Pootler

  Dedham Vale : The Tour de Stour   Route GPX File Denham Vale   Intro The ride circles Dedham Vale, a designated 'National Landscape' of 'Outstanding Natural Beauty' comprising the lower Stour Valley on the Suffolk / Essex border. It begins at Manningtree Station and circles back from Bures. Constable Country so it is beholden to all to visit Flatford Mill and Dedham but there are other sights, particularly for olde building nuttes like me. For the most part it follows quiet country roads (there are a few exceptions) and although you might think of Suffolk as being very flat, remember you are cycling up a river valley and rivers don’t flow uphill. Zooming In Dedham Vale – Bucolic Constable country. Flatford Mill – The scene of Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’. Ancient wool towns and villages Dedham Village The usual oddities including a dragon.  Route Tips Flatford Mill and Dedham are near the start and finish of the ride respectively. The northern leg of the r...

Country cottages. Warped ships' timbers, honeysuckle, pixie-cut thatched roof,  a misshapen chimney, the aroma of baking and  Vaughan Williams 'Pastoral' drifting out of the small paned window. Very twee.  Do you ever wonder whether they are really ancient or just more recent fakes?  This post is about the oldest, visible, surviving rural housing used by the common people and in particular, how much you can see from the road. It is impractical to include much detail in a post aimed at mobile phone readers, so  I have added notes and links in a postscript i n case you want to peek behind the floral curtains and take a closer look.  It isn't easy. Timber was the common building material and it lasts well, but the main survivors from medieval times are the stone buildings, like churches and mansions, which I am not concerned with here. There are few details, let alone complete houses, that have survived e xtensions, reconfigurations and improvements; and no c...

  Brass Point nr. Beachy Head I introduced the Chalk in my previous post.  Rolling hills  of pure white stone  surround London and the Thames Valley. T he Chilterns and Downs are  'ancient' country, the 'bleached clean bones of old England' and  Tolkien's Barrow Downs.   Wonderful stuff.  There aren’t many places in the world where pure chalk rises to the surface, and most of them are in England.  If you are walking, it is usually dry and springy underfoot and on a bike the slopes are merciful. Cretaceous Earth Its origins are described in the first two posts in my 'Deep Past' series; Links: ' From Hell to High Water '  and ' Coming Up For Air '.  A short reprise. The chalk was formed at the bottom of an ancient sea at  around the same latitude where you now find North Africa. Sharks swam in it, crabs scuttled along the bed, and coiled carnivorous cephalopods called ammonites floated about.  Then as now, at the bottom of t...