A friend of mine once chose to rent a house in Withermarsh Green because she dreamt of "living in the back of beyond". She didn't last long in the first one because the spooky barn freaked her out. So she moved to an old priest's house in a graveyard.
I walked passed it again today. I don't know who lives there now, but it still looks as though the occupants are impermanent. That's the feeling you get from this place: it has so many layers of history that you feel as though you are just passing through.
Starting at Homey Bridge, you can follow the road past Polstead Mill, with its Versailles-like greenhouse, and left on to the Polstead to Stoke-by-Nayland road. Usually, I would go right at the footpath sign and up the hill through the sheep field to the top right-hand corner, where a track takes you parallel to Marten's Lane. Today, it was so wet underfoot that I followed the road, dodging the morning school run traffic, and up tiny Marten's Lane. Despite it hardly being wide enough for one small car, a total of five vehicles managed to find it necessary to take that route (I'm now well practised at wedging myself on to the bank with the help of overhanging branches) rather than the much more suitable road through Polstead, which would have taken them about one minute longer. The curse of sat navs.
I followed the road towards Withermarsh Green, past the ancient cottages in the picture (a confession - that was taken on a cold, sunny morning back in April, not today in the gloom of June). I went along the road past the minuscule Catholic church flying a yellow flag (significance unknown), past the random pile of Gifford's Hall, today invisible among the June lushness. Turning left towards Shelley at the T junction, I stopped at the five-bar gate on the right, which gives a view down into the wetlands of the valley leading to Higham. Surprisingly, the water seemed no more extensive than usual (even though it's raining again) and the normal hoard of squabbling water fowl were uncharacteristically quiet.
Today it was too wet to continue up towards the hole in the hedge and across the fields to Shelley Church, and too wet even to stay on the road towards Polstead, as previous experience told me that it would have been flooded at a narrow point between two high banks with hedges on the top. I could have practised my hedge-trapezing again, but instead took the option of turning back the way I had come.
It's always surprising how different a familiar route looks when you walk it in the other direction. My discovery of the day was that the footpath signs have been replaced at the green and there is now a brand new yellow arrow pointing north-north east through the field. On several previous occasions, I have tried to find a way through an impenetrable tangle of brambles which seems as though it should be the path which is marked on the OS map. Now I know that I don't have to lug an industrial brush-cutter along with me if I want to explore that route (not that that it helps much, when the field the path goes through is usually filled with alarmingly massive and unfriendly-looking cattle). That's an adventure for another, less watery day.
Back down Marten's Lane I trudged and past Polstead pond, famous for featuring in the mystery of Maria in the Red Barn. My only companions were a furtive heron, stone-still among the soaked, overhanging branches, and a sleepy huddle of young ducks of mongrel heritage (tawny, grey, black and white), who ignored me supremely as I crept to within a footstep to take their photo. It's June, it's wet; ducks rule.
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