Let’s hear it for the country’s best loved landscape painter. This is the 250th anniversary of the birth of John Constable, the man who revolutionised the genre. Constable loved what he saw, and his greatest love was for the countryside where he grew up, around the River Stour in Suffolk-Essex. Constable country is celebrating him this year and this, then, is the time to visit, though the Stour Valley is enchanting at any time.
You can easily make a day trip to the places most closely associated with Constable if you’re a walker: Flatford Mill, East Bergholt and Dedham, in any order. Or, for a more expansive look at the anniversary events and places, make a couple of days of it. But given the numbers of visitors with the same idea, try and go at other times than weekends. The Dedham Vale National Landscape and the Stour Valley have very good walking guides online.
