I’m an Essex girl. Smirk all you like, because there’s something I know about Essex that’s our little secret: It’s a little piece of English country paradise!

Can you picture John Constable’s ‘The Haywain’, or ‘Willy Lot’s Cottage’? This is the Essex I know, where I grew up amongst barley fields and ‘yummiest jam’ competitions, and our fathers were farmers instead of used car dealers.

The last time I returned to ‘Constable Country’ it had shrunk (as places do when you knew them in your childhood), but was in many ways more charming than I remembered. I arrived in Dedham with my townie boyfriend and a wicker picnic basket for lunch on the river.

Renting a freshly-varnished boat from the riverbank, we rowed downstream past paddling Friesian cows and processions of tiny ducklings. Breathing the scent of wet grass and lavender, we paddled into some tree roots and stopped to eat.

Plump bumblebees hummed lazily by as we uncorked the wine and sliced crumbly stilton, feeling like Ratty and Badger in the Wind in the Willows, just ‘messing about in boats’. We rowed on, crossing the border into Suffolk as we arrived at Flatford in a swarm of tour buses visiting the National Trust properties.

Flatford Mill, Valley Farm and Willy Lott's Cottage are the main attractions in Dedham Vale between the two East Anglian counties of Essex and Suffolk. We strolled a while among the oilseed rape fields, spotting views familiar from the National Gallery, then milled around the sweetly rustic and low-key Constable exhibits (paintbrushes, sketches, writing desks).

After the 2-mile river trip, and in preparation for the 2 miles UPstream on the way back, we fortified ourselves with buttery scones from the cottage tea rooms, and packed some extra ginger beer in case of emergencies.

Back in Dedham, we recovered with a pint of pale ale on the Sun Inn’s pretty patio, and reflected on the idyllic charms of a county much maligned.