Essex

Walk Details:
Date: 12/2/2005
Total ascent: 17m/ 56ft
Total distance walked: 1.66 miles
Walk difficulty: 2/10 (due to the wind and mud - normally about 1)
Enjoyment rating: 1.5/10
Best bits: St John the Evangelist church
Worst bits: Mud
Walkers: Anth, Jim
Car Parking: At the St John the Evangelist church, Langley Upper Green, TL 442 352

Top details:
Name: Oldfield Grove
County top number: 41 of 207
Grid reference: TL 44312 36208 MAP
Height above sea level: 147m/ 482ft
How nice was the top? 1/10
Views: 2/10
Description/Notes: The highest point of Essex is an unmarked spot in a field corner north of Oldfield Grove

The Walk:

We had originally planned to connect the Essex top to the Cambridgeshire one in a long, looping walk from Great Chishill. Unfortunately, what with our battle against the wind in Suffolk and the fact that it was taking longer to drive between tops than we had anticipated, time was getting on a bit and we decided to take the quick but lazy option of bagging the two tops separately. The Essex top would still be a kilometre walk from the nearest place to park in Langley Upper Green.

We parked outside the church of St John the Evangelist, a lovely little church with a wooden porch peeping out from between two bushes. It looked like it may once have been a private church for the big house next door called "The Hall" - or maybe for "Duddenhoe Grange", just a little further away on the OS map. Churches are a bit of a godsend (ho ho) for us county toppers. Whilst I wouldn't want to park by them Sunday morning and block access for the congregation, for the rest of the week they are a ready source of parking spaces within walking distance of county tops!

On the map the path to the county top passed directly behind the church, but we weren't sure if you could get out the back of the churchyard onto it and didn't want to look like a pair of doofuses wandering around the churchyard looking for the exits. Instead we walked down the church drive to the road, along the road and then back up an exceptionally muddy track to find that there were a couple of obvious exits from the back of the churchyard (so we still looked like doofuses).

An equally muddy footpath (part of the Harcamlow Way, whatever that is) soon bore off of the track and took us through a cabbage field, gradually sloping uphill to a thin band of woodland which extended out from Oldfield Grove. The county top was purported to be just the other side of this band of trees. We emerged into a field that was pretty much flat; you could have said the county top was pretty much anywhere in that field or the band of trees. We therefore took the obligatory photo in front of the highest tree in the band, and then turned back towards the car. An oncoming hiker (full pack, hiking pole, the full works) must have wondered what we were doing - he'd just seen us emerge from woods, take a photo of nothing much and then turn back. In his head he was probably calling us quitters!

The hiker was fast - Jim and I had to put on quite a spurt to reach our car ahead of him. We nodded a hello to him as he fairly whizzed past - we wondered where he was off to in such a hurry. Our lunch in the car was overseen by a slightly puzzled dog from a house just down the road, and followed by a short drive to the Cambridgeshire top.