NCN Route 1 Chelmsford to Woodbridge — Where my wheels go

Stage 4 of the NCN 1 (Dover to the Shetland Isles)
Chelmsford to Woodbridge 118km

To catch up on the previous day’s ride, click here

Email exchange with Private Space In Central Woodbridge via web booking portal.
Hi, I’d like to book a room for September 7th.

Emailed reply
I confirm your stay. I should tell you before you arrive that the bathroom looks a bit worse for wear. The guests on Saturday accidentally pulled the towel rail off the wall and I am awaiting an electrician.

Email from me to the owner of the property
Thanks for letting me know about the bathroom. Not a problem. I am sure it will be fine. I wonder if you could leave some full fat milk in the fridge so that I can make some porridge in the morning.

An email reply later
Hi Julian, no problem with the milk. I will pick some up on my way back from work. I won’t be home until 5pm but the Studio will be cleaned and left unlocked for you. There is not a hob, just a microwave but I will give you a large bowl to make porridge in.
There is a problem in the bathroom as the towel rail has been pulled off the wall and I am waiting for an electrician to repair or replace it. I am sorry about this but can’t do anything before you arrive.

Continuum
I’ve spent the night back at home and returned by train to Chelmsford. The route passes undemanding countryside, which gently rolls. Large fields of harvested grains, fat pigeons and small copses. There’s an air of fatigue - the country has given of its fruits. The route uses canal pathways, quiet roads and gravel tracks.

Defoe on Maldon and the surrounding marshy coast
”A noted market town, situated at the conflux of two principal rivers and I think I have done Malden justice and said all of it that there is to be said. On this shore also are taken the best and nicest, though not the largest oysters in England.”

WhatsApp message sent from Maldon.
Can you remember if we had oysters here in Maldon last time we were here? If so, where? I can’t find any shop selling them. Thought the town was famous for them. xx

WhatsApp message from home.
Do you really want to cycle on a stomach full of oysters? We bought salt, not oysters.

Journal Note written outside the Maldon Coffee Company
Maldon - famous for oysters and salt.
A battle was fought against the Vikings in 932 which the Brits lost 1-0.
Alex Dowsett, the cyclist, comes from Maldon.

Journal note written by the quayside.
Some sun, many Thames barges all tied up, many old people wandering about licking ice-creams. An unhurried air of a dowager sea-side town.
A dachshund without hind legs is strapped to a tiny cart which it pulls a cart behind it - a disabled dog cart. The dog has a look of stoic determination. Its owner looks impatient and bored.

Journal note somewhere between Maldon and Colchester
The swirling swallow
skimming the stubble, sipping the wind
with balletic brilliance
flicking a wing tip here and there.
With a roller-coaster whoosh
it climbs vertically towards the sun
all power and grace
then
when it’s a mere dot in the sky
it pulls back its wings
rolls and
swallow-dives
back to earth
pulling up just above
the field.

It flies past me once more
a twinkle of delight in its eye
and a smile,
I’m sure.
It tips its wings
in salute.

Clipping the wind
it skims
over the hedge
and flies off
south -
away till next summer
leaving me with a hole
of sadness.

Defoe on the country between Maldon and Colchester
“The product of all this part of the country is corn.”

Continuum
I dislike the word, ‘pleasing.’ It denotes dullness and a lack of imagination. I cycle through the ‘pleasing’ countryside, with slight undulations and cropped corn, beside dark hedges with their ripening berries. The kilometres roll on gently. I ride meditatively - deep within. Not present in my surroundings, just being. It’s a pleasing state to be in.

Journal note whilst resting under an old oak tree after miles of bumpy bridleway through woods
The route alternates between bridleway and road. The paths are gritty, and full of river-rolled stones and sand. Sometimes the bike slews, sometimes it just sighs and sinks. All the while I fear the hiss of air, for these paths have been my undoing before. On the outskirts of Colchester I ride in an Ancient British ditch, deep, steep-banked and darkened by a roof of trees. I love the idea of riding where ancient feet have trod - on this self-same path.

