Westley and Ickworth Walk

"Friday May 31st: a very early start time of 7.30am from Wyevale Garden Centre in Bury. We will walk to Westley and then Ickworth Park and back to Bury via the St Edmunds Way. It's a 12 mile pacey walk and we should be finished about 11.30am for a coffee at Wyevale.", said the invite from Joyce. That sounded good.

We met at Wyevale Garden Centre as planned. This was our route.

How does she do it? Joyce had found a route through Bury St. Edmunds I had never trod! But it also linked up with paths I was very familiar with from other walks.. around Ickworth Park and joining up with both the Bury to Clare and St. Edmunds Way paths we had walked previously.

There were just 6 of us on the walk so I was able to be involved in conversation with everyone, catching up on news of other walks I hadn't been on and sharing my own Suffolk Walking Festival walks.... but was maybe less observant with the camera than usual as a result. But I still had plenty of pics.. here are a few of them.

So where are we now? I haven't been paying attention!

We passed the Spread Eagle... well I know where I am now.

It was billed as a pacy walk. See how the walkers are striding out.

This leafy lane was rather attractive.

We got some lovely views of the countryside...

...and flowers.

Westley Church

We liked this pond on Old Church Lane.

There were swift swifts in abundance.

Seeing some clouds in the distance I remarked that "If we weren't in Suffolk , I might think we had some hills on the horizon". Other joined in with the imagination. A little later we had this view of not-an-inlet by a bluff. Pigs might fly.

Another leafy lane as we approached Ickworth park...

...and this cottage with animals on the roof...

...and some sheep.

We passe the church.

 ...and stopped at the Porter's Lodge for refreshments.

Ther were some nice poppies alongside the lodge.

Leaving the park via the lodge and church, and headed back across the countryside...

Lovely meadows and even bean flowers.

We had a view of Moreton Hall school... we think.

Nearing the end, we had this view of cathedral and sugar factory, two icons of the town...

...before arriving back at the garden centre for coffee, as promised.

Thanks, Joyce, for another great walk.You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our route here on MapMyWalk.

John Does The Suffolk Walking Festival

The Suffolk Walking Festival is not quite finished but I have now done all 10 of the walks I booked or was helping on. I had a great time! Thanks to David Falk, Festival Director, and his team for the organisation and the walk leaders and helpers for shepherding us safely.

I've managed to do a blog post for each of the events I went on, with the routes, a bit of a narrative with some photos and a photo album. So here are links to them.

But, first of all, although not part of the Festival, I have to include this... there was the "pre-amble", a walk the day before the start of the festival, which was accompanied by a crew from Anglia News who crafted a news item which was broadcast on the ITV Anglia 6 o'clock news.

Fornham St. Genevieve Walk

That was fun and it made a great little news item about the imminent festival. It was also a rather nice walk!

And so to the Festival Walks themselves.

No. 2 - Launch Jaunt - Ancient Ways. There were about 70 people on this walk of around 4.5 miles from West Stow Country Park taking in the Icknield Way and the King's Forest, led by David himself. What a great start!

No. 24 - Walk 'n Water Sudbury & Cornard Riverside. A gentle and relaxing morning cruising down the River Stour, hosted by the River Stour Trust, where we learnt lots of interesting facts about the river and its history, and then a leisurely 1.5 mile stroll back along the river to a cup of coffee at the Granary Tea Room at the end.

No. 30 - Bluebell Walk from Suffolk Food Hall. A beautiful circular walk of nearly 12 miles with masses of bluebells in the ancient woodlands and lunch by Alton Water. We were delighted to be joined on this by BBC Producer/Presenter from BBC Radio Suffolk Lesley Dolphin, patron of the festival. This was my favourite of the walk walks.

No 46. - Discover RSPB Minsmere in Spring. A lovely guided walk of about 2 miles around Minsmere Nature Reserve. We got a bit drizzled on, but had some great views of the birds and expert commentary from Ian, our RSPB guide. I wished I had taken a notebook to write things down.

No. 70 - Orford Ness - Walk with a Ranger. Another guided walk of just over 4 miles along the Red Route on Orford Ness. This was my favourite event of the Festival. Beautiful weather, spectacular landscapes, lots of interesting wildlife and some excellent commentary and fascinating history imparted by David, our National Trust ranger.

No. 83 - Felixstowe Marshes and Deben River Wall. A walk of nearly 8 miles around the countryside inland from Felixstowe and along the river Deben with lovely panoramic vistas and more birdlife.

No. 87 - Nowton Park Circular Walk to Great Whelnetham. Local turf for me and much of the nearly 10 mile route was familiar but I'd never been to the Artisan Bakery where we stopped for munchies and Hennessey's Coffee Lounge where we had our lunch. Delightful views, as promised.

No. 95 - The Magna Carta Walk from Castle Hedingham To Clare. A linear walk  of about 8.5 miles through the lovely North Essex countryside back to Suffolk with lots of great historical information from our guides from Clare Walking Group and a visit to the beautiful Clare Priory.

No. 98 - Rounding the Point. An informative guided meander of about 2 miles around the Landguard Point Nature Reserve. Chris the ranger was a fountain of information and fascinating stories and we saw lots of wonderful flora and birdlife - and yes we saw a nesting ringed plover!

