I set off from home for an hours drive to Harwich to meet Dan for our final section of The Essex Way. I parked up in Wellington Road and waited for Dan to arrive. Dan arrived a little while later and we left his car there whilst I drove us onto the start where we finished the last walk in Mistley.
Again we parked up in the car park of St Mary and St Michael Church.

We walked back down the road and at the junction opposite the Mistley towers we turn right and walk along the High Street.

Mistley is the location of one of five Cold War control rooms in Essex. Built in 1951, it was opened as a museum called the Secret Bunker in 1996 but closed in 2002

Mistley Towers

Mistley is the village where Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, was reputed to have lived, according to legend owning the Mistley Inn. He was buried a few hours after his death in the graveyard of the Church of St Mary

We pass Mistley Quay.
The first quay was built around 1720 and trade went on from that quay up to Sudbury. Around about 1770, the quay was enlarged by Richard Rigby and was known as Port of Mistley. Small-scale shipbuilding took place here, and a number of smaller warships were built for the Royal Navy at Mistleythorn during the 18th century.
At that time, the village of Mistley, then known as Mistleythorn, consisted of warehouses, a granary, a large malting office and new quays.

Mistley Quay

Opposite we take the Path through the grounds of EDME (The English Diastatic Extract Company).
EDME has been based on the same site next to the River Stour in Mistley, Essex, since its earliest origins in the late 19th century.
Malting is one of Mistley's oldest industry having its roots in the 17th century and expanding rapidly once the Mistley Quay was built. Barley (the raw material for malting) was bought to Mistley's quayside granary by barge and horse drawn waggon. Malt was subsequently exported to the breweries in London and Dublin.

EDME was established in 1881 and today they are the largest producers of malt extract in the country. EDME annually produces about 13,000 tons of malt-based ingredients for the food industry. It goes to breweries, bakeries and breakfast cereal manufacturers, with about 24% being exported overseas. The many swans you see along the sea edge are said to be attracted by the waste from the maltings.

We couldn't but help smell the maltings as we walked through reminding me of hot cups of ovaltine
.

After walking through the yard which was easy as today was Sunday and no-one was working we left onto a path and through a tunnel beneath the railway.

Now we walk through an open field and a look back sees the enormous chimney at EDME.

We enter the woods at Furze Hill where we were met with two paths, unsure which to take we both went a short distance along both before deciding on the right path.

We leave the woods by Church Farm and cross Heath Road onto another path and cross an abandoned railway cutting. This cutting was excavated for a railway from Mistley to Walton. Work began in 1864 but was abandoned five years later.

views down to the River Stour

We leave the fields behind and exit onto Mill Lane.

Now we reach Bradfield and the Church of St Lawrence. In 1871 the Reverend Leighton G Hayne arrived and was the new Rector of St Lawrence. He bought with him in ten large railway trucks, a monstrous organ which would rival the one installed at the Albert Hall. Parts of the church had to be virtually demolished to install the organ and the vibrations created when it was played caused even more damage.

In the graveyard Squadron Commander Edwin Harris Dunning, DSC (17 July 1892 – 7 August 1917) is buried. Dunnings of the British Royal Naval Air Service, was the first pilot to land an aircraft on a moving ship.

Dunning landed his Sopwith Pup on HMS Furious in Scapa Flow, Orkney on 2 August 1917. He was killed five days later, during his second landing attempt of the day, when an updraft caught his port wing, throwing his plane overboard. Knocked unconscious, he drowned in the cockpit.
He is buried at St Lawrence's Church, Bradfield, beside his mother. A plaque in the church states:

The Admiralty wish you to know what great service he performed for the Navy. It was in fact a demonstration of landing an Aeroplane on the deck of a Man-of-War whilst the latter was under way. This had never been done before;and the data obtained was of the utmost value. It will make Aeroplanes indispensable to a fleet;& possibly, revolutionise Naval Warfare. The risk taken by Squadron Commander Dunning needed much courage. He had already made two successful landings;but expressed a wish to land again himself, before other Pilots did so;and in this last run he was killed. My Lords desire to place on record their sense of the loss to the Naval Service of this gallant Officer.

We went across the road to The Strangers Home PH and I was shown around the campsite by the owner, as I may stay here sometime in the future. Looks quite a clean and tidy site.

After a bit of discussion I agree with Dan who was right for a change and we walk on down Harwich Road for a length before taking a path on our left.

Now we head down to the Stour across farmland and through another tunnel under the railway.

Now we walk along the Stour by Jacques bay.


Views across the Stour to Stutton on the Suffolk bank.

Now we turn away from the river and into Wrabness Nature Reserve.

