Needham Lake Ramblers Walk

Not for fair-weather walkers today, the weather forecast was for a proper dousing - which our gardens and fields needed, so no complaints there. Remarkably we had only a few less than for my walk last week. Well I wasn't going to let a little bit of rain put me off Carole's enticing "Need a lake?" walk, and neither were the rest. Actually I was glad of the opportunity to give my waterproof top I got for  Christmas a first proper test. We were going to climb Creeting Hills!

This was the listing.

And this was our route...

..a figure of eight starting and finishing along the River Gipping and ascending the (ahem) dizzy heights of Creeting Hills.

Here are a few photos. Alas. My phone was misbehaving so some of the photos I thought I had taken disappeared. Never mind.

I sheltered in my car before the start...

...and then looked out to see everyone had disappeared! Oh no! I hadn't missed the start had I?  But no. They were sheltering under a tree.

Here is Carole giving us our briefing about the walk. We were heading north-west today - the previous ramblers walk I'd been on went the other way, but I had done a fair bit of today's walk last year, as you can see here, coincidentally, also a bit of a wet walk - but not as wet as today's!

And off we went!

I like that there is a Cattle tunnel under the railway.

Ron drew our attention to this... the origin of modern football, perhaps?

It was still raining. Carole asked if we wanted to cut the walk short and head on back from here. What? No chance!

We crossed the A14.... on a bridge. I don't think I would fancy my chances crossing the carriageway underneath!

And followed the sign to Creeting Hills!

Hmm. This is where some of my attempted photos went missing. Here, we are on our way back.

You can sort of see our route here on MapMyWalk, but my phone switched itself off at one point so I lost the timings of the first 3/4 of the walk. As for photos, no album today - just the selected few from my phone above.

Thank-you Carole for a lovely walk. And, good news,  my waterproof top did the job leaving my head, arms and T-shirt perfectly dry.