Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

has anyone put forward the East/West trending valley between Catthorpe and Lilbourne as a candidate

I don't think so. It's hardly a dramatic site though - rather a shallow valley, and opening eastwards as you say, with the road on the higher ground to the west. Only any use if we imagine the Britons coming from the east - I know you've been taking as lateral a view as possible, John, but personally I don't go for the idea of the Iceni returning home and then heading off to attack Paulinus, which this scenario seems to require!

(Remember that the Iceni had deliberately neglected to plant any crops in the spring, meaning that they were probably intending to seize Roman grain supplies. These supplies were in London, it would appear, and if Paulinus burned the warehouses before pulling out the rebels would be short of supplies, with nothing much waiting for them back home...)

The Trinovantes were having their wealth, land and possessions removed as were the Iceni... So the expulsion of the Romans from their own lands would have been of the highest priority

The Iceni were a client kingdom before the revolt in 61, not a colony, so although they'd been defeated and largely disarmed after the 47 revolt their lands and wealth hadn't yet been claimed by Rome. There may have been forts demarking a border with Roman territory in the Trinovante lands, but the Iceni themselves were, I think, largely left alone (albeit under the supervision of the procurator). It was the threat of direct annexation - the Roman claim on Prastutagus's will - that led in part to the revolt.

Did the Iceni attack Colchester or was it the Trinovantes or was it both?

Both, surely! If we accept Boudica as the leader, or one of the leaders, of the revolt, and if we accept that Boudica was the wife of the Iceni king (and if we don't then we don't have much else to go on!), then the Iceni were certainly involved in all stages of the uprising. The Trinovantes alone may have had cause to attack Colchester due to the overbearing attitudes of the Roman colonists on their land, but it took the rising of the Iceni (spurred by the annexation threat and the insults to Boudica herself and Prasutagus's daughters) to spark a full scale revolt.