Journal note in Colchester
Two men follow me out of a sandwich shop where I had stopped to buy lunch.
‘We were admiring your calves in the queue. You’re in good shape’.
They see my pewter-coloured hair peeking out from under my cycling cap. Their eyes quickly note the wrinkles on my skin.
‘How old are you?’ the younger one says.
‘60’, I say.
‘Wow - you’re in fantastic shape’. They both smile.
The Ego is keen for more of this, the Heart wants to run. The Head is furious.
Say nothing, it says.
‘What’s your name’? I’m asked.
‘Julian.’
‘No’, says the brain, ‘not the right answer’.
‘Julian, I’m Caleb.’ A hand is outstretched. Mine is full of sandwich and drink so I cannot engage. The younger man continues, ‘We’re inviting people to come and celebrate with us at our church……’
Head is screaming. ‘NOOOOOO. Leave. Leave. Get out of this now. Give any excuse and go’.
Ego is thinking, ‘any more compliments before we go?’
‘That’s not my thing,’ I say. ‘I am not from round here and I have far to go. Goodbye.’
They look saddened. I stuff a whole sandwich in my mouth, balance a drink in one hand and the bike in the other and walk away with purpose. They don't follow.

Brain receives more messages.
Nice calves, eh?
In good shape, eh?
That’s enough,
get on the bike and ride, it replies.

Defoe on Colchester

“The town is large, very populous, the streets fair and beautiful; and though it may not be said to be finely built, yet there are abundance of very good and well-built houses in it. It still mourns, in the ruins of a civil war….it suffered a severe siege….. the battered walls, the breaches in the turrets, and the ruined churches still remain…..the town was severely visited in the Plague year and they buried more people in proportion than any of its neighbours, or than the city of London.
The castle of Colchester is now become only a monument showing the antiquity of the place, it being built as the walls of the town also are, with Roman bricks. The inhabitants boast much that Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, first Christian Emperor of the Romans, was born here, it may be so for aught we know; I only observe what Mr Camden says of the Castle in Colchester, viz. ‘In the middle of this city stands a castle ready to fall with age’. Though this castle has stood an hundred and twenty years from the time Mr Camden wrote that account, and it is not fallen yet; nor will another hundred and twenty years, I believe, make it look one jot older.”

Journal Note At Colchester Castle
I sit outside on a bench beside an overflowing flower bed filled with gaudy bedding plants, eating a bacon roll. A child walks past holding the hand of his father.
‘Did Henry VIII live here?’ he asks in his little boy voice of seriousness.
"‘I don’t know, son. We’ll find out.’
They walk on a few more steps in contemplation.
The boy tugs his father’s hand, as if it was some bell-rope rung for attention in the upper drawing room of a grand house.
‘Dad? I think I’ve lost my bag’.
‘You mutt. You must’ve left it in Burger King. OK, let's go back and get it.’
Dad smiles at me and rolls his eyes in a paternalistic manner. They exit through the gate they’d just entered.
The boy’s brow is furrowed by anxiety.

I share my bench with a tired old man, who leans forward on his stick. His white-haired wife reads the information board nearby and paraphrases its contents aloud.
‘It was a Roman Temple, George.’
George says nothing and stares at the floor just beyond his shoes. The effort of living creases him.
‘Then the Normans came and built this castle. It’s the largest of its kind in Europe…..’, she continues in a voice worn by words.
George does not look up, but continues his fixed stare just beyond his shoes. She turns to him and asks if he is alright. He looks up at her, and gathers some strength, and rises unsteadily. He holds her arm and they walk unsteadily towards the exit of the park.

The castle has a Byzantine look. Its walls seem sunburnt and there’s a squat square tower on one corner and round one on another. Deep red tiles, the sort you see in the Mediterranean, cover the roof. If the day were bright and warm, I kid myself for a moment, that I could be in Anatolia.

