Essex is a county of contrasts and surprises, far removed from the jokes and clich?'s surrounding it. Journalist Brian Mooney and artist Jon Harris set out to celebrate its people, history, architecture and geography by walking every inch of its boundaries. Whether tramping up the Maplin Sands, stumbling across an old soldier living wild in the woods, or visiting a chapel on a lonely seawall, their story is brimming with unexpected encounters and colourful surprises. Starting in Waltham Abbey, their walk takes them down the old Essex border into London, along the Thames to the marshes, rivers and creeks of the eastern seaboard and then follows the Suffolk borders to the edges of Cambridge and Hertfordshire.

Jon Harris is a leading authority on landscape, townscape and conservation, and a well known Cambridgeshire artist. The Fitzwilliam Museum held a retrospective exhibition of his work in 1997.