Constable Country

I've decided, in an effort to speed up these ramblings, to choose one special day from each week to tell you about. But which day? This is the dilemma.

We've moved on to Suffolk now and I have to decide which of those special days was the most special. Will it be the visit to the magical, moated Oxburgh Hall? Or the day I got lost on Wicken Fen? Or perhaps the day in Bury St Edmunds, the town where Sam Weller met Mr Pickwick at the Angel Hotel in The Pickwick Papers, not to mention it's wonderful Abbey ruins set in beautiful, peaceful gardens for all to enjoy. Or what about the day cycling around Cambridge, now that was a special day. But I think perhaps it will be the day spent in Constable Country that I most want to tell you about.

John Constable, the renowned landscape artist, was born in East Bergholt in 1776, the son a wealthy corn merchant who owned the mill in Flatford, on the river between East Bergholt and Dedham.

The young John walked each day from his home in East Bergholt to school in Dedham, passing on his way all the beautiful countryside of the Dedham Vale wherein flows the River Stour in Suffolk.

These were the landscapes he grew to love and started to sketch at a young age. His father wanted him to get a real job, as fathers do, but John eventually won him over and, at the age of 23, was enrolled at the Royal Academy School, and within a few years was exhibiting his work at the Royal Academy.

He was a little ahead of his time as an artist and the stuffed-shirts at the Royal Academy couldn't abide his nature studies and pictures of old cottages and cows munching grass.

The French embraced his romantic, earthy style and he sold many pictures there but few in his native England during his lifetime. He is said to have influenced the work of his contemporaries in France, and later still the impressionist movement drew inspiration from his work.

To start my day in Constable Country I decide on a peaceful rural walk as set out, in what appears to be adequate detail, in a magazine at The Stables, my very pleasant abode for this week in Suffolk. I take the precaution of tucking the mag into my back-pack for reference purposes.

The walk commences in the car park of the Red Lion pub in East Bergholt, proceeds in the opposite direction from my destination, circles around and ends up in Flatford. Sounds easy? Well, yes it is until the 'now go down the hill' bit. This is not a fully adequate instruction when there is a choice of two hills to go down.

I hardly need mention that first I go down the wrong one. Trudge back up and down the other one. The path now disappears altogether and becomes some flattened grass on the edge of a field. I press on and come eventually to a Footpath marker. These signposts can be seen all over the country indicating the public footpaths that criss-cross this small island.

Now the problem with these signposts is that they don't actually tell you where the footpath is going. I think you are expected to have a compass and an Ordinance Survey map in your hip pocket, and not just be wandering around with a magazine containing clearly inadequate directions.

Naturally I head off in the wrong direction but luckily I find some elderly walkers out for a bit of air, and they set me straight, so I make it to Flatford without further ado.

I approach from the far side of the river through a field that has a herd of docile cows grazing or drinking at the river, oblivious to the numerous people walking to and fro on the path through their field to Dedham.

The first building that catches the eye is Bridge Cottage situated just over the little hump-backed bridge. It is painted white and has a thatched roof, making it about as picturesque as they come. This is the National Trust Visitor Centre which has a good exhibition relating to the life and times of John Constable. Here you can sign up for the guided walking tour.

Our guide has a collection of pictures in his folder and as we walk around from one spot to the next he shows us just what this or that painting depicts. Willy Lott's cottage, which is featured in 'The Hay Wain' looks just as it did then, also the mill and the dry dock, the ordinary everyday things of the time that Constable loved to paint. We are not fortunate enough to have a 'Constable sky' today which reminds us all the he too had to wait for those clouds to billow up in an azure sky.

The old Granary is a privately run B&B, but the mill; Willy Lott's cottage; and the Medieval Hall House, Valley Farm, are all owned by the National Trust and leased to the Field Studies Council who run residential and day courses in arts and environmental subjects.

For those who like messing about in boats there are row boats for hire near the bridge and on a pleasant day one can scarcely imagine a more delightful pastime.

The Brits certainly do a good job of preserving their 'sacred' sites. This place is almost close enough to London to smell the petrol fumes but still looks much as it would have looked 200 years ago to a young boy on his way to school.