Wrabness Local Nature Reserve was designated in 1993.It covers 52 acres (210,000 m²) on the banks of the River Stour estuary. The site was once a former mine depot established in 1921 by the Ministry of Defence. It was closed in 1963. Following closure, a number of planning applications were put forward (including an application for a prison in 1968 and 1989). The site was saved from closure when it was bought by Wrabness Nature Reserve Charitable Trust in 1992. The site has now been taken over by the Essex Wildlife Trust.
The reserve is an important wildlife site - owls, yellowhammers, whitethroats, turtle dove, song thrush, nightingales and bullfinches can be seen. There are also many wild plants such as corn mint, hairy buttercup, sea aster and ox-eye daisy.

We walk through before leaving too early and end up walking down Wall Lane. Still a nice stroll down seeing some foals and a blackcap.

We turn left at the end of the road and along Church Road. We were heading for the church when we spotted a sign for The Essex Way. So we took this and ended up on a path that was closed due to cliff erosion. Looking back now this was indeed where we should have came out had we not walked down Wall Lane. Anyway we walk back up and back onto Church Road where we then reach All Saints Church in Wrabness.

The oldest building in the village is All Saints' Church, which dates from around 1100. The church's bell tower collapsed in the seventeenth century after a fire, and the bell moved temporarily to a wooden bell cage in the church yard. The bell cage remains to this day.

We pass the church and again after a lack of of signage and a bit of map reading and confirming the correct path using viewranger on my phone we take a path down Stone Lane to the water edge again.

We follow the path along Copperas Bay which takes its name from the old industry of copperas gathering which took place i the bay until the 1870s. Copperas (bisulphide of iron) was dredged from the mud and taken into Harwich to be used in the manufacture of dyes, inks and sulphuric acid. Copperas Bay consists of vast areas of intertidal mudflats and saltmarsh, much of it owned by the RSPB.
The bay offers the spectacle of thousands of wading birds and wildfowl during the Winter months, The Stour Estuary is one of the most important estuaries in Britain for Black tailed Godwits,dunlin, red shank, pintail, Brent geese,shelduck and gray plover. There is a public bird hide here.

We detour a short way off from the path up a path to see Grayson Perry's "Julie’s House".

In 2015 a conceptual holiday home was created by the artist Grayson Perry, working with FAT, and commissioned by the charity Living Architecture. It is known as "Julie’s House" or "A House for Essex", in homage to the "single mums in Dagenham, hairdressers in Colchester, and the landscape and history of Essex". The house is highly decorated incorporating rooftop ornaments, and overlooks the River Stour near the village.

“There’s a story behind its creation and it’s even more bonkers than you thought!” muses Perry.

It turns out the house is a kind of autobiography and at the same time a biography of a fictional woman called Julie May Cope. It is also a 21st century shrine to Julie and mining her imagined everyday life provides much of the content of this artwork and its overall tone. It is an “Essex Taj Mahal” says Perry and he remarks

“The house is devoted to a fictional Essex everywoman.”

We head back down the path and rejoin the Essex Way, here I had a bit of fun on the rope swing there.

Now it was Dan's turn, he tried but as so many other times before he bottles it and gives up !!

So we stop in amongst the bluebells with lunch and a cuppa.

We continue on along the path past a house which has an open garden for charity.

We turn right and up a path that takes us through Copperas wood before exiting onto Wrabness Road.

We walk up Wrabness Road with its fast traffic for a bit before turning right onto a path running past Seagars Farm. We reach a point where it wasn't clear as to which way the path went. I decided on the wrong direction and after a short way I stopped to check on viewranger and found Dan was right again. Twice in one day, unheard of he normally gets us lost !
We walk back and across to Ramsey Windmill.

Ramsey Windmill was originally built in Woodbridge, Suffolk. It was the north westerly one of four mills on the Mill Hills shown on the 1838 tithe map. The mill was moved to Ramsey in 1842 by Henry Collins, millwright of Woodbridge. The mill was working until the Second World War, and then left to deteriorate until 1974 when the owner, Mr Michael Organ, set about restoring the mill.

Ramsey Windmill is a post mill with a three storey roundhouse. The mill was winded by a roof mounted fantail, similar to that seen at Icklesham today. It has four double Patent sails. There are two pairs of millstones in the breast and a third pair in the tail.

A random shark in the bushes

We exit out into Ramsey village itself now. A pretty village with lovely cottages.

We reach The Castle PH which has a small camping outback. We stopped to check out the camping arrangements before walking on.

We walk down to the roundabout and again a lack of signs see us go wrong and walk quite a way up Rectory Lane before meeting two other Essex Way walkers who also had gone wrong here and informed of us of the mistake. So we walked back and eventually on the right path passing Whinny Grove before exiting out in Little Oakley.
This is the site of a fourth-century Roman villa, excavated between 1951 and 1975.

We stop off at a shop for some refreshments before continuing along the path.

