Suffolk Walking Festival - Felixstowe Marshes and Deben River Wall

I chose this walk as I had never ventured far from the coast at Felixstowe, although I had walked part of the Deben River wall up from North Felixstowe ferry.

Yet again the walk was sold out, but this time with a maximum of 40 walkers. That's a lot!
This was our route.

We went clockwise around this, i.e. inland first and then back along the river wall and golf course.

Here are a few of my photos.

Our Walk Leader Nigel explaining the route.

We set off through the Abbey Grove.

This tree has some windows!

Soon we were out in open country.

We had panoramic vistas for much of the walk.

We saw some nice flowers and heard plenty of bird song from Reed warblers, Sedge warblers and Blackcaps among others.

We passed the Kings Fleet,where we heard plenty of birds. Later in the walk we had an interesting discussion about the man-made waterway and the name. Nigel said he had been told it had been created by some king or other as a place that would attract waterfowl for shooting. But somebody else said they had heard it had been created for parking ship's of King Henry VIII's fleet. We decided this was more likely as the water is quite deep - deep enough for it to be a pike-fishing area.

Maybe this article on local history of the area has it right... " ...the part of the river Deben known as Kings Fleet was where Edward III fitted out his fleet for his expedition to Flanders in 1338."

We were on low-lying ground here with drainage ditches, protected from flooding by the River Deben wall.

And here it is... and our break for packed lunches (for those who had brought one). Ah. I knew I had forgotten something.

So now we got views of the River Deben....

..as people ate their lunch.

Here is a view of Kings Fleet from the Deben River bank... with more than 7  Swans-a-swimming, although I don't see 6 geese a-laying.

We continued along the river wall.

Is that a little egret, I had spotted?

This is the lonely looking and derelict Holmhill Farm. According to this article, it is believed that Holmhill was vacated after the 1953 surge when the Deben flooded fields and the Ferry community was inundated

When we got to the golf courses, we turned right to walk between them.

After walking along Ferry Rd we got to walk a short stretch along this path. Hmm. With building work going on each side, if there was a vote for a Golden Raspberry path in the Walking Festival, I think it would be a strong candidate.

But it wasn't for long and soon we came to this nice ceanothus bush (I think - I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong).

And then it was back across the playing field to The Grove car park.

Thanks Nigel for a great walk!

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