At last! Blue skies heralded our first walk of 2010. We decided to take a 5.5 mile route closeby, just around Ingatestone. A small town south of Chelmsford, it sits within an area of green belt land, 20 miles north of London. It has some history; established in Saxon times on the then Great Essex Road (now major the A12 trunk road), it sits between the then goliath Roman towns of London and Colchester. The name originally meant ‘settlement at the stone’. It even has stones left by glacial action visible in the High Street.
Nik used to live and spent some of his formative years in the town (in two locations) and so knows the area well. I don’t have that much knowledge of Essex and perhaps the thing I knew Ingatestone for the most is that it’s the last stop before home on the train from London. And that it has good curry house. Our walk from the Walks Into History: Essex changed all that and to be honest, if it hadn’t, at least we managed to get out for a couple of hours, in the (all too limited) winter sunshine.
Our stroll took us around Ingatestone and also Fryerning, a village to the north of the small town. We tramped across empty fields, many deserted pastures with electric fences, over and under the A12 and round the back of the 16th century Ingatestone Hall. Open to the public at selected times and dates, the grand and majestic Tudor mansion that was once host to Queen Elizabeth I is probably most well-known for providing the exterior of Bleak House in the 2005 BBC adaption of the Charles Dickens’ novel of the same name.
After the prolonged cold snap that prevented almost everyone from going almost anywhere, it really felt good to be out and about in the sunshine again, after far too long. Mud (in the car park opposite The Cricketers pub and en route) notwithstanding, we really enjoyed tramping through the grass and hedgerows again, even sighting some deer common to the area. One thing that we had forgotten and was probably telling of the afternoon’s activities, was the aching of our legs. Maybe the moderately high mile count was to blame, maybe it was the lack of activity over the past few weeks. Whatever, it won’t stop us next time.