Fornham St. Genevieve Walk

"Dear All,
Our next walk is planned for this Friday May 10th and is likely to be approx 14 miles.

We will park/meet at All Saints Hotel Fornham St. Genevieve, Bury St Edmunds, IP28 6JQ. I haven't checked we can park here but it is open to non-residents and there is plenty of parking.

We will start the walk at 9.30am. My rough plan is to have a morning coffee stop at The Cadogan Arms, Ingham and then a quick lunch stop at Great Livermere (possibly near Church) so pls bring your packed lunch. I'm going to show you the amazing Ampton Water so be prepared to be stunned by this location. We will then return to Ingham and possibly another quick pit stop at the Cadogan Arms if the weather is warm. Finally back to Fornham via Culford. Be prepared for warmer weather and also nettles and even crop irrigation.", said the original invite from Joyce.

But then there was more...

"If you are intending to join our walk this Friday (May 10th) then please be aware that ITV Anglia will be joining us and doing some filming for the first 5 miles. I hope this doesn't put you off but instead encourages you to walk with us instead if you re in 2 minds. ITV Anglia are encouraging people to get more active so our walk fits nicely with their campaign and the Suffolk Walking Festival remit.

David Falk will also be joining us for the first part. We now have permission to park at The All Saints Hotel and we will be there from 9am (hair and make-up...that's a joke!). We will be ready for a 9.30am start."

Woo! That sounded fun. And it would be nice to have David, Director of the Suffolk Walking Festival with us.

We met as planned at All Saints Hotel and Golf Course. and were introduced to presenter Russell, cameraman Tony, and David.

Instead of Joyce giving us her usual chat about the walk, they got us to pose being shown where we were going on the map, which makes a nice visual story for the news item, I suppose, but I'm afraid I found it hard to keep a straight face, because we never do that.... we just follow our leader!

This is most of our route... I forgot to start my tracker  until after we had bee through the golf course, so the route is maybe up to 1/2 mile short (Gavin's tracker made the route 15 miles).

The first and last parts of the walk were pretty much the same as our Snowdrop walk in February, although we didn't start and finish in the same place. See that post for more details of the things we encountered then and today.

Here are some photos of today's walk... including filming and interviews!

Joyce posing with the map.

We were filmed walking towards the camera here on the golf course...

..and walking along here. Oo look. We can see the sugar factory.

Little Park had some lovely wisteria.

We crossed the A143 into a verdant landscape.

We passed through the churchyard at Timworth Church but didn't stop.

Tony and Russell had leapfrogged ahead of us and walked back towards us to intercept us as we were crossing Ampton racecourse.

Here they interviewed some of us as we were walking. This was Jane getting filmed.

There was a bit of choreography involved in getting us to walk across the bridge away from the racecourse, and, I think, our only retake, for the clip that featured as the introduction (see later).

While we were getting organised, I photographed the lovely view.

Our penultimate scene had us walking past the camera at boot level.

And now we were reaching the Cadogan Arms for the final shot... of us trooping into the pub.... just for coffee, of course... hmm, well I have to admit I decided to forgo that for a 1/2 pint of the excellent  Brewshed Pale Ale.

Here we had our group photo and said goodbye to the film crew and David and were joined by a few more walkers.

Now we could start walking at normal pace. We passed through Ampton...

...and its church.

We got some nice blue sky....

..and strode on...

...to Livermere Lake.

We stopped at Great Livermere church for our sandwiches.

Somehow we managed to avoid getting rained on.

This bridge out into Ampton Water was a bit flimsy.

We had to take it in turns to go on it and back so had a little respite.

This bridge going all the way across was a bit sturdier.

 We got a nice view of Ampton Hall as we crossed.

We found a tree with a hollow in it. Roland, what are you doing?

We returned to the Cadogan Arms for another small libation, before continuing along the route of the Snowdrop walk back to our starting point. We walked for a bit along the River Lark.

...with a view of  the ruined Fornham St. Genevieve Church. To paraphrase the linked site... "The ruined church of St Genevieve is marooned in the park of Fornham Hall to the north of Bury. The tower, which is all that survives, stands on private land, a good half a mile from the nearest road. Although the church is only a mile or so north of Bury St Edmunds, it stands on wild heathland, and is not reachable from the village of Fornham St Genevieve itself. Instead, you have to approach it from the north, along a track which begins on a back road near Culford. In the old days, this would have meant risking the wrath of the owners of Fornham Hall, but today the Hall stands empty, and is being converted into apartments. The church was destroyed by fire in 1782, and was derelicted in 1813". This is a bit of a better photo than I managed last time.

As we neared the main road, we saw this lost little duckling plaintively cheeping in search of mummy duck. We never got to see if they were reunited.

And here we are back at the golf course...

...and hotel where we started.

Thanks Joyce for the lovely walk... and Ampton Water was, as promised, amazing.

So what was the result of the filming? Some were concerned that, because we had to walk relatively slowly for the filming we might be seen as amblers rather than walkers. Roland suggested that maybe our walking scenes should be shown speeded up with the the Benny Hill chase music, but our worries were unfounded. I managed to grab some video from the news programme so you can see for yourselves...

Our walk was introduced up front of the news bulletin in this Intro. And, half way into the broadcast, was our news item.  I almost got a legal high watching. (in joke!). I thought it was an upbeat, cheery and entertaining piece and those of us who got put on the spot, did a grand job! Well done Joyce, Julie, Roland, Jane and David for their lucid interviews. Russell did a great job of presenting, and the camerawork was pretty good too. What is more it was rather nicely edited. Well done ITV Anglia!

As usual I have more pictures than there's room for in a blog post. You can see more of my photos in this slideshow (Flash required)....

...or here on Flickr and more details of our route here on MapMyWalk