Essex’s Easter trail is the place to search for spring

The Easter villages of Essex make an appropriate theme for this month’s walk, which joins a circular trail linking the villages of High Easter and Good Easter.

But this is also an excellent walk for this year’s much delayed spring. Essex’s rural hinterland is characterised by wide fields lined with hedgerows and ditches brimming with life. With luck you’ll see flocks of yellowhammers, chaffinches and collared doves, perhaps a bold fox cub, untidy rook nests high up in the trees, while the field margins will be decorated with primroses.

The walk begins by the church of St Andrew’s in Good Easter, 10 miles or sowest of Chelmsford, built from flint (you’ll see sharp stone in the soil everywhere) but with a weathered, wooden spire. Walk to the back of the church and take the south-east footpath over a footbridge, waymarked with a picture of a poppy for the Essex Way, an 81-mile route running from Epping to Harwich.

Cross the field to a white-tipped post and keep ahead along the field edge. Turn left at the next waymarker over a wooden bridge and follow the path to the road. Here turn right and, 50 yards later, turn left over a stile, following a fingerpost sign. Keep ahead, entering a second field, where you aim for the left-hand white-tipped post and cross a footbridge by another white-tipped post and head half-right across the field, passing two more white posts to enter a small wood by a stream, with reservoirs further to the right.

Pass a weir and enter open ground by a pond, and turn left, then right past an old stone granary tower, following the field edge across a driveway, keeping straight ahead and then bearing right around the field edge and heading east with a brook on your right. When you reach yet another white post, turn due north, with the woodland on yourright,passing a reservoir and an exercise yard for horses.

Walk through the stables and bear right around the pond to reach delightful Mashbury church, tucked away behind yew trees and hedgerows. Turn right opposite the church and follow the field edge, keeping straight ahead along the Chignal road for 400 yards. When the road bends right, keep ahead on the bridleway by the post box and follow the path round the back of the house towards Hoddock’s Wood.

Just before the wood, turn sharp left, heading due north, following waymarkers for a mile to reach Fox Road. This is a delightful stretch, the final section shaded by a canopy of alders and beech and bursting with birdsong.

Bear right along the road, past two sets of houses and then bear first left, winding behind the house and following white marker posts along another lovely path, hemmed in by hedgerows. This eventually meets a concrete path, where you turn left and make for the village of Pleshey.

At a fork, keep ahead on the road, but where this bends right, go straight ahead through a field to reach the village. Before doing so, look over the drawbridge at the remains of the motte and bailey castle. Turn left along the main village road, past the restored village pump and to the White Horse pub and church. Pleshey, like other villages around here, has thatched houses with dovecotes from which the tremulous white birds emerge.

Take the bridleway to the left of the pub which follows the line of the medieval town enclosure. Turn left in front of the footbridge and follow the track to a T-junction of paths, where you turn right to join the Essex Way once again. Follow the broad track to a crossroads, turn left along the paved road, and keep ahead through Woods Farm when the road bends right. Follow this green lane to Stagden Cross, turning right to walk through the village.

The next destination is High Easter; recent footpath alterations (not yet recorded on the OS map) mean the easiest route is to follow the road rather than a circuitous, unrewarding plod through fields. In High Easter, the Punchbowl is another inviting watering hole, located next to the church of St Mary.

To continue, walk to the end of the village and then double back behind the hedge, following a fingerpost sign on the left. Journey’s end, the steeple of St Andrew’s in Good Easter, looks dauntingly distant over the brow of the hill to the south. Further footpath changes require you to walk right along the field edgeto a fingerpost sign and then head due south, along a grassy field edge to reach Hayron’s Lane, a broad track where you turn left, soon veering right along the Essex Way once more.

Follow the poppy waymarkers for a further mile to reach Good Easter. I was told the village holds the world record for the longest daisy chain, more than 1.5 miles long – if you feel like making your own, the churchyard is a serene place to pause.

Compact Facts

Distance: 11 miles

Time: 4-5 hours

OS Map: Explorer 183, Chelmsford and the Rodings

For further information, go to visitessex.com.