic by the looks of them.  So I am going to have to set suitable limits on this project to stop myself ending up staring at lumpy sticks through magnifying glasses and trying to pronounce Latin words longer than my arm.

Lets get back to the main track.

The only reason I watch Bear Grylls is to rock with laughter as he scoffs down some disgusting looking item which is wriggling.  The only things he eats that looks worse is the stuff not wriggling.

Just lately other blogs have been waxing most lyrical on the lovely blackberries to be found.  I don’t live in the Siberian wastelands so I could not wait to feast my eyes and tastebuds on this most child friendly of berries.

One of a number of things seems to have gone wrong.  These succulent berries are a product of fevered minds or fisherman’s tales, is one possibility.  The other is I simply have been rather unfortunate in having failed to find a decent batch, or finally berries aren’t what they used to be.

I am discounting the third option, global warming is to the environment what aspirin is to medicine.  It’s the answer to everything but its damn boring hearing about how it cures all.

There might be some fevered minds out there in the outdoor world, but a conspiracy on this scale seems unlikely.

Frankly, its too early for blackberries, so I am not too concerned yet.  But those red miserably hard looking berries are going to have to seriously improve.  I did eat a few of the darker juicier variety but found maggoty wildlife had beaten me too most of them.  This was much to close to a Grylls experience for my liking.

Other blackberries flattered to deceive, they looked the part but tasted foul.

I have hopes though, it was a grand year for strawberries.  Wimbledon fortnight is always more enjoyable when watched with a large bowl of strawberries just picked from the garden.  They taste great and even better when stacked up against the mad expense of the things on centre court.  Strawberry jam will be enjoyed long into the year.

It was a bumper year for rabbits too, so the rest of the garden was eaten long before it reached my plate.

Earlier in the year I walked past a pea field, and I have to admit some sampling went on.  Not on an industrial scale, a few pods were experimentally popped, untimely ripped, but peas can barely do wrong.

This looks to be a good year for sloes, they are everywhere.  Described as eating a fruity deodorant stick, these astringent horrors I steer well clear of.  These are in the theoretically edible category, along with my leather shoes.

I have spied some abandoned apples and pears on some walks, they have looked pretty meagre efforts but maybe the latest batch of weather will have done them good.  I shall be keeping a keen eye on what goes on there.

Carrots are seen with their heads above the soil now, I resisted the urge to free them from earthy grasp.  I admit it was because the farmers windows were very much in evidence.  Cultivated crops are straying somewhat from the remit though.  It is about like walking into someone’s kitchen raiding the fruit bowl and claiming to be living off the land.  Maybe Bear G would consider this TV material, but not for me.

The real success this year in terms of wandering along footpaths have been cherry plums.  The tastiest most juicy fruit hanging in large groups, often by quiet roadsides.  Nobody seems to care about them.  I make them feel loved and wanted.  They are loved and wanted. 

I saw an elderly woman collecting them in a churchyard to make jam with them to sell to the churchgoers.  This seemed a time honoured traditional sort of thing.  I fondly imagined the right to pick the berries having been handed down the female line of her family for multiple generations.  Those generations, now feeding the tree on which the fruit comes, slumbering happily, tradition maintained.  No doubt total nonsense but it enriches the inner landscape which, when it comes to the crunch, is all you actually have.

So I wait eagerly to see if blackberries are edible soon and on a longer term scale I noticed Sweet Chestnut trees heavy with prickly casings.

Last year was a miserable sweet chestnut year, even by the lowered expectations you need due to the English climate.  They were small and spongy and overfilled with wriggling grubs, a lot of effort was expended for not a lot of eating.  So I have my fingers crossed in that regard.

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