It has been hot, hot, hot for the last two weeks. The August landscape is parched, already harvested and standing ready for autumn. Today the wild plants all seemed exhausted with summer, as though they will be glad when autumn comes and they can throw off all their hot leaves and retreat to their cool roots. Even the nettles are sulking and don’t react with their usual vehemence when pushed gingerly aside by a scantily clad limb. Only the brambles still have any energy – enough, anyway, to send out the odd exploratory, viciously armed shoot to grab passing walkers by the trousers, or bare flesh.
I started from Stone Street, taking the footpath up into the plateau of fields, with views of Boxford, Groton and Hagmore Green. I had set out early, as the day was bound to be hot. The colours in the landscape are muted now and at that time of the morning the light was almost autumnal, but I could already feel the sun's heat as I trudged up the hill and on to the path across the fields towards the huge fir trees which march across the Hagmore Green sky-line.
When I reached the cottages in front of the tall firs, I turned right past Firs Farm and left into the farmyard. An outlier from the grand fir trees guards the entrance and I stopped to admire its enormous, ridged red trunk stretching upwards, forever trying, but never succeeding in catching up with the five giants further along the road. Perhaps it’s because time has stopped in the farmyard. Deserted wooden trailers shelter under the lopsided cart lodges. Strange pieces of red brick wall stand around, serving no apparent purpose. It all looks like an abandoned film set. I expected to see Tess of the d’Urbervilles, or an actress playing her.
On across the fields, I finally came to the road to Aveley Hall. I turned right here, then left on the footpath just before the pond. Earlier in the year, the pond was a centre of activity for ducks, moorhens, dragonflies and swooping house martins, but the drought has shrunk it to half its normal size and its bustling life had gone into hiding. I looked towards the deepest part and wondered how many unlikely neighbours are having to share the smaller and smaller space. It took me back to my childhood and the very hot summers of the mid-1970s, when our local pond on Burgh Heath in Surrey dried up so much that all the fish had to be rescued (including a huge pike that no one had known was there) and for the first time in my life I could stand on the tiny island in the middle, which had always seemed as inaccessible as the moon.
I took the path straight across the next field, now golden stubble, then right past a small wood and left at the next wood, towards the A134. A sudden, loud scuffle in the trees made me jump and I looked round to see a deer’s white backside hurtling through the undergrowth at such a speed, I couldn’t even see how big it was, let alone what species it might be. It must have been a local and knew a way through the densely packed trees which, at that speed, no pursuer could possibly have found.
I crossed the road, which looked on the point of melting, and followed the remains of the lime avenue towards Assington. The owners of this land have recently built a large new pond/reservoir, leaving the earth removed from it piled up around the edge. This mini mountain range has already been colonised, despite the drought, by swathes of thistles and docks, their purple and russet heads now about the only flowers in the whole landscape. Next year these slopes will probably be a scarlet fiesta of poppies.
I walked through to the road and down the length of Assington village, past the entrance to The Thicks, with its procession of dog walkers disappearing into the tall conifer wood. At the end of the village, I took the track towards Assington Mill, then right across a wide field that had been full of ripe and very dry barley last time I came this way, now harvested and waiting patiently for the tractor which was working the far end, almost out of sight.
I crossed the road and continued on the footpath opposite, over a stile, across another field and another stile (difficult to find, as the footpath signs had disappeared, and rickety to negotiate when I did find it). Back on track, I followed the steep field down the hill towards Tiger Hill Wood.
This exquisite woodland is one of the gems of this whole area, particularly at bluebell time, but is far less well known than its neighbour, Ager Fen. That’s probably because some walking is involved to reach it. It runs along a valley bottom, following the course of a stream, and the path goes through several water meadows before reaching the wood itself. The wetlands continue through the wood, with board walks to help keep feet dry in the boggiest bits.
One of the wood's loveliest aspects is that it is not over-managed. No young trees planted in lines and wrapped in plastic collars here. Fallen trees stay fallen and gently rot. Wobbly trees wobble until they are ready to fall (a sign warns walkers not to stray from the path in case one chooses the wrong moment to surrender to the inevitable). Undergrowth rampages (apart from on the path, which I found well maintained). Just how a woodland should be.
When I walked through the wood today, I was glad of the damp shade. I could feel how fierce the sun was in the bright patches filtering through the canopy. The greenness of the water meadows and the stream banks was a shock after the pale, parched fields I had walked through on the way.
Under the trees it seemed almost dark. I stopped to listen to the silence. Running water, like birdsong, always seems to intensify, rather than diminish the quiet of deserted places. Just as I was in danger of waxing poetic, I found myself ducking and dodging a hail of hazelnuts coming from somewhere above me. They were large and hard and were coming down with some force. Perhaps it was the wind, but when a squirrel suddenly dashed down a tree trunk next to me, flew across my path and shot up another tree further away, I thought that maybe I had come under attack for being too close to someone’s nest.
At the end of the path, I crossed a footbridge over the stream and continued to the right, along the bottom of a sloping field which appeared to be full of long, dry grasses and nothing else. A footpath sign led me through a hedge to the right and along the edge of another field, past a reservoir. The waysigns then ran out altogether and I had to consult the map to work out how to continue. The path went back to the other side of the hedge, then straight on to the right until it reached a track. Here, I went left, then immediately right. This path was shady and ragged robin was still managing to flower. A clump of thistles was shedding its down, making a fluffy white mound among the grasses to compete with the fluffy white clouds which had now begun to gather in the sky.
A little further on down the path I caught my first glimpse of the Old Bures Dragon. He is carved into the hillside on the opposite side of the valley. His head is held high to the right and his tail swirls round in a loop to the left. He first appeared in this form in 2012, courtesy of the local landowner. However, if the old story is right, he first appeared in the middle ages, as a terrifyingly real creature which had a habit of helping itself to the local sheep. Attempts to hunt the interloper were unsuccessful, as arrows were said to bounce off its scaly hide or lodge harmlessly among the spines along its back. Eventually, it hid in the marshes of the Stour Valley and disappeared. The account is known from the Chronicle of St Albans Abbey and dates from 1405. We will probably never know what the original Old Bures Dragon actually was, but its image on the hillside is more guardian spirit than sheep-slaying demon.
To reach the best view of the Dragon, I carried on to a stile on my right and followed the path past a distant lake off to the left, full of geese and other water birds, squabbling loudly in their diminishing space. The lake is out of bounds (apparently, it’s a nature reserve) and the path continues to another stile, then up a steep, grassy hill to the ancient chapel of St Stephen.
This is a magical spot, said to be the place where King Edmund was crowned on Christmas Day 855. It feels like the kind of place to crown a king, looking out across a wide valley and the gently rolling hillsides. The Dragon is king here now, seen in his full glory from a bench next to the chapel.
I said goodbye to the Dragon and walked back down the path, over the stile, past the nature reserve and then straight on up a steep hill, through a fallow field. Looking back, there were distant views of Bures and its church in the valley. Perhaps one day, somewhere in the marshes down there, someone will find a strange, long-tailed, spiny backed skeleton.
At the top of the hill, I followed the path to the right, then left on a track through some trees to the Ager Fen road. At the road, I turned left and followed it past the car park for Ager Fen. It was filled with cars, dogs, children and school-holiday-stressed parents. Ager Fen has its charms, but I wondered whether any of these visitors had ever thought about finding the lovely wood a short walk down the road, or knew that walking just a little way further, they could go and visit a dragon.
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