Littley Green Walk

Details of Walk

• Date of Walk: 20/09/2009

• Distance: 5.59 Miles

• Level of Difficulty: A Moderate Walk

• Car Park:  The Compasses CM3 1BU

• Refreshments:  The Compasses & Green Man

• No Photos Taken on the Walk

On the way to Littley Green we met my sister Diana and Adrian driving out of Gt Leighs heading towards Chelmsford on a roundabout and we waved to them as we exited the roundabout, they must have wondered where we were going as it is only a little road leading to no major town. Littley Green is a tiny hamlet no shops or church but it has a pub called The Compasses Inn. We left the car on the verge opposite the pub and carried on up the road to a junction where we turned right on the road signposted to Hartford End. Keeping on the road and round a sharp left hand bend withLittley park on the corner and here there is good views looking out over Chelmer valley. Once round the bend it was down hill towards the River Chelmer and when we reached the bottom we had the Old Ridley's Brewery in front of us, for many years after Grays brewery closed in Chelmsford Ridleys was the only brewery in Essex. They also had several pubs and The Compasses being one of them at Littley Green is the nearest and it earned the title of "brewery tap". Ridleys Brewery was sold to Greene King in 2005 and The Compasses was sold to Joss Ridley in 2008 and believe it or not the Ridley Brewery was bought again by one of the Ridley family in 2011. We turned left here and then right walking down the side of the brewery to reach the Mill House where we walked through the grounds which is the home of the Ridley family and the house has been built over the river.

When we come across these places it makes me feel good as no way would we have seen this place or many other places as it is only by doing these walks, by car we would have just drove past not knowing or seeing them. We followed the path through the garden to a metal gate and then we took the path to take us round The Gorse and when we came to the end of the wood we went up a field edge. At the next field we crossed it heading for a gap in the hedge by a modern looking house. We were now at Stumps Cross where we turned right along the road for a few yards and then left down a green lane known as Dunmow Lane, for those of you that do not know what a green lane is, well its like a road but mainly used for tractors to get from and to different fields but if you wanted to you could drive down it. The lane is around 1.25 miles long and you are in glorious seclusion with hedges and trees on both sides. Nearly at the end of the lane we turned left and headed towards a white topped marker post on the ridge where we followed a ditch on our right hand side to the next marker post.

We entered the field which had bulls in it and they always want to come over, whether it is because they are interested in Bryn our dog or what but we did not stand around to find out we just made a beeline for the next style. Once on the road we should have turned left but we decide to turn right and walk up to the Green Man which is supposed to be the oldest pub in Essex, here we had a cup of coffee. After the break we retraced our steps back along the road and went pass the stile for about 40 yards and turned right down a track to a stile by a gate and a farm bridge over the river Chelmer. We went across a meadow to a gate and then over a field and the we had to cross two stiles. We then headed uphill with a hedge on our left which brought us out on to a road which is Essex Regiment Way.

This is where we went wrong we crossed the road and turned left following the road but we should have crossed the road and carried straight on, but it did not matter as we took another parallel path that brought us out further down the route, but I must admit we did have to work our way through high stinging nettles and a bush. We came across a very small man made pond where someone had build a bridge over to a island. We found a really nice spot a bit further on where there was a couple of trunks laying down which was ideal to sit and rest those feet by a river. Near a bridge over the river there was three stiles and we had to cross the one on the right taking us down to a sunken lane where we turned right to climb up the lane to a green at Butlers which is another fine house. From here we turned left and followed the road into Littley Green with the pub just through the village.