Essex Walks

Short Walks
Long Walks
Instructions

Short, Circular Routes

Short Walks includes routes of less than 20 miles. They are nearly all circular, so once you've completed your walk, you'll find yourself back at your car or public transport link.
You can explore the details of the route and surrounding area by using the interactive (zoomable) online maps from Ordnance Survey and Google.
Once you have decided which route you want to walk, you can download and print off the three PDFs of (1) the map, (2) the directions and (3) the photos to take with you.

West Essex

Bumbles Green, nr Harlow 7 miles
Jury Hill, nr Brentwood 4½ miles
Moreton, nr Harlow 2½ miles
East Tilbury, Thurrock 6½ miles
Stebbing, nr Great Dunmow 7 miles
The Rodings, nr Chelmsford 7½ miles
Ingatestone, nr Brentwood 5 miles
Elmdon, nr Saffron Walden 11 miles
Abridge, nr Loughton 5 miles
Matching, nr Harlow 5½ miles
Great Sampford, nr Saffron Walden 5½ miles
Little Hallingbury, nr Bishop's Stortford 4 miles
Hatfield Broad Oak, nr Bishop's Stortford 11 miles
Epping Green, nr Harlow 4¾ miles
Good Easter, nr Chelmsford 3 miles
Lots more coming soon.....!

East Essex

Castle Hedingham, nr Halstead 10 miles
Paglesham, nr Rochford 13½ miles
Tollesbury Wick, nr Maldon 9 miles
Woodham Walter, nr Danbury 5½ miles
Admiral McHardy Way, Little Baddow 9 miles
Clacton to Walton 7 miles
Downham, nr Wickford 7½ miles
Steeple, nr Maldon 4½ miles
Wormingford, nr Colchester 5½ miles
Messing, nr Kelvedon 4½ miles
Earls Colne, nr Halstead 4½ miles
East Hanningfield, nr South Woodham Ferrers 8 or 9 miles
Ulting, nr Little Baddow 8 or 11½ miles
Bocking, nr Braintree 6 miles
Shalford, nr Braintree 3½ miles
Bradwell-on-Sea 12 miles

Long Trails

Long walks is a section for Trails - long distance footpaths that can't be walked in a day, for example The Essex Way. The trails are chunked into walkable sections with the emphasis on getting to the start and finish of each section via public transport where possible.

The Essex Way: Backwards!

The Essex Way is a long distance path stretching for 82 miles right across Essex. Although it officially starts in Epping and ends in Harwich, it actually is signposted both ways, so Essex Walks thought it would be nice to start at the coast and head inland. The route is lovely, taking you through ancient woodland, open farmland, tree-lined river valleys and leafy green lanes, with plenty of picturesque and historic villages along the way. We decided to break the route into sections so that each represented a moderately demanding walk of around 8 - 12 miles, and which could be accessed via environmentally friendly public transport. So each section of the route starts and stops either within half a mile of a train station, or near a bus stop with a regular service to a major town. We have tried to indicate refreshment places along the route as well.

Centenary Circle

The Centenary Circle is a circular footpath circumnavigating Chelmsford. The 21 mile long route has been broken into five sections starting at the village common in Galleywood, south of Chelmsford. The anti-clockwise route then visits Sandon, Springfield, Broomfield and Writtle before returning to Galleywood. If you wish to break the walk over more than one day, each section starts near a bus stop which will take you back into Chelmsford town centre.

The Saffron Trail

The Saffron Trail starts in Southend-on-Sea, winding north west for 71 miles until it arrives in Saffron Walden. There are some lovely sections along the route including riverside walks, visits to unspoilt villages and historic monuments, strolls through beautiful woodlands in the heart of the urban sprawl, and many miles of walking in the wilds of the Essex countryside. However there are also several miles of urban street walking and some extensive rural road walking, often with no verge. We have broken the route into 7 sections which can be accessed via public transport at either end. Pubs are listed too.

