A weekend in East Anglia

Y and I have just spent a truly lovely weekend north-east of London discovering the towns of Long Melford, Lavenham, Mistley, Colchester and Dedham in Suffolk. Or was it Essex? Sources seemed conflicted as to where we actually were. Y said “You can’t say you went on a mini-break to Essex. You should definitely say Suffolk”. The man working at the car rental place solved the problem “The weather’s always this beautiful in East Anglia!”. East Anglia it is then. Wherever we’ve been, it was superb. Here’s our itinerary:

1. We caught the train from London’s Liverpool Street station to Ipswich – the train takes about 1 hour and costs 11 pounds per person return. Our preference is for a quick getaway out of London and then to pick up a hire car, avoiding any driving in London.

2. Avis car hire is situated a very short walk from Ipswich Station and within minutes we were in our little red Punto careering through the gorgeous countryside.

3. We headed straight to Long Melford (30min drive away). The drive from Ipswich was just breath-taking, with rolling green hills, trees and flowers in full blossom, quaint little villages with churches and stone walls. So English!

4. We walked up and down the main stretch in Long Melford and had lunch at The Lounge (above). We stuck with the basics – a parma ham and cheese Panini with coffees. Service was friendly and lunch was good. The town is lovely (especially if you like shopping for "antiques" - using the term loosely), but perhaps suffers from a lot of traffic going down the main road.

5. Our next top was Lavenham (15min drive - above). As soon as I saw this amazingly pretty town I wished we’d skipped Long Melford and had lunch here at one of the little cafes or pubs. We went through the National Trust’s guildhall which was for the weavers and cloth makers of the town back in the day. For 1 pound you can pick up a map of a walk in Lavenham from the National Trust shop – I recommend doing this as you’ll go through some lovely streets and take in some lovely houses, the amazing church and get a lot of info too.

6. We then headed to Mistley, stopping on our way to check out the Hall Farm Shop (30min drive from Lavenham, Mistley is a further 15min drive) which had an impressive array of local produce and a café (above and  below). If you have sunny weather, like we did, you could drop by the farm shop first and pick up a picnic to enjoy in the church yard at Lavenham.

7. We have an incredibly reliable book, Room at the Inn, which is a guide to England’s gorgeous pubs with accommodation and their restaurants. We try to stay and eat at as many of the pubs in this book as we can and have never gone wrong. On the book’s recommendation we stayed at The Mistley Thorn, right on the River Stour. The service was incredibly friendly and we were soon settled into a lovely room, overlooking the river.

We went for a stroll along the river to Manningtree before enjoying a pre-prandial Prosecco back at The Mistley Thorn.

8. One of the best parts of staying at an excellent pub is that it’s not very far to go for dinner (stumbling home afterwards is easy too!). The food in the restaurant at The Mistley Thorn was top notch. The seafood on offer was mind boggling and I struggled to make a choice, which is rare! Between us we (greatly) enjoyed Mersey Island oysters, lightly fried squid, seabass with Spring Greens and roast tomatoes, and plaice with fennel butter. I was super impressed by both the service and the food. Plus you’ve got to love out of London prices!

9. We had a lazy but light breakfast (included in the package from The Mistley Thorn - you can also do cookery workshops next door by the way) before heading off to Colchester (20min drive). On the road from Mistley, before the Dedham turn off, we saw a couple of farm shops and I stopped to buy a very healthy bunch of rhubarb from a farmer’s roadside stall – keep your eyes peeled!

10. We had about 1.5 hours to walk around Colchester before collecting a friend – we saw the Norman castle and the park which has a Roman wall running through it; and two English Heritage properties (St John’s Abbey Gate and the 1100AD ruins of St Botolph's Priory). These sights were terrific and Colchester’s history is very interesting, however it’s not the prettiest of towns, so you might want to skip this and do the walk from Manningtree to Dedham instead, if you’re feeling energetic - it’s meant to be one of England’s great walks.

11. Lunch with our friend was in Dedham (not far from Mistley, less than 10min drive) at another pub recommended by our "Room at the Inn" book. Dedham is a quaint and very pretty little town, with a river running through it where you can hire a row boat. It was positively heaving on the Sunday we were there. Lunch was at The Sun Inn (you can stay there also) and our mains of cod baked with lemon and anchovies, and slow cooked duck were hearty and delicious. I insisted we have a soft serve ice cream cone (with a choc flake of course!) from one of the tea rooms before we strolled around the town.

12. After dropping our friend back to Colchester we headed back to Ipswich to drop the car (20min drive) and return to London. It had only been 2 days, but it felt like we’d been away for ages. We arrived in London refreshed, relaxed and ready for the week ahead … until the alarm went off on Monday morning …