No 102. - Santon Downham Walk. Last for me but not least... a lovely riverside and woodland walk of about 5.5 miles around Santon Downham and the River Little Ouse. We didn't see any kingfishers or bats but we did see some stonechats.

I loved them all. It's just a pity I had to go to work on Wednesdays and Thursdays and couldn't do more. Well done and thanks again to all involved in making it happen and I'm looking forward to next year already. I may even volunteer to lead a walk or two. And for those attending walks over the final 3 days of the Festival, Enjoy!

Suffolk Walking Festival - Santon Downham Walk

This was another of Joyce's walks in the Suffolk Walking Festival and she invited me to join her as a back-marker. It was to be my 10th and last event in this year's festival as I am at work tomorrow and Thursday, doing something else on Friday and couldn't get a ticket for the walk I wanted to do on Saturday. But I've had a great variety of walks and it has kept me busy keeping the blog up to date!

Here is how today's walk was described.

The clouds looked a bit threatening so I wore my coat and packed my waterproof in my little backpack. I needn't have worried... by 15 minutes into the walk I was taking my coat off.

This was our route...

Here are some photos from our walk...

Joyce gave us a briefing on the walk and what we would see.

We started by crossing this bridge, which appeared in a Dad's Army episode, as described here.

The Little Ouse is not that little.

We came across Waymarking signs for a new route, the Via Beata, which will, when complete, run across the width of the country from Lowestoft to St. Davids in the far southwest corner of Wales.

A little further upstream, we came to another bridge crossing the river, but we stayed on the Norfolk bank.

Further along still we came to the tiny church  of All Saints Santon, which was made redundant in 1998.

Our flower of the day was Broom.

Talking of flowers, we came across this group of botanists doing a study of the local plant-life near the site of St. Helen's Well.

From the terrace here we had a good view of Little Lodge Farm, where you can bring your horse on holiday.

But what was that in among the swans and geese? It was a cormorant drying its wings.

We took a little detour to visit the prehistoric burial mound at Blood Hill, not that there is much left of it after all of these years.

Nearby we spotted a pair of Stonechats. (Thanks, Barry). Here is one of them.

We recrossed the railway line, passing a model aircraft airfield.

There are several paths crossing each other here, including the St. Edmund Way.

We also recrossed the river...

..and took a detour into the woods to find the Two Mile Bottom Bat Hibernaculum Read more about it here too.
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My fellow back-marker/marshal Carolyn will be disappointed I didn't manage to photograph any bats, but here is someone else's photo from here of a Natterer's bat roosting in one of the bat-bricks inside in early 2009.

As is often the case  around here, we were buzzed by military jets on a training sortie. Can you see this one whizzing overhead?

We stepped aside to let some horses by ... horses and riders on their holidays at Little Lodge, perhaps?

All too soon we were back at the car park where we started. And we hadn't got wet!

Thanks Joyce for the lovely walk!

You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our route here on MapMyWalk.

Suffolk Walking Festival - Rounding The Point

Dawn was away so it ended up being just William and myself, but I thought they would enjoy this - a walk around the Landguard Point Nature Reserve, led by the Ranger.

This was our route, starting at the entrance to the reserve and ending in the car park.

Our guide was Chris Ryde, who has been the ranger at the reserve for nearly 6 years.

Here are some photos from our guided tour.

As we were arriving we saw this container ship leaving port.

We assembled outside the Landguard Point Visitor Centre and View Point Cafe.

Here's Chris giving his introduction to the reserve and our walk,

We started along the acid grassland habitat. There were masses of these little Common Stork's Bill plants

Here Chris showed us one of the "bills" that allow the seeds to stick in the soil.

This is a spot favoured by the rare Stinking Goosefoot. None to be seen just yet - they don't usually appear until later in the year.

This, and several other bramble bushes nearby had been attacked.

This was the culprit, the bushes were being munched by Brown-Tail Moth caterpillars like this one.

Here are some Vipers Bugloss flowers.

There were lots of Bird's Foot Trefoil flowers both here in the grassland and on the coastal vegetated shingle.

This is the deadly Hemlock, It looks a bit like cow parsley but has a red streaks on the stem.

 This is Hoary Cress, it is believed to have been brought to the country in the stuffing in mattresses.

We ascended the man-made banks which were constructed so support shooting practice.

We found some fennel...

...and Houndstooth

There are great views in each direction.

Some Sea Kale in flower.

This is Tamarisk.

The Sea Poppy flowers only last a day each.

There was an abundance of pretty little Scarlet Pimpernel flowers.

We also saw and heard lots of bird-life, including song thrushes, robins and  white throats. There were plenty of linnets flying about and singing. Here is one sitting still for a moment.

But the bird species the site is famous for is the Ringed Plover , which nests on the shingle. Unfortunately they suffer from predation by birds-of-prey and even crows. Chris has resorted this year to putting a wire shelter over this nesting bird. Can you see it? It is pretty well camouflaged.

We visited the point...

 ...before heading to the View Point Cafe.

Alas, there was a huge queue so we decided to go for home for lunch... much to William's disappointment, I think!

Thanks Chris for a very informative and entertaining tour!

You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our route here on MapMyWalk.