St Peter's Way

St Peter's Way is 41 miles in length, running from Ongar to the Dengie Peninsula near Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex. Starting in Ongar the trail runs eastwards through agricultural land visiting many historic Essex villages, with scenic views of Hanningfield Reservoir and the Blackwater estuary on the way. At Tillingham, the route traverses the Essex Marshes and joins the coastal footpath heading north to the site of St Peter-on-the-Wall, an ancient Saxon chapel built on the ruins of a Roman fort by St Cedd in 654 AD. The route is shown here in 6 separate sections of between 5 and 9 miles long.

Key to icons used on the Essex Walks OS & Google maps :

Parking
Photo scene
Video
360° Panorama
Food
Railway Station
Bus stop
Pub
Toilets
Information
Walk route
Alternative way
Direction No. 1
Direction No. 2
Direction No. 3 etc etc

How to Use this Section

The full list of Essex Walks on this website is available under the main menu 'Short Walks' and 'Long Walks' links. 'Short' walks are between 2 and 19 miles long and are usually circular. 'Long' walks are 20 or more miles long. These include Long Distance Footpaths which have been divided into sections that take no more than a day, starting/stopping at convenient public transport links. Click on any one of them to get more details.

For each walk you will find:

Description & Route: facts about the walk including its length, parking and transport, refreshments, access to an interactive route map (on either Ordnance Survey or Google Maps) with pop-up photographs and a brief description of the walk itself, with a downloadable PDF of the routemap to print off.
Directions: point by point verbal instructions on how to find your way around the route, including cross-references to the photographs
Photos: mainly cross-referencing the instructions: a picture tells a thousand words! Click on any photo to expand it, then you can scroll through all the photos using the Prev and Next commands
History: for many of the walks there is some background information which you might find interesting

PEAR Help

A 'PEAR' icon in the walk description gives you an 'at-a-glance' impression of the walks convenience and quality by rating Parking, Easiness, Amenity and Refreshments out of 3.

The route map is interactive: you will see various icons along the route. The numbered ones tie back to the cross-referenced photos and show important points along the routes. The photos come up as a thumb-nail with a brief description, for more detail click on the thumb-nail and the picture will expand so you can see it more clearly. Click the back button to return to the route. Other icons are explained in the key on the right.

More help with the latest version of Google maps, including 'Street View' is available here

Help with Map

Once you have decided which route you want to walk, you can download and print off a pdf of the directions and photos to take with you.

Printing Maps

You can also print off a copy of the route map. The description page of each walk has an Adobe PDF document with a screenshot of the route on an Ordnance Survey map. Click on the link marked Download Map PDF and print it off in landscape. However, these maps are fixed in scale and size - so you might want to use the interactive map, where you can zoom in on different parts of the route to get more detail and print these off separately.

If you are printing the screen direct from your browser, we would suggest using the Firefox browser for the most reliable results. When printing from your browser, you may want to optimise the map before printing. Drag the map so that the route appears on the top left of your screen. Go to Print Preview: you may need to toggle between portrait and landscape, and you may wish to alter the % print size. Due to the layered nature of OpenLayers graphical rendering, sometimes the map will not display in Print Preview. This can sometimes be remedied by playing with size / orientation settings in Print Preview. Allow time for all the map tiles to load before trying to print. At the time of writing, current versions of Google Chrome and Safari for Windows fail to produce consistent results in rendering the full screen maps.

Alternatively, for Windows 7 and Vista users, you can capture the screen or a selection of it with the " Snipping Tool " and print it out with Paint or other graphic program such as Picture Viewer or Irfanview . To use the Snipping Tool, first get the walk route displayed on the full screen OS Map, then go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Snipping Tool and drag the cursor around the area you want to capture. The captured map image can then be saved as a .PNG, .JPG or .GIF file for printing off.

Fold up the map, directions and photos and put them in your pocket, and go off and enjoy your walk, unencumbered!