The Fox is Found

Picture inside The Fox's Inn

We drove from Dorset to Essex around the M25 taking several hours to reach our destination.  England is in the middle of a heatwave with days of endless sunshine, heat haze, and temperatures in the high 20s.  The day we travelled was predicted to be the hottest day yet, so it was surprising (to us, at least) to see so many thousands of cars heading south on the motorway to the beach.  Surprising inasmuch as they were nose to tail and for much of the time, stopped dead.  There was no blaring horns, no road rage, just a patient, endless, traffic jam.  Could it be that only the English could spend the hottest day of the year sitting in their cars on a motorway?

So, with the help of our GPS (not only necessary for the navigation, but also for the sanity of the driver and sanctity of the marriage), we deviated to Camberley and Sandhurst for lunch, and arrived at our destination in good time.

Over the next two days we saw some very pretty areas of Essex including the oldest standing wooden church in Europe (in Greensted), the town of Maldon on the river Blackwater (famous for, among other things, its salt), the very pretty village of Finchingfield (which seriously looked like the setting for something like Midsummer Murders, it was so attractive) and Thaxted, another old village in the Essex county.  Essex is a lovely county, given a bad name by tv programmes like The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE) and the Essex lads and ladettes.

Maldon, on the Blackwater Estuary 

The Blue Boar, Maldon (on left)

Upstairs in The Blue Boar

Wooden bible covers

Greensted church

Finchingfield

Finchingfield

Thaxted

Gustav Holst lived in Thaxted, composing The Planets while here

Finally, and, to make a good ending to this travel blog, we found a charming pub called, appropriately enough, The Fox's Inn, where we had a proper Ploughman's lunch, served on a slate, with good cheeses, bread, and ham, and of course, good ale.

The Fox's Inn at Finchingfield

Picture inside the Fox's Inn