Monday December 12, 2005

Being in Essex for a weekend.

To make it easier for us to visit friends who are in a temporary home while waiting to find more permanent one we had an weekend in Essex. The excellent Wikipedia has a nice section on Essex including a picture of the Arms of the County council which are three swords on a red shield background. This can be seen on many signs in towns and villages as you drive around. We did one walk around the town of Great Dunmow. The town is renowned for its ancient custom of the Dunmow Flitch which consists of awarding a flitch of bacon to a newly married couple who can satisy judges that they have lived together for a year and a day following their marriage without argument. The Flitch trials were revived in the Victorian era and are held every leap year. The walk was not as good as we hoped the main reason the amount of building that has taken place since the walks publication ( 2003) that meant paths/roads were not as we expeced to find them. Once we found it we walked along the line of the former railway line Braintree to Bishops Storford. The line had gone through a cutting and even after lunchtime there was a small amount of fog in the cutting that made it feel very spooky. We left the line and crossed a field. Unlike the countryside in our area which is mainly grass, fields here grow crops. In no time at all both our boots had tons of mud stuck to the bottom of them and we felt like we had doubled the weight of our legs. Thankfully we finally approached the hamlet of Little Easton.

The church dates from Norman times but like many was rebuilt in the fourteenth/fifteenth century. It has fourteenth century frescos but a more recent memorial are two stained glass windows in memory of the 386th US Bomber group stationed at Little Easton during the second world war. We then followed less muddy fields and again got lost as we made our way back to Great Dunmow. We then drove on towards the pub we were staying overnight. On the way a lovely sunset persuaded me to stop and take a picture. Sadly the overhead wires were in the way, I could have avoided them by walking further into the field but I had had enough mud that day....

We stayed at the excelent Cricketers pub run by Jamie Oliver's parents. This is the third time we have stayed there and it is always good. The staff are friendly, food and alcholic drinks are perfect and the rooms are very nice. We both had fish main courses Brill and Halibut, both came with lovely sauces. A nice bottle of Grenache at ten pounds fifty pence was excellent value preeded by two pints of a previously unknown Adnams beer called Explorer.

The following day we visited our friends and had a nice Sunday lunch and a walk around their new village home. The drive back was busy partly as a result of the biggest peacetime fire in nearby Hemel Hempstead Unlike others who said they heard the initial explosion at 6am I had my own explosions inside my head as a result of the beer and wine from the previous night.