This North Essex walk is one for the nature lovers, taking in four nature reserves. The walk can (and should!) be extended by rambling along the trails within these reserves before re-joining the main route. There’s a variety of terrain; farmland, woodland, meadows, and River Stour estuary and salt marsh. It’s an undulating walk with several steady climbs, but they are barely noticeable.
14.2 km / 8.8 Miles
Link to OS Map Route: Ramsey to Wrabness Nature Reserve Circular Walk
Conditions: Low to mid 20s, Windy, Blue skies and fluffy clouds!
Parking: Limited, expect to park on roads or use a reserve car park along the route.
The route is blighted by a few sections of road walking. The worst of these sections is, unexpectedly, on the long-distance Essex Way footpath. It’s a 60mph, winding road with some blind corners and although it’s a country road, it’s busy enough to be unenjoyable.
We started in Ramsey to finish at the pub, but if you want to access the walk by rail, then start at Wrabness. You can also cut Ramsey off the route completely, heading west from Copperas Woods instead of following the Essex Way South to Ramsey (but missing out on views of the windmill as you approach the village).
Essex Coastal Challenge
This walk was the final one on our Essex Wildlife Trust Coastal Challenge. We walked a total 43 miles (our target was 35) of Essex coastal habitat throughout August (Marine Month) and documented our journey here to raise awareness of Essex Wildlife Trust, the work they do, and the impact of climate change on our coast. You can support our challenge and donate to the trust here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/lovewildwalks.
Read about our other walks from the challenge:
Week One: Leigh-on-Sea Circular from Two Tree Island
Week Two: North Fambridge to Burnham-on-Crouch River Walk
Week Three: Dengie Peninsular Circular Coastal Walk from Tillingham, nr. Bradwell-on-Sea
Farmland Climb to Stour Wood
We started and ended this walk on the Essex Way, along a perilous path surrounded by nettles – I really need to stop wearing shorts on walks. The path soon opened up and we followed it through a series of interconnected horse paddocks. The windmill stood behind a fence to the left and was easy to miss. We kept looking behind us to catch glimpses of it, but knew we’d get a good view on the return route anyway.
Where the path splits, we took the left-hand gate to leave the Essex Way – the return route is through the right-hand gate. We continued our steady climb through a very dry field of lost crop and along field edges where a farmer was harvesting hay. There are few waymarkers but we did have to check the map a few times; presumably this footpath is less used than the Essex Way so was a bit harder to follow.
The wind was annoyingly blustery but thankfully only bad on this hilltop rather than the whole walk. Along the way we stopped to give some water to a tired bee; flying in this windy weather is undoubtedly hard work!
As we crossed a rickety footbridge between two fields, the map was essential; we were to turn left along the field edge but there were no signs nor evidence of a path. This popped us out onto a road which we crossed and into Stour Wood.
Stour Wood and Wrabness
Stour Wood is owned by the Woodland Trust and managed by RSPB as part of the Stour Estuary Nature Reserve. The wood has a lot of ancient fauna, including an abundance of fern, and is home to dunnocks and woodpeckers. The trees are predominately horse chestnut but efforts are underway to improve the diversity. In places, it’s not as dense as one would expect an ancient wood to be, but this may be a result of intentional coppicing as part of the diversity project.
There are a few routes through the wood (we took purple, to yellow, back to purple) which are mostly wide, stony paths. We exited the wood down a tree lined farm track and entered Wrabness on Rectory Road.
Wrabness is pretty much just a single road, you would not expect a village of this size to have a rail station! At the other end of Station Road, a developer has purchased some land, so the village may be a little larger soon. It has a lovely community feel however, with residents donating fruit, veg, even bird boxes from their front gardens. There is also a charming community garden outside the station.
As we exited the village, the footpath faded away and we walked on a quiet, narrow road for a short time before heading back onto a footpath through Brakey Grove. There was an unexpected climb up and over an unfenced, ungated level crossing in the middle of this tiny forest – very tense! The grove opened out into a meadow which we followed to the main road (more road walking…) and into Wrabness Nature Reserve.
Wrabness Nature Reserve
Wrabness Nature Reserve sits on a former mine depot, which closed in 1963. The site has been the subject of numerous planning applications, including for a prison. Fortunately, the 52 acres was designated as a nature reserve in 1992 with Essex Wildlife Trust managing it today.
The reserve’s former life as a mine depot means it benefits from hardcore roads around the reserve. It’s not the prettiest reserve, but nature has well and truly taken over and it’s a pleasantly wild space with an abundance of scrub, trees, and meadows. At one point, Martin noticed I had acquired a hitch hiker; a red-legged shieldbug.
As with Stour Wood, there’s a couple of tracks through the reserve. The car park was busy but most people were here to forage blackberries rather than observe wildlife. Ascending up the first left after walking the long “drive” from the car park, we turned around and could see what we thought was a stately home across the water in Suffolk; it is in fact the impressive Royal Hospital School, Ipswich. We made our way towards the river and sat in a bird hide that had stunning views across the River Stour over to the private school.
We hugged the riverside on a dirt trail which emerged onto the sea wall, a good platform for observing the marshes being flooded by the incoming tide. The country-boundary Stour is tidal all the way past Manningtree and the waves were obvious on this windy day.
An eerie, accidental detour
The sea wall path is unfortunately short lived due to a large section of privately owned beach and land. We re-joined the Essex Way footpath which bypasses this land along a path lined with trees.
This tree tunnel is almost a kilometre long and passes the Oakfield Wood Nature Reserve green burial sites on the right-hand side. For each burial, a native broad leaved tree is planted, thus each burial contributes towards creating a new woodland on what used to be arable farmland. When the burial ground is full, it will be managed as a nature reserve by Essex Wildlife Trust.
