Below is a copy of the article that appeared in the June 2018 edition of the Ramblers South East Walker.
Walking the Uttlesford Way
In 2012 my husband bought a booklet entitled Discover Uttlesford – Circular Walks along the Uttlesford Way in Essex written by the local author Peter Cooper duly signed and collected from his home in Clavering. We were still working at the time and although walked fairly regularly with the Uttlesford Ramblers were pretty much fair weather walkers with five or six miles about our limit.
The Way is a chain of 16 circular walks centred around Saffron Walden and are a variety of lengths from 4.5 miles as the shortest, up to 12 miles as the longest. It starts and finishes in Stansted Mountfitchet, our home village, so in July 2012 we embarked on our first walk. This was Walk No 16, which is actually the last one if you do them in number order, but as we could do this from home started with this one first. The instructions for all of the walks are in an ‘out and back’ format but with different routes each way so with this one from Elsenham to Stansted it was easy to follow starting with the ’back’ section.
Having completed the first walk, a few weeks later we did another section this time Walk No 12 Debden (the one near Saffron Walden not the one near Loughton!) to Widdington and back a leisurely 4.5 miles. We didn’t complete another section until April 2013 with a more extensive walk of 7.5 miles from Stansted Mountfitchet to Manuden again starting from home.
We could now see a bit of a pattern forming which seemed to involve doing the shorter and nearer walks first so tried to devise a plan working our way up to the longer walks as we progressed through the Way. Our diary of walks continued over the following years, completing our final section of 9 miles with Walk No 7 Great Chesterford to Hadstock on Saturday 24th February 2018 , a beautiful sunny winters day ,in the company of Clive, Jo and Paul of Uttlesford Ramblers. Such is the Uttlesford way of walking; some of the walks were completed starting from the published end to allow us to enjoy a pub lunch, so celebrated with a lovely lunch at the Plough in Great Chesterford. If asked what barriers we came across during our walks, it wasn’t blocked paths, bulls in fields or poor weather but the demise of the great British pub! Some had closed, some were only open on certain days and some had changed to more expensive ‘gastro pubs’ or restaurants. Thanks to all the pubs keeping up the tradition of welcoming us as walkers, as long as we don’t bring in any mud, of course.
Over the time it has taken us to complete the Uttlesford Way we have both retired, celebrated our Ruby Wedding Anniversary and more grandchildren have arrived. We still walk regularly with the group but age has caught up with us and six miles is now about our limit as long as there is a pub lunch at the end!
Sylvia and Brian Hayes
Uttlesford Ramblers
Peter Cooper's book is currently being updated so look out for a new version soon