Essex Way day 4: West Bergholt to Lawford

Into Dedham Vale and the Stour Valley

I’m walking the Essex Way in five stages — one day a week — during August 2023. You can read about my first stage from Epping to Pepper’s Green, my second stage from Pepper’s Green to White Notley and my third stage from White Notley to West Bergholt.

After a series of early morning train journeys, it feels odd to start a day’s walking with a bus. I’ve reached the stretch of the way where it arcs north of Colchester, though, an area that the train mainly just speeds on through to get to Ipswich and so my day has to start with either a bus or a lengthy walk to West Bergholt. Twenty minutes on the former is the much easier way to start the day.

I pick up the Way where I left it last week, taking a familiar path down Armoury Road and then out across Armoury Farm. The name apparently comes from a corruption of someone’s surname over the centuries, and not that this was a miles-away outpost of Colchester Garrison. There was a dull roar of the nearby A12 as I crossed the sloping fields, a route that’s sometimes a muddy tramp, clay-heavy soil clinging to your boots, but today most of the land is baked hard, the route across still a clear line through recently-harvested crops.