Bury St. Edmunds Christmas Walk - Part 2

"Christmas Walks: Monday 10th December and repeated Friday 14th December. Park at Marlows Garden Centre, Hollow Road, IP32 7AP in the additional parking spaces on the left hand side of the entrance. We have permission to park here all day. Please feel free to arrive early to use toilets and/or have a delicious coffee. I've devised an enjoyable, circular 4 mile walk to start at 10.30am from Marlows. It has all my favourite things in it -crossing railway track, country smells, puddles, views of the Sugar Beet factory and bats! We will then have refreshments back at the garden centre and then the option to join me on another 5-6 mile circular walk after lunch using local footpaths around the core of Bury St Edmunds.", said the invite from Joyce. I decided to do it both days!
 
This is the follow on to the morning walks in Part 1, starting again from Marlows Garden Centre. Our route did vary slightly between Monday and Friday. This was our slightly longer Monday route.

Heading south along Hollow Road past St. Nicholas House again, we took a different route from the bottom of Mount Rd.

Here we turned right along Shakers Lane and turned right again across the footbridge over the A14 down towards the river passing the now defunct St. James Middle School...

...into the Abbey Gardens.

...passing through the Abbey gate and through the town, ending up at Hardwick Heath. Here are some of the sights along the way...

 

Crossing Hardwick Heath, we returned towards the River Lark again past the Grindle houses (which just means a small stream or ditch)...

....on Monday via No Man's Meadows...

 but on Friday along St. Botolph's Lane past the Old Mission House.

On the Monday we came across this line painting machine...

...and on Friday found lost of nice new double yellow lines like this...

Recrossing the A14 via the footbridge, it was a reversal of our steps back along Shakers Lane for some, but on Monday some of us added and extra loop through the Moreton Hall area before arriving back at Marlows just as it was getting dark.

You can see a slideshow of more of my photos below (Flash required).

You can also see the photos here on Flickr. As for our route, you can see more details in my MapMyWalk log.

So thanks for the walks Joyce, and others for their company. I'm looking forward to more walking with friends in the New Year already!