Ye Olde Buffer
Posts: 356
Joined: 7 Dec. 2003
From: Maldon Essex United Kingdom
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Today was forecast to be a nice day and it was. We woke up to sun and, after breakfast, drove over to Colchester, collected Marie and drove the short distance to Dedham. For those of you that don't know Dedham is in 'Constable Country'; the area in which John Constable produced a lot of his paintings including 'The Hay Wain'.
Our plan was to park in Dedham, walk across the fields to Flatford where John Constable's father had his water mill, across to East Bergholt where the Constable family used to live and then back to look around Dedham.
We set off through the fields alongside the River Stour until we reached the bridge where we cross to the other side then continuing through the fields by the other bank of the river. We eventually reach Flatford Bridge where we cross the river again. You can see two trouble makers on the bridge and the end of Bridge Cottage on the right.
We walked towards Flatford Mill passing Valley Farm, a picturesque medieval house, on the way and soon arrived at the mill. This is, of course, Marie and Flatford Mill just before we threw her in the pond. I think she was waiting to see the Hay Wain go past and I hadn't the heart to tell her she'd missed it by a couple of hundred years.
We called in to the Tearooms at Bridge Cottage for a brief cuppa before continuing on up the lane to East Bergholt. The lane runs uphill from Flatford to East Bergholt although not steeply. Even so after a little while of walking we were high enough to see this view across Dedham Vale with the tower of Dedham Church visible above the trees near the centre of the picture.
We arrived in East Bergholt and went into the churchyard. This is an unusual church inasmuch as the person paying for the church to be built in 1525 died before it was completed so building had to stop because the money dried up. That meant that although the main body of the church was complete the tower was only half built so no place to put the bells. So what was to be done? They built a wooden bell cage on the ground in the churchyard as a temporary measure and that 'temporary measure' has remained for the last 500 years until today and here it is with two other belles.
Time to head back to Dedham, along a different footpath from the one we had arrived on, just in time for lunch. After lunch we headed for the very large and imposing parish church. There is an archway through the tower with this rather ornate ceiling.
Walking past the church we took Marie to see a rather special medieval building and although it looks fairly ordinary in this view it is built in the form of a square with a large open courtyard in the centre.
It was still only mid-afternoon so we thought we'd go and look and some other villages and chose Stoke-by-Nayland and Nayland. We discovered that there was a snag - they were both off the top of our map and we hadn't though to bring any more maps. I knew very roughly where they were so we decided to follow our noses. We left Dedham in roughly the right direction until we found a sign. It was pointing to various places we knew didn't want except one so we followed the road to Higham. We kept following signs to Higham until we found one pointing to Stoke-by-Nayland - hoorah!
We did eventually arrive at Stoke and parked the car. Quite by chance we were within site of this rather impressive house.
Just in case you wondered that's not an exceptionally large chimney stack it's the church tower. After wandering around this rather attractive village for a while I took this last photograph before we moved on to Nayland.
We parked in Nayland, not an easy task I can tell you, as you can see from the cars in this view.
We thought we'd managed to lose Marie in the maze of little streets but wait - who is that walking along the pavement? Oh no - it's 
There were some very interesting old houses, in assorted colours, as you can see here.
This was our last call so we took Marie back to Colchester so that she could collapse in her cottage and we went home to collapse in ours. A lovely outing.
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Ye Olde Buffer
http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk
The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
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Chaos Anglaise - Day 4 (Sunday) - 
and Marie...you looked ready to take on a long walk...yippee!!!
, plane, bus, drive to Lisa's (she is getting better 
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