Essex Way day 3: White Notley to West Bergholt
Passing halfway and getting close to home
I’m walking the Essex Way in five stages — one day a week — during August 2023. You can read about my first stage from Eping to Pepper’s Green and my second stage from Pepper’s Green to White Notley.
This is how horror movies start, I think when I arrive at White Notley. It’s a lonely single-platform station deep in the countryside, and I’m the only person who gets off the train there, standing alone on the long arc of concrete as the train heads on to Braintree. The lone traveller, wandering out of his urban zone of comfort and into the wild, ready to stumble into a macabre situation, accidentally transgress against some important local customs or just become the random victim of the merciless processes of fate. Maybe if I’d chosen a different day that could have been me, getting caught out in one of the sudden heavy storms that have been passing over Essex this year and seeking shelter at a remote house.
Instead, it’s a warm day and the sun is starting to push the clouds aside as I set off down the road to rejoin the path where I left it, the only horrors the few cars that pass me on that short stretch with their drivers looking bewildered as they try to process why someone might be walking through here.
