Essex: Great Oakley Hall to Walton-on-the-Naze 28 June 2009**

 

Brown hare   Barn owl   Borage with pennycress & scarlet pimpernel

From Great Oakley Hall (where the plants were covered in white down from seeding aspens) we walked back down the road to the footpath going across farmland, which should have cut out a lot of road walking through the village.  It was initially signed very obscurely, but we found the way well signed after that.  In the first arable field there were brown hares and pheasants in the corn, but the arable weeds were generally uninteresting, perhaps because we have now changed from sandy soils to boulder clay, although there were borage, scarlet pimpernel and common pennycress.  Many 7-spot ladybirds were emerging at last, and we saw our first marmalade fly of the trip.  We emerged on the road again at Moze Cross and had to walk a kilometre along the B-road with rather fast traffic and no verge.  We came off at the first footpath leading to Beaumont Quay at the western head of Hamford Water.  This was well signed for the first few fields, but finally we found ourselves in a field where there was no way out and had to walk through crops to get across at all.  We crossed a ditch into another field where there was some space left by the crops but then found ourselves at a Wildfowler’s reserve where we had to climb a locked gate to progress.  There was an artificial lake here that had a lot of shelduck, curlew and some red-fronted geese.  A silent spectral white barn owl kept quartering the fields.  There were many large ditches cutting off the way forward, although we were close to the embankment.  We found a track that crossed to the embankment and walked below it for several fields, the top being unkempt.  We eventually came to a way up and down again to a major track beside the saltmarsh, heading for Beaumont Quay, passing through a farmyard and out through a gate saying “Private no footpath”!  We eventually reached the intended path across the river and along the embankment on the other side.  We began seeing hog’s fennel again and there were places with a lot of it further along the walk, but the grassland was rough and “improved”, so there were few interesting native plants – just one patch of sea clover, a single pyramidal orchid, and a few patches of dyer’s greenweed.  We were exhausted with paths appearing and disappearing, but it was late before we found a place to sit down and rest until we found some steps by a sluice gate.  We then welcomed our cheese rolls, bananas and water!  Our spirits revived, we were able to set off again, this time soon reaching a stretch of the embankment that had been strimmed longer ago and was easier to walk.  There were few birds to be seen across the marshes – black-headed gulls, oystercatchers, lapwings scattered around.  We then walked alongside a creek going south as far as Kirby-le-Soken, where there was an arable field with such a dense colony of stinking chamomile at one edge that it appeared completely white. We crossed a wet and muddy path leading to the embankment again on the other side.  Here the grass had not been cut so it was easier to walk on the inland side, where we at least found sea barley in large patches, and lots of bird’s-foot trefoil (including the narrow-leaved species) attracting such butterflies as common blue and small copper.  There was also our first hedge brown, so that the fresh emergence of butterflies which marks the arrival of summer seems to have happened, with the two small skippers yesterday as well.  At the end of this embankment was the route across the marsh to Horsey Island, only passable at the right state of the tide.  We did not attempt this as the tide was now quite high and still coming in.  This was as far as public rights of way followed the southern banks of Hamford Water, as a marina blocked the way.  We took the stony track back to the road B1034, past a field where people played with noisy model aeroplanes.  There was pavement all the way along the road as it descended into Walton-on-the-Naze through expansive suburbs.  Just outside the town there was a white form of black horehound, with pure white flowers and yellowish-green leaves, next to a clump of the ordinary form.  The beach at Walton was busy and narrowing as the tide came in.  Turning left at the church, we entered the High Street leading to the middle of the seafront, bus station and information bureau.  There were, however, no buses back towards Harwich on a Sunday and we had to get a taxi.  When we arrived back in Harwich we sat on the pier to enjoy a refreshing and well-earned iced-lolly.

 

Dyer's greenweed   Beaumont Quay

Hog's fennel   Walton Beach