Marks Tey to Sudbury

If you want a good excuse not to visit your in-laws in north Lincolnshire, change jobs. Your desire to cut a dash among your new colleagues, not to mention a handy three-month probation period, is an acceptable way to escape a long week of curtain-twitching and watching Countdown videos. And, if you're really lucky, your wife will go anyway; giving you a full seven days to revert to your disgusting bachelor habits.

Then again, I never really grew out of them. So, on Saturday, I got out of bed, jumped into the previous day's underpants, deodorised the outside of my shirt and slung the tent in the rucksack. The rough plan was to walk from Bures, straggling the Essex/Suffolk border, and head up to the campsite at Sudbury.

As always, I'd done my research under the influence so, while I knew I had to get the train from Liverpool Street to Marks Tey, and then another on to Bures, I was rather sketchy about the actual times.

The first leg was fine, but when I got to Marks Tey I realised that I'd have to wait another 45 minutes or so before I could carry on to Sudbury. So I went in search of a pint.

And found a dual carriageway. A ruddy huge one at that and not a boozer in sight. So I got the map out of the pocket, looked for the nearest 'public house' symbol and headed up a sliproad in the direction of Fordstreet.

I went through some unremarkable tracks and fields, but things soon improved and, breaking out through Aldham, I went via Cummins Farm and along to the bar of Fordstreet's Old Queens Head.

I'm unfit. Two miles down, shirt glued to back with ethanolic sweat, nicotine withdrawal round the corner: the only solution was a pint of Abbot. Just right. I decided to complete the cure with bangers and mash.

Now, I'm in two minds about the bangers and mash in the Old Queens Head. While I can imagine the Queen in question being unamused by the sausages, she couldn't fault the gravy: rich and meaty with fragments of the Sunday roast clearly visible under the meniscus. But the effect was good and, after a fag or two, I hitched up the rucksack and headed off.

"Happy hiking," said a clearly-satirical voice as I left.

Just in case I got thirsty again, I cut a mile up to Fordham and then, resisting the urge for another beer, struck out towards what was clearly marked on the map 'Airfield (disused)'.

Disused my arse. As I headed through a field of barley, congratulating myself on shaking off a chatty scoutmaster a few hundred yards back, I heard a huge whoosh that nearly made me bite the end off my tongue. Soaring in front of me, heading moonwards, was an enormous glider on the end of a cable.

Just to set the record straight, let me point out that I am not an inveterate townie. I was brought up in a small town, true enough; but I spent much of my time in the surrounding countryside with my grandfather who, for years, was a forester. So when it comes to the town/country divide I can fairly say that I've got a foot in each camp, even if my crotch is dangling over the middle.

But with aeroplanes, I have to admit I know jack shit. In the book I had as a kid, gliders were pulled along by aircraft and definitely didn't have a habit of jumping out of fields on the end of a steel hawser.

I caught up with the abandoned scouts, who were taking a breather on the edge of the airfield, rucksacks open, water bottles and snacks out, clearly not planning to push on in a hurry. Nice to see the old fieldcraft in action. They're probably still there now.

Out of the airfield, bypassing a non-existent footpath (an overgrown field) I spotted a bench on the corner of the road down to Wormingford Hall. Taking off the rucksack I discovered that about a litre of sweat had taken up residence in the back of my T-shirt so, entering into the aeronautical flavour of my surroundings, I took it off and stood at the edge of the road, using the breeze to make an impromptu windsock of the sodden garment.

Now I know that half-naked, pasty Londoners are rarely a feast for the eye; and I'm no exception. But I did mean this to be a private moment. And I do ask the guy in the red car whether he really needed to drive past quite so slowly, or whether he felt he must smirk quite so much. Even if I would have done exactly the same.

But following in his wake towards the Hall and then out by the lodge, I hit some superb countryside. Unfortunately all the photographs I took of it were out of focus (how?), but as someone who is usually indifferent to scenery I gulped in the view from up on the Lodge Hills before heading the last mile or two into Bures.

The dilemma most people face on entering a strange town or village is deciding which of its pubs is likely to be the best. Luckily, the Three Horseshoes in Church Square, garbed with garish St George's Flags, was the sort I instinctively rule out except for in emergencies. That led me to toss a coin: heads for the Swan Inn, tails for the Eight Bells.

The tails had it and the pub was a good choice, though I was by this point too knackered to appreciate it properly. There was a knot of regulars at the bar (the A-list), a bloke by himself near the door (presumably to fat to stand, too short to reach the bar stool) and a middle-class fellow with a shorts-and-socks combo who popped in from a side entrance for a solitary ale. One of the guys by the bar had that fantastic, rasping pre-emphysemic laugh, which rose and subsided like someone filing the bars of his prison cell.

But a pint of lime and soda, washed down with a pretty good Greene King IPA soon set me up and I left the boys to get on with it.

The next stretch, heading out to Sudbury was pretty boring, sandwiched in between the River Stour and the railway line, but I passed a charming looking pub in Lamarsh (alas, closed) and got a superb view of the village church (right) from the hill to its west.

From there I headed down to Valley Farm, on a path that passes by the house. Someone came out as I was passing and ignored my smile of greeting so, just to cheer him up, I asked him if I was going the right way.

"Yes," he said, then disappeared.

So, after heading across a field I decided to call it a day, rejoining the road to Henny Street, past an awful lot of turnips or something similar and then across Shalford Meadow towards the sewage works and campsite.

Of course, that was the last of the sunshine. Over the last mile the stormclouds (right) had gathered and, by the time I was hobbling into the campsite, I felt the first spatters of rain.


Map(s): OS Explorer™ 184 (Colchester, Harwich & Clacton-on-Sea); OS Explorer™ 196 (Sudbury, Hadleigh & Dedham Vale)