Day 141 – Steeple to Bradwell Marina: 9.02m: 4.2h

Very well appointed rooms at The Star and also, it would appear, very recently refurbished. We’re back in the bar for breakfast by 7:30 having all ordered the large cooked option yesterday evening. Large turns out to mean double portions – to include a plate of 8 hash browns for the 4 of us. John doesn’t approach this with his customary trencherman gusto and confesses to not feeling 100%, which he thinks might have something to do with last night’s curry.

We check out and set off at 8:30, and reach yesterday evening’s finishing point around 15 minutes later. Today’s planned route isn’t particularly long – a tad over 12 miles to St Peter’s Chapel which, after Bradwell, is the last place for several miles where we can turn inland and reach a convenient meeting point (i.e. a pub) for a pre-ordered cab. We make reasonably good progress over the first couple of hours in bright and increasingly hot sunshine. Again, the grass bank along which we’re walking is well maintained and when, half an hour from the start, we get back to the Blackwater at the Steeple Bay Holiday Park, the path eastwards is relatively direct and inlet free. After those first two hours, we’ve just passed through St Lawrence. This has involved a minor diversion to negotiate the streets of a riverside housing estate, and being told (indeed urged) by a couple of local residents to ignore an upcoming sign announcing that a green stretch of land leading back to the river is private property. We follow that advice without inflaming what seems to be a rather controversial local issue and continue towards Bradwell. However, John’s progress now starts to slow quite significantly, and this isn’t because of his dodgy toe or his earlier dodgy curry diagnosis. It’s not clear exactly what it is, although there is a suggestion that he might have caught a bug from a niece at the family gathering over the weekend. In any event, he isn’t feeling at all well and we need to stop on two or three occasions for him to rest in the shade and recover sufficient energy to walk a little bit further with his rucksack being carried by others. It’s readily apparent that we have to finish today at the first convenient spot – i.e. somewhere to which we can redirect the cab – which is Bradwell Marina. We reach the Marina Bar at 1 o’clock having completed not much more than 3 miles in the last couple of hours. Ben and Gary pop inside for a drink, John sits outside in the shade, and David shuttles between the two whilst arranging for the cab to collect us from the Marina. Fortunately, it’s able to get to us within half an hour after David’s call, and it takes another half an hour or so to return to the Heybridge Basin car park.

John is still feeling unwell, but there is a marginal improvement in his condition. On our arrival at the Marina, he was considering spending the night at David’s house rather than travelling home to Gloucestershire by train. However, by the time we’re in David’s car on our way back to Witham, he’s decided that he can manage two rail journeys and a trip on the tube in between. And so, having bid fond farewells to David at Witham station, the other three of us catch a train to Liverpool Street from where Ben walks to London Bridge so that he can travel to join his family for a few days away in Kent, while Gary joins John on the tube to Paddington and then continues homeward.      

POSTSCRIPT 1

John establishes through a PCR test that, if he has indeed caught a “bug”, it’s not COVID! He continues to improve to such an extent that, by the end of the week, he is proposing that on our next two day trip in September we should be walking anything up to 36 miles!

POSTSCRIPT 2

Following his session with the consultant, Mike will be having a right hip replacement. The operation is currently scheduled for the beginning of October and although this means that, as anticipated, he will be absent for the rest of the year, the consultant is confident that he will be fit and able to rejoin the walk in early 2022. Fingers crossed.           

Day 140 – Heybridge Basin to Steeple: 14.8m: 5.7h

Mike has withdrawn from these two days without coming under starter’s orders. He’s been suffering pretty serious hip pain since shortly after the last walk and thinks that his race might well be run for the rest of the year, but he’s due to be seeing a consultant later this week for a full diagnosis.

However, David has joined us once again. He and John have been at a family gathering over the weekend at their father’s house and they’ve driven this morning to Witham station where they pick up Ben and Gary from the Liverpool Street train. Before we set off for Heybridge Basin, John receives a call from our overnight stop, The Star at Steeple. Apparently, one of the kitchen staff has tested positive for COVID. The rest of the staff are negative, but it won’t be possible to provide cooked meals this evening. Given that there aren’t any other pubs or restaurants in the immediate vicinity, The Star is happy to make some sandwiches for us free of charge, or alternatively we could order something for delivery from a local Indian or Chinese, and it would be fine for us to eat this in the bar. Something to ponder during the course of the day.

In the meantime, David drives us to Heybridge Basin where we park and walk the short distance to the lock gates outside the Old Ship. With an uncharacteristically cavalier attitude towards determining mileages, John crosses the lock before starting the logger, thus losing several yards from our recorded walking distance. The reason for his haste is the belief that the gates are about to be opened, but this isn’t in fact the case and so, notwithstanding the more relaxed approach of the member for Putney (standing outside the pub making initial notes in the hard copy log) we are not delayed and set off at 11 o’clock. Also uncharacteristically, John is the only one of us who isn’t wearing shorts on what is another warm and muggy day. Even Gary has learned his lesson from the last trip although David affects the belief – on more than one occasion – that there must be a pair of overtrousers in his rucksack!

The first hour of the walk is spent on pavements getting into and through Maldon and onto the south bank of the Blackwater. Here, the underfoot conditions revert to what we experienced for much of the last trip, namely raised grass banks – which fortunately, for the most part, are reasonably well cut back. The first stretch extends eastwards and soon, in the distance, we can see the power station at Bradwell which is towards the end of our planned route for tomorrow. However, about 3 miles out of Maldon, opposite the south side of Osea Island, we have to turn away from the river to follow the western bank of an inlet leading to a place called Maylandsea. This inlet is not only long, but also very winding – to such an extent that, on more than one occasion, we are walking 180 degrees away from Bradwell. In fact, it takes us nearly two hours to reach Maylandsea, although this does include a few unscheduled stops for some of us to rehydrate and apply sun cream, and for John to carry out running (or limping?) repairs to what seem to be increasingly troublesome and uncomfortable problems with one of his toes.

Eventually we turn north to return to the Blackwater but, almost immediately after we get there, we encounter another inlet. This one isn’t as long (or as winding) as the first, but it still takes around an hour to almost get round it and reach the end of today’s walk at a track leading inland towards Steeple. Had we been crows, our flying distance here from the start of the first inlet would have been not much more than a mile. Our walking distance has been almost 9 miles. The route into Steeple takes us through a couple of fields, past some farm buildings (which appear to be used principally for some kind of mobile beer outlet business) and along a road which brings us to The Star shortly after 5 o’clock. Following a friendly welcome from and chat with the 3 or 4 people around the bar, we consider what we’re going to eat over the first round of drinks. Having been told that a cooked breakfast will be available tomorrow, the free sandwiches option isn’t immediately discounted. However, David is strongly in favour of a curry and, as the mood among the other three of us is typically agnostic (i.e. indecisive), the menu from the local Indian is circulated for choices to be made. A potential difficulty arises when it emerges that the restaurant doesn’t do deliveries, but this is swiftly overcome when The Star landlady (Star in more senses than one) very kindly offers to drive and collect our order. A second round of drinks is called for, and the food order is duly placed and paid for by phone for collection at 7:30. We check into our rooms which are in a single storey building separate from the pub itself, and return to the bar an hour later to find plates and cutlery on the table, and the landlady away on her collection mission. It’s not long before she returns, and the various dishes which she brings with her are washed down with a bottle of white and a bottle of red. An hour and a half later, we are not only very full but also rather weary. Ben’s enquiries about the desirability of stickies are answered in the negative, and we’re back in our rooms by 9:30.