"Tuesday 13th August we are walking Sudbury to Bures which is about 8.5 miles. Then you can catch the train back to Sudbury for £3.50. The trains are hourly. Or you can walk back to Sudbury which is a shorter 7.5 miles roughly using the Stour Valley Path. We will have a decent break at Bures (pub nearby) and eat packed lunch etc. We will meet at the Kingfisher Leisure Centre, Station Road, Sudbury CO10 2SU (toilets here) at 9.30am. There is a charge to park so you may wish to park in a side street and walk over. I'll be offering a car share from Dobbies, Bury St Eds at 8.25am and obviously walking the full distance. It's a long challenging walk that will be harder in the warm weather so dress lightly, sun cream, water which can be refilled at lunch. No shops en route as it's remote and rather lovely. Could be some stinging nettles! "
Undeterred by the threat of nettles I wore my shorts as usual and took along my new £3 secateurs, bought yesterday, to counter-attack any that might threaten me. Meeting at Dobbies, it was my turn to drive and we arrived with plenty of time to spare so went to see the dinky little station behind the leisure centre. Two people I hadn't met before came along and we set off promptly... only to find ourselves intercepted by Jane who had been trying her 3rd ticket-machine in the Car Park when she saw us move off. 4th time lucky, we set off again.
This was our route, although my tracker stopped 1/2 mile from the end.
The last time I had been to Bures had been on a Suffolk Walking Festival walk last year... "An Outstanding Landscape - and a Dragon". That reminded me. Does the dragon show up on the hybrid street and satellite map? Yes it does!
I digress as that wasn't on our itinerary for today. Our walk of two halves was firstly on the Suffolk side and then on the Essex side of the River Stour via the Stour Valley Path. We got plenty of ups and downs, some lovely scenery and not too many nettles, although my secateurs were called into action a few times to tackle encroaching brambles and tree branches in tandem with our snipping leader.
Here are just a few of my many photos.
The aforementioned station. There are only 4 stops on the Sudbury to Marks Tey line, aka the Gainsborough line.
The first part of our walk followed the Stour along to the lock and mill at Great Cornford, walked in reverse on our Walk 'n Water boat trip and walk in this year's Suffolk Walking Festival .
And then we walked through Great Cornard and out into the countryside....
We got a nice view back with 4 churches in sight.
We came to the Grade 1 listed Little Cornard Church. The site tells us.. "The bells have been silent for nearly 200 years. We know very little about the history of the bells or why they ceased to be rung, but we can guess that when times were bad and there was no money to effect repairs, they simply fell into disuse and then decay. The Tenor Bell is the oldest, dating back to 1399. It could have rung out to celebrate the English victory at Agincourt in 1415."
We were interested in the lych- gate. As Steve said and the dictionary confirms, "A lych-gateis a roofed gateway to a churchyard, formerly used at burials for sheltering a coffin until the clergyman's arrival."
A constant presence on the skyline on our walk was the Sudbury Big Tower TV masts.
The short one was built in 1997 as part of the provision for Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV) transmission.
Rather unusually, the footpath passed through the grounds of a nursery - Yorley Barn Nursery. We loved the wellies and alphabet pots, but wondered where the Z had gone.
This path through some maize was fun.
I managed to catch a Painted Lady at rest. There are a lot of them about this year.
There was one bit of footpath that wasn't navigable, so we had to cut a way through to the road. Here is Joyce taking some photographic evidence to report it.
Steve suggested an alternative path down into Bures from the one we were heading onto. It gave us some lovely views.
Steve and Ian said goodbye to us and Steve got the bus back to Sudbury (and Ian the train).
After lunch the remaining five of us headed onto the Stour Valley Path back to Sudbury. Only the first and last stretches went along the river though.
We had to cross the railway line.
This apple tree had some lovely looking apples. A lady leaned out of her upstairs window to shout "Leave my apples alone". We weren't going to pick any.
It's hard to see from the photo, but this was quite a steep climb up from Lamarsh Hall.
We got a nice view back to the surreal looking Grade 1 listed Lamarsh Church. As Simon Knott's site says, "The top of the tower is surmounted by an elaborate octagonal spire with fairytale dormer windows, by Arthur Blomfield. The whole effect is of a bit broken off of a castle belonging to Mad Ludwig of Bavaria."
The view from the top of the rise.
Oh look. There's the train heading to Sudbury.
We stopped for a drink after our climb.
I got left behind a bit admiring the views as the others descended, but I soon caught them up.
Secateurs at the ready for some more encroaching shrubbery ahead.
Beautiful countryside views.
Our final church was at Great Henny. St. Mary's church is thought to have first been built in the 11th or 12th century and then later extended in the 14th century. The church is also registered as a Small Place of Pilgrimage.[
We wondered what this was.
The answer was inside the church
There were newspaper cuttings about how the church's wooden spire had been attacked by woodpeckers. Here is an online new story about it. What we had seen outside was a wooden decoy.
We weren't for from the end now as we passed through this avenue of elderberries.
Then it was back across the Stour into Suffolk and Sudbury.
Well that was a lovely long scenic walk - thank-you Joyce, and the weather was perfect.
You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our route here on MapMyWalk.
No comments:
Post a Comment