You’ve already seen a picture of the Essex-Suffolk border. Assuming you’ve seen Constable’s ‘The Haywain’, that is: the Stour (the river into which the farmer has cleverly driven his cart) forms the county boundary, meaning the land on the left is Suffolk, that on the right, Essex. Years of David Beckham and jokes about girls in white stilettos had rather inclined me against Essex, so when I moved to Suffolk it was galling to discover I had a Colchester postcode. Only gradually did I realise how well the two counties work together.
This part of the world is beautifully untrendy — it’s on the way to nowhere other than the North Sea, so, unlike the Cotswolds, we are spared invasion by tourist coaches. Flatford Mill (home of ‘The Haywain’) is at the eastern end of the boundary. Further inland are the villages of Nayland and Polstead, both of which feature in Ruth Rendell stories.
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