We almost miss the path again because of the same old problem in this parts of no signs, we cross a small bridge over a ditch and walk on towards the seawall.

We reach the seawall where we stop to rest our tired legs for a few minutes and have a quick drink.

Here we are at South HAll Creek. Saltmarshes that are rich in wildlife. Amongst the wild species here are The Essex Emerald Moth and Sea Purslane a plant thought to be extinct in Britain for 50 years before being rediscovered in Essex in 1987.

It just isn't Spring without a walk with Bluebells and lambs !

Now we reach Dovercourt. The wind is still blowing a gale and the wind is causing havoc with the sea. Dovercourt is rich with civil war history and as a seaside resort offers shops and cafes for visitors and residents.

The 1980s BBC sitcom Hi-de-Hi! was filmed in Dovercourt, at Warner’s Holiday Camp, which transformed into Maplin’s. The camp, under the direction of Anna Essinger and aided by several of the staff from Bunce Court School,had been used in 1939 for refugee children arriving to be placed in foster homes in the Kindertransport mission,and was later re-developed as a housing estate, which is known as Hightrees.

I had bought my shorts and a towel for a swim,but with the rough seas and blowing wind, I gave it a miss this time.

Further along the coast after much dodging of the sea crashing over the seawall, we reach the Low and High Lighthouses at Dovercourt.

The 'Low Lighthouse' on Dovercourt's shore was built in 1863 as one of a pair after the two Lighthouses at Harwich, which worked on a similar principal of being aligned by the mariner to mark safe passage had become inacurate and dangerously misleading.
The two iron towers were built by Trinity House to aid navigation into the River Orwell on which the busy ports of Felixtowe and Harwich are located.
The impressive tower is supported by 8 legs (which merge into 4, nearer the ground on which they stand) and is painted black. From top to bottom the tower is 8 metres in height and the lower portion of the structure is often submerged at low tide.
The light, which shone from a square window in an enclosed lantern (Which does not resemble the High Light's lantern at all), exhibited a fixed white, marking safe passage into the ports of Harwich and Felixstowe until 1917, at which point both Lighthouses were discontinued.
After being extinguished, both of the Dovercourt Lighthouses fell into disrepair and were only restored in 1988. Tony O'Neil was given a lease to open the High Lighthouse to the public, including a camera to show the inside of the Low Lighthouse, which can not be reached safely on foot due to the poor state of the narrow causeway, although this is yet to happen.

We follow the seawall and pass Redoubt Fort on the path. Harwich Redoubt is a circular fort built in 1808 to defend the port of Harwich, from Napoleonic invasion.

It was part of the scheme that included the construction of 29 Martello Towers on the East Anglian coast. The Redoubt is of circular shape, approximately 200ft in diameter, with a central parade ground of 85ft diameter. Hoists lifted shells from the lower level to the gun emplacements. It is similar in design to earlier redoubts at Dymchurch and Eastbourne. Though difficult to imagine as it is now surrounded by houses, when the Redoubt was built it was on a hill top with free views in all directions. A house was demolished to make way for the Redoubt, and a large elm tree - used by ships as a navigational mark - was also removed. It is said that French prisoners of war were made to help in the construction.

We now walk into Harwich with its many historic points of interest.

Built in 1818 by General Slater Rebow of Wivenhoe Park to replace earlier wooden structures. He was stung by criticism over the vast profits he was reaping from the lighthouses (all shipping using the port could be charged a fee for this important service).
The High and Low Lighthouses were built in alignment to act as a pair of leading lights. Because of shifts in the channel outside the harbour the lights became known as "misleading lights". They were made redundant in 1863. The Low Lighthouse now houses a maritime Museum ,whilst the high lighthouse marks the end of the Essex Way.

Here we come to the Treadmill Crane.
Built in 1667 on the site of the Naval Yard, now Navyard. It was moved to its present site on Harwich Green in about 1932. It stands on a slight eminence where once stood Queen's Mount Battery' for the defence of Harwich.
The crane was worked by men walking in the interior of the wheels (as opposed to jail treadmills where the operators walked on the outer surface). Two wheels produce balanced action. Each wheel is 16ft (5.8 m) diameter, 3ft 10 ins (1.4 m) wide and made of oak. The wheels are spaced 4ft (1.5 m) apart on a common axle 13½ ins (34 cms) diameter. The jib has a projection of 17ft 10ins (6.5 m). It is described as a 'House Crane' in official records to distinguish it from the unenclosed type. Originally it had a boarded roof but pantiles were later substituted.

