Book excerpt: The Essex landscape gently undulates, with the hilliest country is in the north and west, near the Herfordshire and Cambridgeshire borders. On the marshes of Essex, for example, there is a genuine feeling of solitude that is hard to find anywhere else in southern England. Colchester, the oldest recorded town in Britain, is featured in one of the walks, and there are routes through Epping and Hatfield forests, which contain some of the finest surviving fragments of England's medieval forests. The Essex-Suffolk border is Constable Country, and walkers are guided through Dedham Vale, passing Flatford Mill and Willy Lott's Cottage.