Posts Tagged ‘essex’

14
Mar
2010
Categories
Journal

Saracen’s Head, Chelmsford

A bit of a sinking feeling, fortunately averted.

Rich’s mum came over for mothers’ day weekend, with Ean and Vikki and we’d booked ourselves into the Saracen’s Head for lunch.

A bit of a spur of the moment booking after the other places we tried were either full or had gone ‘family friendly’ and installed ball pools. Still, it looked nice and the menu was good.

Then we had to change our booking, and that’s when I found the reviews. Terrible, terrible reviews. And even worse, an episode of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares in the kitchen there when it was called D-Place. Lots of Ramsay swearing and then, apparently, it went bust.

According to the News of the World:

In Chelmsford, Essex, D-Place went bust just two weeks after the cameras left. Owner Israel Pons said: “The menu Ramsay came up with was extremely poor. We dropped 50 per cent in sales. He wasn’t the saviour everyone seemed to think he would be.”

This, I kept quiet about. It was far too late for us to go anywhere else.

I’m so glad I did. The service may have been a little slow, but food was excellent, and Ean even declared the pate the best he had ever tasted.

If I could remember where I’d read the reviews I’d head back and add my own, refuting them.

Out of five? A good four.

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07
Mar
2010
Categories
Journal

Walking in Cressing

wpid-2010-essex-way-post.kT8zHL5wNCgo.jpg

It’s a long, long time since I’ve been to Cressing. I went years ago, when I was a student and had no money on a day off college and turned around when I got to the barns and saw that you had to pay to get in.

Anyhow, today we headed back there. The sun was out for pretty much the first time since October and it felt like the first weekend of spring, so we dug out the walks book and opened on a random page. This is where it took us.

The walk, which started in White Notley, followed a short stretch of the Essex Way, an 80-odd mile footpath that stretches from Epping to Harwich through surprisingly unspoiled countryside.

White Notley itself is little more than a small town, with the dinkiest train station (one platform, one track, no car park) sat at the start of the walk. We quickly broke away from the road, past old farm buildings and across ploughed fields.

wpid-2010-white-notley-barns.bCoMuh9435Az.jpg

Eventually we found ourselves at the famed Templar barns, now coming up for 900 years old and in remarkable condition. If you’d told me they were replicas, build five years ago I could quite have believed you.

We didn’t go in. We got diverted by the tea shop and sat reading about what was inside them, but as soon as we discovered it was waxwork people and ‘display boards’ (yawn) we skipped the cultural bit and headed off across the fields again.

All in all, though, an excellent walk of four and a bit miles out in the middle of nowhere. Let’s hope this heralds the start of a good summer of walking. We could do with it after the winter we’ve just had.

wpid-2010-white-notley-church.hKigOz6iqinr.jpg

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28
Feb
2010
Categories
Journal

Walking back in time

A lucky escape. A bit of a grotty weekend and then an unexpected break in the clouds. Too good an opportunity to pass up, we jumped in the car and drove out to Ingatestone to walk.

There is a loop you can take, out past the end of the village, along the lanes towards Stock and then back on yourself past Ingatestone Hall, the setting for the BBC’s most recent adaptation of Bleak House, across the railway line and into the village to head back to your start point.

While we were walking it, keeping an eye on the fast-approaching rain clouds, I had the rather shocking realisation that it’s probably 18 years (or more) since I last walked it. That’s literally half a lifetime away, yet it feels so recent.

We did – just – make it back to the car as the first spots of rain began to fall, and as we slammed the doors and buckled up the heavens opened. That was our lucky escape. Despite the inclement weather, though, it’s reminded me how nice it is walking around there, and as soon as it’s held off long enough for the fields to dry out properly, I’d like to head back and rediscover some of the other walking routes of my youth.

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Anglia Ruskin campus is coming down

This will be of precisely no interest to anyone who doesn’t live in Chelmsford.

However…

I always regretted not taking a picture of the bus station before they knocked it down. And I always regretted not taking a picture of the half-finished Kings Tower as they built it up.

So, not to repeat the mistake, here’s the pile of rubble that now constitutes what was once the town-centre Anglia Ruskin University, soon to become a 20-odd story block of flats.

Such a shame. The campus wasn’t pretty, and the university does now have smart new buildings in the north of town.

Anyhoo, the picture below shows the state of the site right now, as the knocking down is well under way and the building has yet to begin.

The shonky angle is down to stitching together two images to make a single picture.

Anglia Ruskin University building site, Chelmsford

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21
Oct
2009
Categories
Journal

Suffolk weekend

Mushroom at Walberswick
Amanita muscaria toadstool in the woods at Walberswick

Is it wrong to think that one of the benefits of living in Essex is that you can easily escape to the next county (or two) up?

We went to Lowestoft to visit Rich’s mum, and spent much of Saturday in Norwich. I’ve always liked Norwich – particularly the market – but we don’t get to go often from Chelmsford. Perhaps that’s why it’s still special.

