Taking A Break In East Anglia

Ailz's birthday and our wedding anniversary (she arranged it so there'd only be the one date I could upset her by forgetting) finds us in a Holiday Inn to the north of Colchester. We don't know East Anglia at all well- which is a prime reason for coming here. We spent most of yesterday zig-zagging about through Essex.

And this is where we had lunch- at Heybridge Basin, on the other side of the Blackwater Estuary from Maldon- but not in the pub because we'd brought a pic-nic with us. There was a battle round here in 991- between our Viking ancestors and our Saxon ancestors- which is remembered not for its own sake but because someone wrote a poem about it- such being the power of literature.



Yesterday was very hot. I ate too much pizza and drank too much wine for supper and dreamed there were people in our hotel room who I kept having to chuck out. No sooner had I closed the door on them than they were back. "So," why didn't you lock the door?" asked Ailz when I told her about it this morning.

Today we're going the Bury St Edmunds....