Glenn and I were looking for a 30 km work out and decided to do the two walks that I did the week before, the John Ray Walk from Braintree to Witham and the Blackwater Rail Trail from Witham to Maldon, in one day. We left a car in Maldon and Sue drove us over to Braintree for the start of the walk at Braintree Station. The weather was glorious; a nice sunny day rather chilly to start with but it warmed up to 13 degrees C early afternoon.

Since I described the walk in detail in last weeks walk, in this report I have just high lighted some aspects, particularly where we took a slightly different route.

A really interesting story lies behind the comment above that the "Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A29 Suevic on 20 December 1915". The "Suevic" was one fo five "Jubilee Class" (so-called because the commissioning of these ships coincided with the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria) built by Harland and Wolf for the White Star Line for service on the Liverpool - Cape Town - Sydney route. In 1907 she was approaching Plymouth and ran aground at full speed on the Stag Rock on Maenheere Reef a mile off the Lizard in Cornwall. They could not re-float the vessel, but as the rear 120 m was undamaged, it was separated from the bow by dynamite (no oxy-acetylene cutters in those days) and towed to Southampton. A new bow section was constructed by Harland and Wolf and the ship was repaired. During the first World war it was requisitioned and in military service was known as His Majesty's Australian Transport HMAT 29 and made several journeys, one of which John Osmond Barnard was abord.In later life the vessel was sold to a Norwegian company and was converted to a whaler, and was eventually sunk by the Germans as it tried to sneek out of Gothenberg with other vessels during WWII.

The full story of the Suevic can be read on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Suevic

We continued on our way, past Cressing Temple, along Temple Lane, and down the farm track towards Whiteheads Farm.

Here we studied the map so as not to make the same route error that I had made the previous week, but our concentration was disturbed by an extremely aggressive dog who followed us for a while and was intent on taking a chunk out of our leg! We got much closer to the official route that I had done the previous week but we went slightly off piste towards the end. We did eventually get on to the official path which goes parallel to Tarecroft Wood, and eventually came out onto Rickstones Road. We crossed here, and went down Rectory Lane

We eventually came to Forest Road and Forest Road pond, which has been there since the middle of the 19th century. The seat commemorates Councillor Dr. Bob Evans who was a town and district councillor for many years. This would be a good place for lunch if you are doing the entire John Ray & Blackwater Rail Trail route, but we decided top press on to Witham Station where I knew there was a small coffee stand.

We continued down Forest Road until we came to the junction with Cypress Road; here the path goes off to the left and afetr a couple of hundred meters turns left into Cut Throat lane, parallel to the railway line. Afetr a short distance you cross a railar track via a pedestrian crossing and on the right is a huge factory. This is Bairds malt which makes approximately 48,000 tons of brewing and distilling malts annually using barley from East Anglia. The trail turns into Albert Road and on towards Witham Station.

On reaching Witham station we had clocked up 16.8 km, so it was time for a coffee and a short rest.

We followed the same route for the Blackwater Rail Trail as I had done the week before until we came to the T-junction in the rail with the zig-zag ramp with hand rails leading down to Blackwater Lane.