Anyhow, we did the usual – wandered around the shops, looked at the river, went to see Rich’s old college and watched the puppet man from a table outside Starbucks. It was quite nice to see him there as we both thought we’d seen something on the BBC about him retiring on the news a couple of years ago. Turns out we were right. I guess he had second thoughts.

Like that? Check out his YouTube channel.

Anyhow, that was Saturday. On Sunday, after a lazy morning of breakfast and cards, we headed out to Blythburgh, and a walk in the woods at Walberswick. They’ve just kidnapped a herd/flock/pod of 26 ponies from Dartmoor and released them in the woods, and over the course of two hours we spotted 17 of them. Not a bad rate considering the density of the trees when you get away from the paths.

They were so friendly they were happy to be tickled and stroked and have their picture taken at very close quarters.

Despite it being a pine forest, which keeps its greens throughout the year, the air felt distinctly autumnal. The sun went down quickly, the air cooled, and the damp, shady parts were home to a generous crop of brilliant red toadstools. The seasons are changing.

Dartmoor pony at Walberswick
Dartmoor pony at Walberswick

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04
Jan
2009

Maldon Mud Race 2009

Maldon Mud Race 2009

Sometimes you only realise you’ve done something stupid when it’s already too late. Like entering the so-called Mad Maldon Mud Race. This year’s event, across the River Blackwater and back in front of a crowd of 10,000 at Promenade Park, took place this morning.

Maldon Mud Race 2009

It was so cold. We arrived an hour and a half early, and even then we weren’t the first. As we stood on the icy riverbank looking back at the frozen boating lake, we were both very glad that we wouldn’t be plunging into the river like the 250 competitors mad enough to have signed up for this year’s event.

Maldon Mud Race 2009

Now in its 36th year, it’s a big charity fund-raiser, and it attracts TV coverage from around the world. Japanese TV is a regular fixture, and dad says he always sees it on French TV in the new year under a snooty ‘only the Brits…’ banner.

As with many of these things, it started out as a dare that got out of hand. A local resident challenged the pub landlord to serve lunch on the opposite bank of the river. He did it, it was a success, and the following year he set up a bar on the spot. 20 locals dashed across for a drink, gulped it down and ran back through the river.

A tradition was born.

Maldon Mud Race 2009

The course itself is very short, and if you’re at the front of the pack you can make it across and back in about five minutes. If you’re not, though, the ground quickly gets churned up and anyone 20 or so back in the pack quickly stops being a runner and starts being a wader.

Maldon Mud Race 2009

That hour and a half we waited went surprisingly quickly, despite the number of times we looked at our watches, and the 40 minutes it took the slowest competitors to finish shot by. As ever, some barely got beyond the water’s edge on their first crossing, and 45 minutes after the tape was raised they were being hauled out of waist-deep mud by men with ropes and carried back to the start.

Maldon Mud Race 2009

It was only as we started walking back to the car that we realised quite how cold we were. Our legs had stiffened up, our toes were numb, and our fingers were red raw from where we’d taken off our gloves to use our cameras.

Maldon Mud Race 2009

It was a fun morning out, but it did nothing to convince us that we should be taking part next year, and we happily retreated to the car for grey tea from our flask, half a Twix, and the warm embrace of the heater.

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16
Aug
2008
Categories
Journal

Cafe on the Water, Hanningfield Reservoir

You can see Hanningfield Reservoir on the weather map. It’s in the middle of Essex, usually just near the forecaster’s left hand as the country sweeps by on the BBC.

It’s the second largest reservoir in the county, taking over 200 days to fill from empty, and its construction required the destruction of a grand stately home and small village. I rather hoped that they might all still be down there under the water somewhere as it’s not very deep and their roofs might poke up above the surface, but sadly they were all knocked down and the spoils carted off before the great natural bowl of the reservoir disappeared beneath the waves.

One of the digging machines was left in there, though, and concreted over to stop its fuel and oils leeching out into the water.

It’s owned by Essex and Suffolk Water, which not only pumps its purified contents to thousands of homes, but also maintains its shoreline as for walkers, anglers and bird watchers, runs a visitor centre, and oversees a cafe perched on the water’s edge. That cafe, rather obviously, is the Cafe on the Water.

We’d have known nothing about it if we’d just thrown away the junk that accompanied the latest water bill, but in with the daunting total was a little booklet of information, and in that booklet was an ad for the cafe.

Tracking it down in the car – it’s too far to cycle – we found the fishing lodge with the cafe and its decking tucked away at the back. It was cheap and cheerful in every sense of the word, so we took seats outside and ordered coffees, teacakes and muffins, and took in the view.

It’s not spectacular – this is Essex we’re talking about, not Northumberland – but it is long and wide, and extremely relaxing. Just in front of the decking there’s a little wooden pier where the fishing boats are tied up, and nearer at hand the ducks pad around on the muddy beach, pausing now and then to clean their feet.

We’ll certainly go back, but next time we’ll probably park some way off, at the visitors’ centre, and walk to the lodge through the woods at the water’s edge. The cafe will make a good stopping-off point before we turn around and retrace our steps.

It’s just a shame it isn’t a little closer to home, or it would make a good bike ride, too.

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