Unusually for a Bank Holiday Monday, the weather was warm and sunny when fifteen members and one guest gathered at Leigh-on-Sea station for a walk through Hadleigh Castle Country Park. After a short stretch of pavement walking, we headed away from the road to a rutted path, fortunately dry but with obvious signs of previous mud. Our way soon started climbing with the ruins of the castle appearing above the trees. We entered its atmospheric domain, wandered around what remained of its fortifications and enjoyed splendid views of the Thames Estuary and Canvey Island.

On the most perfect day, an elite team of 7 walkers started out on our 12.5 mile walk from Battle station. The weather was glorious, sunny & warm with cooling breezes when required. 

We started on the 1066 Country Walk which might be worth doing more of as it goes from Pevensey to Rye & sounds lovely. There were several miles of undulating paths in woodland, surrounded by trees with their vibrant spring-green leaves, & birdsong. If any of us had been feeling stressed this would have been the perfect antidote.

The next part was over meadows in a river valley with sheep & lambs enjoying being alive on such a morning, or so I imagined. We had a picnic lunch sitting on some very handy, low brick structures by the Brede Valley Waterworks. The path zigzagged after that for no obvious reason & we made a group decision to scale a gate that was padlocked for absolutely no visible reason & simply led to the lane which we needed to walk along. However, it had a vicious line of barbed wire over the top rung so we were forced to abandon our vote for freedom of movement & follow the official line.