Newmarket 2-part walk

"We will walk on Thursday 27th September around Newmarket and the small village of Snailwell. Please find your own parking in Newmarket. We will then meet outside Waitrose for a 11am start. It is a great walk (no spoilers) with lots of surprise, history and great views. We will stop at the George and Dragon pub in Snailwell around lunchtime for refreshments/toilets. This walk could be 10 miles in total but you have the option to stop after the first 5 miles when we will be back near our cars.", said the invite.

That sounded interesting and, unusually, I was not working - I usually work Wednesdays and Thursdays. It was also a lovely sunny day. So, having finished my chores in time,

I joined Joyce with 9 others for a very pleasant stroll. It was nice to meet up again with several I had walked with before and meet some new faces.

This was our route...

Well actually some of it was just my route, as I parked some distance from Waitrose.

Our 'surprise' happened only a few minutes into our walk....

We were met at the gate of St. Agnes Church by John, armed with a set of handouts about the church and it history. It was built just over a hundred years ago by Caroline Agnes, Duchess of Montrose, a member of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, in memory of her second husband, W. S. Stirling Crawfurd, Esquire.   No expense was spared in its building. The description of it in the Supplement to Cautley's Suffolk Churches speaks of 'the lavish interior embellished with a great deal of Salviati mosaic and a majolica-tiled dado', and draws attention to 'an oil painting of the Last Supper in a fine late seventeenth century frame and an elaborate marble reredos by Boehm in Renaissance-manner' depicting the Assumption of St Agnes over the Coliseum at Rome. All the windows are of stained glass and it is said to be 'the only example of the high Victorian use of such elaborate tile and mosaic work in Suffolk'. The organ, incidentally, was designed by Sir Arthur Sullivan.You can read more about the church here.

We carried along the road until we cross at a Pegasus crossing. We weren't on horseback though!

From here we were out in the open country. Our walk included lots of lovely manicured grassland ...



..and horse tracks and rails everywhere.

 We found some really big conkers...

 ..just before we got to Snailwell. St. Peter's church here is not as lavish as St. Agnes's, but has one of the peculiarly East Anglian features of a round tower.

 Just round the corner was our drinks break at the George and Dragon

 Here we are in the beer garden.

Behind some fencing was a cute tortoise.

We tried to get to the River Snail, but the gate at the bottom of the garden was locked.

Some of our walk was through woodland.

We returned along the Bury Road nearly back to where we started, where we left those who weren't doing part 2 of the walk - around the Gallops.

We followed the track round. Here at the 4 furlong marker we saw the track being harrowed to leave a prsitine surface for the horses tomorrow.

When I commented, Joyce asked my how far was a furlong... and then challenged me to come up with a cryptic crossword clue. This was the last of the markers.

...and here is my clue "Hankers after coat, seen on boat at a distance, worth 1000 guineas, perhaps? (5, 8)".

From the top of Warren Hill we had the best view of Newmarket.

As we descended, a fmiliar spire came into view - it was St. Agnes's church again

Getting back to the town...

...we found a geocache...

and visited Nell Gwynn's house..

...before heading for home.

Here is a slideshow of my photos (Flash required)

You can see all of my photos on Flickr here. You can also see more details of the route on MapMyWalk.  So thanks, once again, to Joyce for the lovely day out, and the rest for their company.

P.S. The answer to the clue?
EIGHT FURLONGS - LONGS (hankers) [after] FUR (coat) [seen on] EIGHT (boat). The 1000 guineas is a 1 mile race... run at Newmarket, of course.