Bradwell-On-Sea – St. Peter’s Way

…And finally the sun came out! In May when we went to the Essex Camping Event there were more caches placed than we were able to handle and had many left after the weekend was over. I was waiting for that rare yellow thing to reappear in the sky after months of darkness and rain so that we could head back to the sea side and grab the rest of the caches. On Sunday 15th July the sun finally appeared!

We parked at the Bradwell-On-Sea marina on Sunday morning and headed off for a 11 mile walk to bag the 55 caches on the eastern loop of St. Peter’s Way.

The eastern loop. 55 caches over 11 miles.

The walk started off taking us along the path along the shore. There were plenty of boats out to sea, obviously the owners had also decided to make the most of the short burst of sunshine too!

Just up from Bradwell Marina

Although a bit muddy and slippery in places, the path was relatively easy to walk. A nice change from some of the over grown nettle patches and uncut rapeseed fields that we’ve had to navigate over the previous month or so. The views out to sea made it all that more enjoyable.

The fishermen managed to catch a boat! Hehe!

Along the shore

The barges out from Maldon

Heading towards the wind turbines

There was also plenty of wildlife along the walk. There was a bird observatory and a few areas of nature reserve. We were also pleasantly surprised to see a plant infested with orange and black striped caterpillars, I’d not seen caterpillars quite like this before. It turned out they were Cinnabar moth larvae, the blue and red beautiful moths that we saw a couple of around the area.

Mediterranean gulls (I think!)

Cinnabar moth larvae enjoying some Ragwort!

The real highlight of the walk was St Peter’s Chapel, a tiny Saxon chapel built in 654 AD which was also at the site of a Roman fort. We ventured inside to have a better look. It felt truly magical inside with the beams of light shining through the tiny windows onto the pews.

St Peter’s Chapel

Inside the chapel

And a bit lower

The caches were mostly easy finds, and mostly film cannisters. It was quite simply a lovely walk. We were glad that we didn’t do it on the day of the camping event in a mob with others because we would have whizzed past quickly whilst chatting and not been able to absorb the lovely scenery and spend so long at the chapel. All good things come to an end though (My feet were thankful for that!) and we were soon back at Bradwell Marina.

Docked in Bradwell Marina

And a few of the smaller boats!!!

About these ads