Day 137 – Clacton-on-Sea to West Mersea: 16.0m: 5.4h

The first part of our walk today is to Point Clear on Brightlingsea Creek from where we’re planning to catch a ferry over the River Colne to East Mersea. Apparently, the ferry only runs every couple of hours and we’re aiming for one that leaves at 12:05. The walk to Point Clear is 9 miles or so which shouldn’t take much longer than 3 hours. However, this assumes that we’re able to use a path through a farm near St Osyth and, if this isn’t the case, a diversion will be required which will add at least a mile to the walk. We therefore want to be on our way by 8 o’clock and have booked breakfast for 6:45. Full English is duly available – with Mike incorporating beans in his order, having succumbed to their temptations over the weekend. The Premier Inn has served us well. Clean, comfortable and good value.

We get back down to the sea front and set off soon after 7:45. The weather forecast is for more favourable conditions than yesterday, but the rain is falling as we continue along the coast, past Clacton’s golf course which looks a lot more interesting than Frinton’s, and through Jaywick. We pass more beach huts, a holiday park and a Martello tower, before having to turn inland after about 90 minutes walking to avoid a network of creeks to the south of Point Clear. The rain has now stopped, and the smells as we get further around a long curving grass embankment confirm that the buildings which we can see ahead of us comprise the sewage plant on the approach to St Osyth. For some reason, our pace increases slightly as we walk alongside this, and then leave the embankment onto a narrow track which joins a road leading to the potential farm diversion. As it transpires, there is a path through the farm although, when we’ve walked along this, we see a sign stating that it’s for the use of people staying at the Lee Wick Farm Cottages and Glamping site. Not sure that we’d have been able to pass ourselves off as glampers, but too late now so we continue to the road between St Osyth and Point Clear.        

Not having been delayed by diversions, we’re going to reach Point Clear an hour before our ferry time, and a call to the ferry office confirms that there isn’t a service to East Mersea before 12:05. So on our arrival at Point Clear shortly after 11 o’clock, we while away 15 minutes of our time establishing exactly where to board the ferry (there’s no indication on the shoreline but it proves to be at the end of a narrow spit which stretches about 100 yards into the River Colne) and then finding an alternative refreshment provider to the Ferry Boat Inn which doesn’t open until noon. The only contender is a tea room run by the very friendly Tracy, which is perfectly acceptable to all – notwithstanding Ben’s aversion to the very concept of a tea room. He resolves this conundrum by eschewing toasted teacakes to accompany his pot of tea and eliciting from Tracy the offer of a sausage sandwich prepared from what remains of her earlier breakfast service. To be fair, if the rest of us had been aware of this off menu option, we probably wouldn’t have been so swift in ordering our toasted teacakes.

Duly revived, we return to the end of the spit, and the ferry comes over from Brightlingsea on schedule. It’s a small, flat bottomed vessel which doesn’t encounter the problems of the Harwich ferry in coming right up to the shingle to collect us, but the crossing to East Mersea is calm and takes not much more than 5 minutes. We now have just over 6 miles to walk along the south side of Mersea Island. We start by crossing some low lying dunes, then there’s a bit of beach action and paths through yet more beach huts, and we finish along a series of lanes (initially passing the Mersea Vineyard) to reach the Coast Inn at West Mersea at 2:15. We sit outside and, in the 45 minutes available before our cab is due to arrive, ease our way through just the one pint each and share an order of chips. And although the cab is delayed a few minutes, there’s still ample time to get to Colchester station where Mike collects his car and the rest of us await the 16:01 to Liverpool Street.                     

Day 136 – Kirby le Soken to Clacton-on-Sea: 16.1m: 5.5h

Lifting of COVID restrictions has been postponed to 19 July, but we weren’t intending to go clubbing in Clacton tonight so the effect of this on the current trip falls into the minimal to non-existent category.

John has spent the weekend with his father again, but Helen has driven back to Cheltenham this morning, leaving John at Witham where he joins Ben and Gary on a Clacton bound train from Liverpool Street. Mike has also been visiting relatives in Essex and joins at Colchester where he has parked his car for collection tomorrow afternoon. We change trains at Thorpe le Soken for the 5 minute onward journey to Kirby Cross and, having donned our wet weather gear, alight into the rain which has been forecast to be with us for the whole day. It’s a 30 minute walk to reach our finishing point on the last trip, and we set off from there just before 11:15.

The first hour is slow going. The embankment track which continues along the south side of the Nature Reserve towards the marina at Walton-on-the-Naze is overgrown and somewhat reminiscent of our initial route out of Snape Maltings last October. Today, we don’t end up on a spit of land with water on three sides of us, but we do arrive at a point where a quite fast running stream is cutting through the embankment with no apparent means of crossing it. We therefore have to spend 5 minutes retracing our steps to a lane which takes us to a B road leading into Walton to the south of the marina. We find our way along a path at the back of a row of houses onto the west side of the Naze itself where, once again, the raised path is considerably overgrown, so we descend to a track on the inside of the embankment. Not only is this reasonably well defined, but it also provides some shelter from an ever freshening wind. It takes us about 90 minutes to complete our journey around the Naze and arrive at the Naze Tower towards its south eastern end. The wind is strengthening and, although it’s now behind us and the rain is easing, we are feeling a bit weary and take the opportunity to stop at a mobile snack bar in front of the tower for some shelter, sausage rolls and coffees. Their restorative effect is pretty apparent when we leave 15 minutes or so later and pick up our pace along the Walton sea front. This leads us past Walton Pier which looks somewhat rundown but which subsequent research has established is, at over half a mile long, by far the longest pier in the UK going out into the open sea. Beyond Walton, we come across what looks like a shanty town of beach huts – not just a line of them, but several rows rising up a slope from the promenade. Beach huts in fact become a defining feature of this couple of days: we seem to go past huge clusters of them at regular intervals. We get a bit of beach action on the approach to Frinton which includes the sight of some kite surfers taking full advantage of the wind – and very impressively too. The wind seems to be causing more problems for a few hardy souls on Frinton Golf Course. From the sea front, it looks like a very flat, narrow, “out and back” course, so it comes as a surprise to discover later that it was designed by the twice Open champion, Willie Park Jnr, and that the club professional in the 50’s/60’s was another Open Champion from way back (1923), Arthur Havers. Books and covers spring to mind.

We pass by Holland-on-Sea and arrive at the pier in Clacton (a bit less dilapidated than its Frinton counterpart) shortly after 5 o’clock and with our average walking pace after our break at the Naze Tower having increased to 3.2 mph (from 2.7 before the break). We’re staying at the Premier Inn on Marine Parade overlooking the pier but, before checking in, the Moon & Starfish, a Wetherspoon establishment a mere 100 yards away from the hotel, simply cannot be ignored. And it simply cannot be criticised for being overpriced – two pints of cider and two pints of Abbot clocking in at less than £10. On leaving, we spot Charnallies, an American restaurant and bar where we have a reservation to eat later. A quick look at the menu results in a brief discussion about possible alternatives, but we decide to go with what’s already been planned and so, following hotel check-in and very welcome baths/showers, we’re back there at 7 o’clock. For once, we don’t go for the fish and chips option. It features on the menu as a special, and it seems more appropriate at an American restaurant to go for the burgers which prove to be substantial and tasty. They are preceded by a bottle of white and accompanied by two bottles of red, and views of the street which result in Clacton securing a place in the Chipperville stakes. All in all we’re pretty happy that we stuck with our (or, more accurately, John’s) choice of eatery. Back at the Premier Inn, stickies are available at Wetherspoonesque prices, and doubles all round are the precursor to a good night’s sleep for all.