Mid-Suffolk Footpath - Part 1

Joyce was meeting up with her friend Hilary, who lives near the start of this walk and knows it well, to try it out with a view to offering a walk in next year's Suffolk Walking Festival. She asked me if I'd like to join, and I said I did.

There is a brochure for the walk that you can download from here. So I did and printed it out, the writing on the nice maps is a bit small for me to read without my reading glasses, but I took it along anyway.

The introduction says...

"The Mid Suffolk Footpath is over 20 miles in length and is Mid Suffolk District Council's first long distance route. It links Hoxne in the north of the district with Stowmarket in the south....

The path runs through the heart of Mid Suffolk, meandering across a landscape of river valleys and farmland punctuated by scenic towns and villages....

The poppy can be found along the Whole length of the route especially within areas of farmland and it is for this reason that it has been chosen as the symbol marking the route."

We did the first 2  1/2 of the 5  stages, from Hoxne to Thwaite, although we started at the Village Hall, where we parked rather than the official start, which is a little North of the village on the Angle's Way.

This was our route...

We started at the Village Hall...

...where I picked up a leaflet for the Hoxne Heritage Walk.  Sadly, no time today to do it, but I remembered coming to Hoxne and blogging about it before, in July 2006.  The walk I did then was from an Ordnance Survey Pathfinder guide... dating from 1991! I've just dug it out. Hmm. Maybe a few more will be worth trying some day.

But today we were going in a different direction. We crossed Goldbrook Bridge over the Gold Brook.

Here was a reminder that this is reputedly where King Edmund was captured by the Danes in 869/870.

"It was whilst hiding under the bridge that St Edmund was discovered by two lovers on the bridge, who noticed his armour glinting in the sunlight", or so the story goes.

We soon came to our first waymarking sign.

Not all of them along the way are as clear and we were glad we had Hilary to show us the way and stop us going wrong.

We soon came to the River Dove, which we crossed via the White Bridge.

Here we had a distant view of a the rather splendid stable block highlighted on the map.

Almost constantly in view during our walk were these wind turbines to the North-West of Eye, to which 2 more were added in 2014.

We passed by the interesting looking Brome Hall farm and then the Hall itself. You can read a history of it here .

Down a little lane, almost opposite were some hidden-away cottages, a favourite of Hilary's.

Although it was feeling very spring-like, there were still some trees yet to come into leaf. I rather liked these two against the blue sky and fluffy clouds.

We skirted around Eye, seeing some remains fo the airfield and crossed the River Dove again.

We passed Abbey Hall.

It is built on the site of the former Benedictine Priory of St Peter built in 1011, renovating the original Abbey barn. It is available to stay at, as described here.

We passed the Abbey bridge over the River Dove at the east end of Eye, getting a glimpse of the church and an inviting stretch of river next to The Pennings Nature Reserve. Now we were on Map 2 of the walk.

We saw some old tractors and then a series of Fish Ponds (read all about them here)...

before arriving at the Big Head wooden statue, part of by the Hearts of Oak Organisation sculpture trail. It was  created in 2003 by Ray Brooks. (The Hoxne Man and Sculpture Seat are both also part of the trail nearby).

We crossed the road and carried on through some open lanscape... and views again of the wind farm

and through these spooky woods.

We passed Braiseworth Orchards. What a lot of trees!

They are more impressive with apples on them.

We passed this pond and little chapel at a Church Farm.

According to Stephen, another walker of the route, "After passing through Church Farm, we find what is marked on the map as "St Mary's Church (remains of)". Only the bricked-up chancel remains. When the Victorians rebuilt Braiseworth church, as they did so many churches, they did so up the road, with a new St Mary's incorporating bits from the old one, including the two Norman doorways to the nave, and the remains of the old St Mary's were left to decay"

Down the hill from the farm we came across some people planting a new hedgerow.

Now we were closing on Thornden.

After passing the Black Horse pub (anyone for a pint? Apparently not) the route skirted round the village... and we were now on Map 3. There were some steps to a place that can get rather boggy, but we were OK today.

There was a sad old bike...

..just before we got to a lovely swathe of daffodils.

Not far to go now for today, we crossed some more green fields, and passed some wild primroses and Stoke Ash primary School, now a Guides centre...

...before arriving in Thwaite....

...where we found these hens and chickens...

 ...and which we can explore more when we do Part 2!

Well that was a lovely walk. We decided the best word to describe the landscape we had been through was "verdant". The weather was lovely too!

There was room for only some of my photos in this write-up. Here is a slideshow of more of them (Flash required).

You can also see them all here on Flickr, and see more details of our route here on MapMyWalk.

Thanks Hilary for navigating us sure-footedly, and Joyce for inviting me along and taking me there and back. Looking forward to Part 2 next week already!