Emerging from the tunnel and on to a track, the Essex Way turns right. We turned left to get back to the coast sooner. Do not do this; despite there being a footpath on OS map, it is impassable due to erosion and we ended up turning back. This unintentional addition of distance was not without interest, though.
The whole area had a mysterious air. The path skirts the edge of the previously mentioned private land. An abandoned and badly damaged Land Rover and accompanying caravan lay off the side of the track amongst long grass. To the right, a sizable oval building with wrap-around windows was set-back from the track behind imposing metal fencing. The seemingly uninhabited building resembled something between a luxury residence and an art deco conference centre.
The footpath towards the coast was wildly overgrown and the sign warning of erosion was set so far back into the hedges we almost missed it. It had certainly been there some time, yet the path itself was not equally impenetrable. Given that the beach below is also private, the whole situation was just eerie, strange, and unexpected. Regardless, a sign at the bottom of this track by the “T-Junction” would have saved us the extra walk (but on the flip side, we wouldn’t have seen the creepy surroundings).
The Essex Way along the River Stour
Retracing our steps, we followed the Essex Way along a road on the other side of Wrabness village to where we were earlier. This part of the village has a few houses and All Saints Church. All Saints Church is the oldest building in Wrabness, dating from around 1100. In the 17th Century, the bell tower collapsed, and the bell was moved to a “temporary” cage. The cage and bell are still in the churchyard today, and the church is still without its tower.
The Essex Way continues down a gated gravel road with a menacing ‘PRIVATE’ sign (and then small writing saying ‘footpath only’). Heading down, we spotted a highly decorated, temple-esque, structure in the woods! Googling, we discovered this is Greyson Perry’s ‘A House for Essex’.
Like other building commissioned by Living Architecture, ‘A House for Essex’ is as much a piece of artwork as it is a house. The building tells the story of a fictional woman called Julie Cope and showcases the unique qualities of Essex through its exuberant design and artworks. The ornamental house, which sleeps 4, is accessed via a road to the right of Wrabness station. Although the house’s subject Julie is a working-class Essex woman, an overnight stay will set you back at least £540 per couple. Hardly the house for the people that the name suggests.
We followed the Essex Way until it finally returned to the sea wall. Kayakers were canoeing in the creeks amongst the marsh. To the east, Harwich cranes and container ships dominated the horizon.
There were a few birds but our highlight was a bloom of Moon Jellyfish along the shoreline. These common and harmless (to humans) jellyfish are identifiable by four circles: these circles are their gonads.
The seawall turns to a narrow footpath and passes through a copse with a tree swing, before opening out into a meadow alongside Copperas Bay. This is an usually green coastal walk, with hedges and trees between the path and the river Stour, sometimes only allowing for fleeting glimpses of the estuary. Woodland is also not far from the shoreline, contrasting with the flat marsh and farmland we’ve seen on other Essex coastal walks in Leigh-on-Sea or along the River Crouch. The river is undeniably tidal, but at high water you feel as though you could be inland.
Copperas Wood
The Essex Way turns south and heads into Copperas Wood, the third nature reserve of the walk. This area is also managed by RSPB and is very unusual in Eastern England for providing a woodland habitat right next to salt marshes and mud flats in the Stour Estuary. Copperas Wood together with Stour Wood forms the Stour Estuary Nature Reserve; 70ha of woodland, 380 ha of intertidal mudflats and saltmarsh, and 70ha of grazing marsh.
A path through the reserve extends east to bird hides overlooking the mud flats and creeks. Dogs are not allowed on this path, and it is a no-through route.
After crossing the railway bridge, we passed into the Essex Wildlife Trust area of Copperas Wood. Technically it’s the same wood, but it still counts as four different nature reserves on the walk! This patch of ancient woodland was badly damaged in a 1987 storm but it has certainly bounced back and there are plenty of carpets that would look beautiful in spring.
Essex Way to Ramsey: Ramsey Windmill
We left the calmness of the woods to face a busy country road. It’s alarming that a major long-distance footpath like the Essex Way passes along this road. There are grass verges but how usable they are will be dependent on weather. There were quite a few motorists, luckily all considerate, but with fast traffic and a couple of blind bends, it was a relief to step into the fields just after the row of power lines.
The walk back was simple, although that blustery farmland wind was back in force on the unsheltered hilltop! It figures that this was a sensible place for Ramsey Windmill. The Grade II listed windmill is an east-Suffolk style post mill which moved to its Essex location in 1842. It was one of the last two mills to work in Essex. Remedial work was done in the 1970s to prevent its collapse, but it could probably benefit from some more; it’s certainly not in as good a state of repair as Bragg’s Mill in Ashdon, for example.
The descent to the village benefited from picturesque views of the windmill nestled among sloping fields. Particularly as we approached the horse paddocks again, the landscape looked as though it might have done 150 years ago.
Passing back along the overgrown footpath (and stepping in dog turd 😡) we walked through the village to enjoy a drink at the 17th century pub, The Castle Inn. The pub is quite modern inside now – not that we spent much time in it, as we were in the garden – but the staff were friendly, welcoming, the beer tasted good and corona measures were taken seriously.
An abundance of parked cars spoils the cottage-lined main road through Ramsey; these old houses having no off-street parking of course. Yes, our car also contributed to this eyesore, but there’s no way all the cars belonged to ramblers!
We’d hoped to have time to visit Harwich old town, but we had to get home to relieve Jack the greyhound; Harwich will have to wait for another day.
Love Wild Walks
