Essex Days Out

New Year’s Day 2012 was pretty grim, weather-wise, so we postponed our regular new year’s walk until today. Scouting around for ideas, we came across the excellent Moutn Bures website, which includes a section with half a dozen circular walks around the village.

Bures in only 20 minutes drive north of Colchester, on the back road to Sudbury, the B1508. There’s plenty to see in the village, but the walk we chose from those of offer was Walk No. 3 (click the link to the left for the PDF from the Mount Bures website). The walk is a modest 5.8km south of the village, taking in the beatiful Hobb’s Well cottage (pic below), and passing the mount that gives Mount Bures its name – which is likely to become more well known once Michael Wood’s new series at the end of 2012 comes out, which includes footage from the site.

The walk takes you passed (and into, if you can) Mt. Bures Church, which is quite charming. And keep your eyes peeled – we saw three deer skipping over the fields! After heading further east, you head back into Bures passing the beautifully preserved mill, this last stretch taking you past cows, pot-bellied pigs, ducks, geese, horses, donkeys, sheep and goats.

The walk is mostly over countryside, and was a bit squidgy underfoot today, so stout boots the order of the day unless it’s high summer. After leaving the church you could take a very short detour for lunch at the Thatcher’s Arms, but we decided to try another pub (having been to the Thatcher’s several times in recent years!), and waited until the end of the walk to visit The Eight Bells. It’s a recent addition to the CAMRA Good Beer Guide, and have a good half dozen beers on today, of which Umbel Magna took our fancy. The pub is a big one, clearly frequented by lots of walkers, and do some good old fashioned pub grub – toasted sarnies from others in the lounge looked attractive, but we plumped for the sea food platter, and tucked into some deep fried scampi and scallops with some excellent crispy chips (a speciality of the pub, we were told).

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