About Ourselves

The West Essex Group of the RA was founded in 1970, a result of the efforts of Fred Matthews who, having move to Abridge from Surrey, was appalled by the unwalkable state of most of the paths in the West Essex area.

Today our Membership stands at 1,100 and we provide four led walks per week, two at weekends and two mid-week. Two of these walks are half-day (4 or 5 miles) and two all-day (8 to 14 miles, 10 miles the norm). The typical attendance of a walk is 20 members and we usually have a lunchtime pub stop of 45 minutes, and short morning and afternoon breaks for tea or coffee. The pace averages to 2.5 miles per hour.

From April to October we have monthly weekend coach outings to walk Long Distance Paths in 11 mile stages, eg, South Downs Way, Ridgeway and Thames Path. We also have monthly mid-week coach outings to walk in such places as the Constable Country, Beachy Head and the North Downs, and visiting places such as Stowe House and Sissinghurst Castle. Our ordinary walks also take us to many places of interest, in particular our London and City Walks.

An interesting Social Programme includes Foreign and English walking holidays, Weekends away, Jazz evenings, Barn dances, and Quiz evenings.

A major part of our work is to protect and obtain improvements to our footpaths and rights of way. To this end we have a Volunter Adopter for each parish in the West Essex Area, who monitors the footpaths in his/her Parish and reports problems to our footpath secretary, who in turn will contact the County Council in an attempt to right wrongs. Farmers ploughing up but not restoring cross-field paths is a major cause of concern.

We have a Country Care Working Party which meets once or twice a week, with the support of the County Council, to do work in the Countryside such as clearing green lanes, installing bridges, and putting in marker and Finger Posts to direct walkers onto the correct lines across fields.

A Countryside Officer, with the help of a small committee, vets planing permissions to see if we would oppose them on environmental grounds, and checks that where development takes place footpaths are not lost. We successfully fought the attempt to close the footpath across the railway line at North Weald.