Despite being a neighbouring county that you can see from Whitstable on a clear day, and despite the fact that I actually spent three years of higher education living in Chelmsford (though I hated every minute and came home almost every weekend, leaving no time for exploration), Essex is not a county that I am familiar with. However, in search of a fun day trip for my daughter-in-law’s birthday, I decided that it was time to lay to rest the unhappy memories of my youth, and started to explore what delights it might offer.

The original plan was to have a girls day out, with me, my daughter and my daughter-in-law, travelling by train. My son didn’t want to be left out however and offered to do the driving, which meant that we could also factor in an extra stop at a place without a train station for a morning coffee en route.

And so on a particularly hot and sunny day in April, we found ourselves in Coggeshall, a pretty little village which has almost 200 listed buildings, many of them attractively timber framed.

There was just one cafe – Bakealicious – so we gave it our custom, sitting outside to make the most of the sunshine, and admiring the unusual blue and white weather boarded clock tower, built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, that was across the street,

The village is built on a crossing of ley lines and these are said to be the cause of strange and ghostly happenings over the years. There was nothing peculiar going on while we were there, and we enjoyed a peaceful stroll through its picturesque streets,

before heading on to Colchester, Britain’s oldest recorded town and former Roman capital.

It was already lunchtime by the time we arrived, and although I’d short listed several cafes as potential eating spots, the weather was so beautiful that I suggested on the spur of the moment that maybe we should have an M & S picky bits picnic instead. Everyone loved the idea until we discovered that Colchester doesn’t have a town centre M & S! What self respecting large town in England – especially one that was a former Roman capital – doesn’t have a central M & S for an impromptu picnic? It loses a point for that!!

Still, in the course of our dithering about what we were going to do instead, we came across a statue of Jane Taylor (and her sister Ann), who lived in Colchester and who famously (or maybe not so famously as I had never heard of her!) wrote Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (Jane is apparently the one on the left who is pointing up at a star), so that was an interesting thing to come out of it.

We couldn’t really make our minds up and ended up just going to Pret which was fine, but not in the same league as M & S picky bits, and took our food to Castle Park.

Although we were unable to sit and admire the Norman keep – the largest in Europe – as we were narrowly beaten to the last available bench that was facing it, the grounds were spacious and well maintained, and it was a pleasant place to spend some time.

Castle Park was also the starting point for our afternoon walk – the Town to Sea trail which runs from the centre of Colchester to the village of Wivenhoe, following the River Colne.

I have to say that the walk was a bit of a mixed bag. It was enjoyable through the park, but after that it was rather urban and not at all what I had been expecting. Having wanted the day to be perfect for my daughter in law, I felt personally responsible that the walk wasn’t as idyllic as I had hoped. Maybe we would have been better just staying in Colchester, exploring its history and doing some shopping?

Luckily, when we reached the halfway point of The Hythe – once a busy port and ship building area, and now mainly residential and university campus – the path joined the Wivenhoe Trail, and things improved considerably.

First though, we had to work out which side of the river to walk on. Up until this point we had been following the right hand bank, but here there were paths on both sides, and I was roundly criticised for my lack of planning, even though I had done so much planning and my efforts to print out the downloaded instructions resulted in a blank piece of paper coming out of the printer each time. I had assumed that it would be well signposted and very obvious, but as we stood dithering for the second time that day, we could see people walking along paths on both sides of the river, with no indication of which to take. Some hasty googling revealed that Wivenhoe was on the left bank, so we crossed the bridge and were able to continue happily.

We were soon deep in the countryside. It was beautiful and slightly reminiscent of Faversham Creek which I love. Suddenly, I was very pleased that we weren’t shopping in the town!

After a while, we could see the village of Rowhedge on the opposite bank. There was an attractive looking pub beer garden on the river, so all would not have been lost had we taken the right hand bank – except for the fact that, unlike Wivenhoe, Rowhedge has no train station, so we would have to have walked – or got a taxi – to get us back again. In the summer however, it’s connected to Wivenhoe by a foot ferry, but it was still too early in the year for it to have been operating on the day of our visit.

Soon after, Wivenhoe was ahead of us

With its sailing boats and colourful houses, it really was picture perfect, and well worth the walk. We were lucky to find one table free outside the Rose and Crown pub on the riverside, and so obviously had to take advantage of the fact and sit and enjoy a well earned drink. The path continues all the way along the river and right down to the Essex coast at Brightlingsea – so of course the idea of doing this (having caught the train to Wivenhoe first) has been added to the ever expanding list!

I was definitely running out of energy by this point, but there was just time for a short stroll around the village before catching our train back to Colchester, during which we discovered a blue plaque informing us that Joan Hickson’s had lived here in Wivenhoe for forty years. In my opinion, Hickson played the only Miss Marple worth watching in the BBC Agatha Christie adaptations, and so I had a star struck moment!

Back in Colchester, we made a short detour to explore the Dutch Quarter, home to Flemish Protestant refugees, fleeing from religious persecution in the 16th century. It was worth a look, with a range of architectural styles, from timber framed to quaint and colourful cottages, but we were all flagging by this point.

Temporarily revived by the sugar boost of a delicious Knoops chocolate milkshake, I had just enough energy to nip into the branch of Sostrene Grene that I spotted conveniently placed around the corner (it’s one of my favourite shops so it would have been rude not to!). I was reminded that it wasn’t my day out and I needed to keep it brief, (luckily it was almost closing time so I had no choice!) but it made a nice end to the day.

I did indeed banish the bad memories of my Essex past, and have seen the county with new eyes. It shouldn’t have been surprising that it was so lovely when it’s next to Kent and therefore pretty similar, and I certainly won’t be waiting another thirty odd years before visiting it again.