A conspicuous omission is any form of brake which made this type of crane somewhat dangerous. A spar was kept handy for levering against the outer edge of the wheel. But the efficiency of such a crude form of braking depended upon both the presence and presence of mind of a workman at the critical moment, a doubtful combination. Should the load take command, the men in the wheels would be revolved backwards with disastrous results.
The earliest known reference to a crane of this type was by the Romans in 25 B.C. By the Middle Ages, such cranes were common in this country. However, by the end of the 17th Century/beginning of the 18th Century, these cranes had only one drum and the power was supplied by a donkey. As far as is known Harwich has the only British example of a two-wheel man operated treadwheel crane.

The High Lighthouse

Here we end our Essex Way trek, its been a great experience full of beautiful and interesting days out in the Essex Countryside. Sad and delighted to see the end. Now what path to do next ??

Harwich Town Brewing Company

A five barrel micro-brewery situated on the east coast of England.

Established in 2007, they are reviving a centuries-old tradition of brewing in Harwich which died out in 1876. Using the world's finest malting barley from East Anglia, and hops from around the world, they produce a range of beers which combine both traditional and modern brewing styles.
All of their products contain nothing but natural ingredients, and where possible, are sourced locally.

Two houses, former customs house. Early C19 and possibly
earlier.

We reach the Ha'penny Pier.
The name of this pier originates from the ½d (half an old penny) toll charged. Construction of the pier began in 1852 and it was first opened in July 1853. It was a popular departure point for paddle steamers until after the First World War.

Originally the pier was twice as long as the present one but one half burnt down in 1927.
The Pier Ticket Office is a charming, typical example of late 19th century architecture. It previously had two storeys, but was without the bell cage. The ticket office now houses the Ha’penny Pier Visitor Centre (an information office for Old Harwich run by the Harwich Society). The Visitor Centre is open daily from May 1st until September 30th. It also houses the ‘Christopher Jones and the Mayflower’ exhibition which has free admission.

There is a small tea room on the pier opposite the Mayflower exhibition with tables and chairs outside where you can drink your cup of tea in fine weather.
The area of water enclosed by the arm of the pier is known as the Pound. Berthed here is the remnant of the once great 19th century fishing fleet.
The pier also accommodates the lifeboat house for the RNLI inshore rescue boat.

An old Triumph Herald

The Sea Shanty Festival was in full swing

The LV18 Lighthouse Boat

The ex-Trinity House vessel LV18 is the last surviving example of a manned light vessel in British waters, which has been preserved in its original configuration and restored to a high standard of authenticity.

The LV18 has already hosted various events, from Offshore Pirate Radio revivals to shanty singing and onboard exhibitions. Now that it has a permanent home at Harwich Quay it will be made available for a range of other functions.

In 2008 LV18 was also repainted as the fictional station ‘Radio Sunshine’ for the film The Boat That Rocked, Although these scenes were cut from the final version of the film they are available at out takes. on the DVD.

UKIP are strong in this area it would seem, posters everywhere.

The Guildhall was once used as a gaol. The wooden walls are covered with fascinating pictures carved by prisoners in the 18th century.

St Nicholas Church

A church has stood on this site since 1177 when the Chappele of Herewyche was founded by Roger Bigod, first Earl of Norfolk, and given together with the Church of Dovercourt to the Monks of Abendon at Colne (Earls Colne).
The crusaders rested here following the Banner of the Cross across Europe to the Holy Land. Kings, Queens and Princes have worshipped here on their way to and from the Continent. Samuel Pepys (twice MP for Harwich), Willoughby, Drake, Howard, Frobisher, Nelson and Daniel Defoe almost certainly attended this church whilst staying in Harwich. Boswell and Dr Johnson prayed to their creator here for protection for Boswell on his continental tour. Christopher Jones, Master of the Mayflower, was twice married in the old church, in 1593 and 1603. Both marriages were recorded in the church registers which date back to 1559 and also contain the baptism of some of his children. Also to be found here are the names of Richard Gardiner and John Alden (the hero of Longfellow’s poem ‘The Courtship of Miles Standish’), who were among the Pilgrim Fathers.

This present graceful church erected on the same site, being consecrated by Dr Rowley, Bishop of London, on 20th July 1822.


Trinity House Catering Depot.

We pass Foresters at 5 Church Street. The oldest building in Harwich circa 1450. It was the Foresters Arms from 1800 to 1940 where a bomb fell on it and it was left derelict for 9 years before being restored by the late Harwich Society president Mrs Winifred Cooper and her husband and left to the Harwich Society after her death in April 1999.

We had Fish and chips from Pieseas Chippy. Well I had chips and Dan had Cod and chips.

The fish and chips were of a high standard far better than we have had elsewhere on our walks. Probably give them a 8/10. Worth a visit if you're here.

Now we're bak at the car outside the Electric Palace Cinema. Britains oldest purpose built cinema, lovingly restored by volunteers. You can now enjoy a film in Edwardian splendor.