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Walk The Essex Way - Stage5

STAGE FIVE; TERLING -  COGGESHALL BRADWELL
   *It's our own stage.

Different from the last time, it was a fresh and fine weather. As soon as the shoes dried we walked the next stage. We started from here, Terling.


We were walking with chatting and laughing, but carefully checked 'poppy mark' for the Essex Way from previous experiences.


But on the way to Fairstead Parish Church, we've already made a mistake.


You should approach to the church from here, but we did from a different direction. Well, it's OK unless we reached the church anyway...


The church door was open. It's a beautiful church. Inside, there are wonderful 13th century wall-paintings.



It's a very pleasant walk. We enjoyed walking with beautiful nature.


We reached White Notley. I remembered some buildings because path was partly the same as John Ray Walk which I walked with the big mouse before.





At the first time, we saw people who were walking  in the same direction, probably 'Essex Way'! Everything was fine until the parish church of Cressing.


At a firm, there was a sign 'DOGS ON LEAD', but actually the firm has let dogs run loose. We were walking on a path, and suddenly a dog started barking at us. It was a small dog and we thought it's lovely at first. But when we turn the corner, the dog and 2 other dogs run like crazily towards us because the gate was left open. Their running was crazy like a dog race running! All of them were small dogs, but I felt scared of being harm because they must be guard dogs. First of all, I don't like dog because of my childhood experience. I've always been impressed by well-trained dogs in the UK, but I've never ever seen such aggressive dogs against passengers! They were barking and chasing around us, I was scared and thought I would have bitten.

My heart was pounding with fear. Anyway, we passed the firm and entered to another firm field. There was a broad grass track on the edge of the field and we saw the sign to 'forward'. So we followed the track without questioning. It was gradually curving along the field so we followed the track. We saw a huge tractor ahead in the field, so we cleared out of his way. When the tractor approached to us, it suddenly stopped and a man got off the tractor and walked towards us with extremely anger face. The fact was we were walking on a wrong path. Truly we had thought that was correct path, so we showed him a map and asked where we were. Suddenly he took a knife out from his pocket, opened it and pointed at the map with the head of the knife. I gasped. He used psychological pressure showing knife, didn't he?

The sign of 'forward' means NOT following broad track but we needed to go straight to cross the broad track and walk into the middle of field.  He was angry because probably people we saw earlier were walking on the same way. That's why he said 'fed up'. Of course nobody's happy that someone entered/used your private property, but also nobody makes a mistake on purpose. If many people make the same mistake, then that means there is a problem which leads people to the wrong way. Maybe the sign is not clear. Thankfully, he allowed us to walk on the edge track, instead of going back and walk in the middle of the field. We admitted our mistake, but his attitude; showing 'a KNIFE'  to women is very questionable. It was shocking for us.


I was calm at first, but 2 bad experiences happened in a row, I started to be upset and lost concentration. We completely got offended and couldn't enjoy walking anymore. We came across to the cross path, but there was no sign at all and we got lost. We couldn't concentrate on checking map. One way or another, we walked on a road to Bradwell Church. And our saver came to pick broken-hearted women up by car.


Eventually it became an unpleasant walk. But it must be a lesson about to walk 'public footpath' in a real sense.

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