Shotley Peninsula Walk

"On Friday Oct 5th, I will be leading a walk around the beautiful area of Pin Mill on the Orwell Estuary. Please park at the free public car park next to/behind the Red Lion pub, Chelmondiston. IP9 1DX. We will start walking at 10.30am. There are toilets at the end of the walk and lunch will be on a bench at Shotley Church so bring a snack/drink with you. Let me know if you would like a lift from Mildenhall or Bury St Edmunds and I'll scoop you up.", said the invite from Joyce's Weekly Walks.

I had plenty to do, but the weather forecast was good and it is a favourite area of Suffolk of mine so I said I would join. To my surprise, there were plenty of other people on the walk - some familiar faces but some new. It turned out that this was also an event on the programme of the Ipswich Outdoor Group and several of them came too..

Alas and alack, I was using my phone for both tracking the route and taking photos... and it misbehaved, tracking us only intermittently. This is a poor approximation to our route...

Oh, well. At least I had plenty of photos. A selection follows. Highlights of the walk included Erwarton Hall and its fantastic gatehouse, Shotley Church and its meticulously tended war graves., a stroll through a vineyard, a walk along the banks of the River Orwell with mists rolling up the river while the foghorn blared at Felixstowe and a pint of beer at my favourite riverside pub, the Butt and Oyster. Wow! What an embarrassment of riches! The mist rolling was just so atmospheric. Some of us likened it to the foggy marshes at the start of Great Expectations. So which one of us was Magwich?  Anyway, here are just a few of my pics...

If you want to see more, here is a slideshow of all of my photos (Flash required)

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