Journal Note written after Colchester in a lay-by in Essex
The land after Colchester
is flat and blank
hedge-less industrial fields
alternating flint-coloured stubble
with the dark green leaves of sugar-beet.
The verges are mown of the roads are and flowerless.
A lone oak mid-stands mid-field
defiant, trunks twisted with age.
Lines of poplars stand stately tall, turning grey.
shedding leaves in the breeze.
Corpses of wind-ruffled pheasant
mark the black road, their feathers twitching
their red-pink flesh
picked by crows.

Journal note somewhere between Colchester and Ipswich.
This countryside is easy on the eye and undemanding on the legs. Gentle hills, a south-west wind nudging me in the back. I pull over for a tractor which wants to pass on this narrow lane. There is a field entrance and I bump over the dried ruts to allow it to pass and lean against the metal gate, my feet still clipped in. The tractor wheezes along the narrow lane, fanning dust behind it, leaving a silence to fill the holes made by noise. The driver does not acknowledge me.

I watch a pigeon gleaning in the harvested field and wonder, does a pigeon overeat? A harvested field is full of the fattest - nearly obese - pigeons.

They waddle between the stalks and their beaks bob towards the earth in rhythmic fashion, gleaning between the shorn-off stalks. They have that determined look of the overfed at a buffet.

Continuum
The ride continues onto Ipswich, whose red-bricked suburbs are as extensive as they are ugly.

Defoe on Ipswich
But the neighbourhood of London, which sucks the vitals of trade in this island to itself, is the chief reason of any decay of business in this place; Having written at length about ship-building and a former premier port for trade with Greenland and the processing of whale oil, he goes onto write; “What I have said, is only to let the world see what improvement this town and port is capable of; I cannot think, but that Providence which made nothing in vain, cannot have reserved so useful, so convenient a port to lie vacant in the world.”

Journal Note written on the outskirts of Ipswich
Ipswich - one of the oldest towns in the land, is uncomfortable with itself. Currents of litter swirl on unswept streets, Covid-closed shop windows are smeared in dust and dirt. A wretched carbuncle of rotting concrete looms over the harbour like a leper’s limb rotten and useless. Mean red terraced houses stretch for mile after mile their gardens filled with old fridges and discarded cartons.

Journal Note written at the end of the day in Woodbridge
The landlady at the Airbnb crosses the gravel driveway carrying a tray. I open the door to her and she comes in nervously smiling. Her words and actions spill out all over the small flat.
‘I hope everything is alright for you, did you have a good ride, I bought you the full fat milk you asked for, you've had some tea I see, good, and you have found the fridge, I hope everything is going to be alright for your stay as I have had two bad reviews. It’s not good for business - she kneels down to the humming fridge and fills it with a big bowl of strawberries, milk, brioche rolls and butter in pot - the last lot stayed for three days and wrote in a review once they’d left, that the sheets they’d had on the bed had not been changed from the previous guests, of course they had, but the thing is they did not mention it while they were here - she shuts the fridge and looks at my bike leaning against the wall - I hope everything is alright, you’ll ask won’t you if there is anything you need, you know how to work the cooker and the towel rail I told you about in the email, I am sorry about that, there is nothing I can do till the plumber comes, and he says that he is busy till next week, was the water hot for your shower, when you leave in the morning just leave the key in the door please, where are you going to tomorrow, Norwich? That’s lovely, well I’ll let you get on now and do say won’t you if there’s anything else you need and don't forget to leave a review on the site, goodbye’.

My review for the overnight stay
Breakfast was superb, hosts kind and attentive. Very good stay. Thank you very much. Would definitely recommend.

To read the next day’s ride up to the Shetland Isles, click here

To access the ride notes for today including a downloadable map and directions, click here

NCN 1 Chelmsford to Woodbridge

Stage 4 of the NCN 1 (Dover to the Shetland Isles)Chelmsford to Woodbridge 118km

Stage 4 of the NCN 1 (Dover to the Shetland Isles)
Chelmsford to Woodbridge 118km