Jayne and I both took this week off work to spend some time with the children, and as Charlie goes back to school tomorrow, today was our last trip out.

Having visited places in West Sussex, Kent, Surrey and Hampshire, today I decided to show the family the sights of Essex.

They have been with me to visit family in Basildon, Wickford and Southend, and her family in Clacton, but that is all they have seen of the county and the coastal and estuarial parts are not the whole story.

To show them Essex at its best I thought it would be a good idea to drive up through Epping and Stanstead Mountfitchet to Thaxted, with its enormous church, windmill, ancient guildhall and old almshouses.

Maybe the family were not too interested in me pointing out good examples of Essex vernacular architecture, pargetting and Essex boarding, but they liked the windmill!

The old windmill has been comprehensively restored, practically rebuilt really, and has all the machinery still in place, including the three millstones. On the lower levels are hundreds of rural artifacts, making the place double as a small museum.

This was really a journey into the past for me. Between 16 and 18 I spent quite a lot of time in Thaxted. I was in a theatre company which camped out near the town to rehearse and perform a version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and we used to walk into Thaxted to drink in the Star and the Swan.

After it was all over a couple of us used to go up and visit some of the locally-based fellow cast-members at weekends. Although there have been changes, much is the same, and if anything the town looks better now than it used to. Any development there has been has been entirely sympathetic in the main parts of the town. Have a look at this street scene…

Notice anything? How about the complete and total absence of any cars at all? I think we take it for granted that every house and every shop in the country has cars parked outside, and forget how intrinsically ugly they make everywhere look. And having the buildings rendered and painted is so much more pleasant than an endless vista of brick.

After Thaxted, we headed South, through Dunmow and various Rodings towards Chipping Ongar, stopping off briefly in the Village of Fyfield. There was no way I could just pass through the village without stopping to show the children where I spent five years of my life.

Actually I was only there during term time, at a boarding school just outside the village, but even so the village was where we used to go to most of the time when we were allowed out. A quick word about boarding school: this was not a private school but one of three comprehensive co-educational boarding schools run by Essex County Council. They were free, non-selective and very progressive.

Most (but not all) pupils were there due to personal circumstances, like having unstable home lives, separated parents, parents travelling a lot in the forces. Unfortunately none of the three schools remain as normal state boarding schools. My old place had most of the buildings demolished, apart from the original 1890 block which is converted into apartments, and the grounds have been filled with Barratt homes.

I did not want to see the old place like that, so I just showed the family the mill pond behind the village church. Its strange to think that I used to go down there on Sunday mornings and even used to read lessons there sometimes when I am basically an atheist. I even got confirmed there, so I suppose you could say I am a confirmed atheist!

Anyway, we continued down through Ongar, Brentwood, and Billericay to stop off for tea with mother. For the others it was just a day out in the country, but for me it was a wallow in nostalgia. At least we got to see the famous road signs to the secret nuclear bunker. Maybe another day we will go and look at the bunker itself.