Blackthorpe Barn Walks

Today's walkers... although Barry didn't actually walk with us, Jane successfully hid from the camera and Anna didn't join us until later... and, of course, I was behind the camera.

This was the invite from Joyce...

"Friday 29th November. We will meet at Blackthorpe Barn, Rougham at 10.30am for coffee or 11.15am to walk only. The first loop will be a gentle 4 miles over to Thurston and back through the woodland at Rougham Park. We will be back at Blackthorpe Barn around 1pm and then for those who wish to walk some more we will start another longer and brisker loop of between 6-8 miles depending on weather. Bring a sarnie for lunch if you are walking the longer route as the morning coffee stop is our 'main' break."

We duly assembled for coffee at the Blackthorpe Barn cafe before setting off for our two-part walk. Here are our routes.

You may notice the start is not in the same place as the finish for this first part... I neglected to start my tracker until we had crossed the A14, but our route out up to the A14 bridge was the same as our route back.

This was our afternoon route.

Here are a few of my photos.

There is a load of Christmas stuff for sale at the barn.

But we were here for refreshments before our walk.

The Rougham Estate has some turkeys....

...and geese.

Which reminds me... many years ago my (Irish) workmate Ian said one day, about this time of year, "I phoned my mother last night and said I would like to come and stay with her for Christmas. 'That's lovely' she said. 'I'll get a turkey'. 'But mother, I'm a vegetarian'. 'Oh yes, so you are. In that case I'll get a duck'". (It's quite logical, if you think about it!).

I digress. We saw some lovely trees on the Rougham estate.

We were overflown by a few light aircraft... the airfield gets quite a view visitors at the weekend arriving from Friday morning.

There are plenty of fungi about.

Walking through the woods.

Back at the bridge over the A14 we had a nice view of where we had just walked from.

Soon we were back at the barn and this lovely tree by the overflow car park.

Off we go for part 2... I've got some catching up to do already as I restart my tracker and finish my can of Diet Coke.

We had some lovely lanes to walk on with fallen leaves underfoot.

We headed to Rougham church, which was often in view this afternoon, as we continued our walk.

Another of the lovely trees we passed.

And some nice houses too.

Happy walkers.

A lot of trees had been felled in the wood by the lake off Eastwoodhill Road.

We heard all about it from the forestry workers when we passed through here previously.  Let me see if I can find it... Not on this one, nor this one, nor this one. It was this one! We've done plenty of walks around here this year as Joyce set herself a target of walking all the paths around Rougham this year... and today was the culmination of that.

Further on we came to this field.... and were glad we didn't have to walk over it!

No. The photograph is not in black and white (you can see a couple of  trees with reddish leaves in the distance).

By now the sun was getting low. Here is the view back to Bradfield St. George church.

Some bare trees on the skyline.

And some with their leaves yet to fall.

We passed through Rougham village.

..before the sun set.

Our last unwalked path... the avenue from Rougham church up to the A14.

And then it was back from the bridge over it, as we had done in the morning, to our start at Blcckthorpe Barn, just as the light was fading.

Thanks Joyce for the lovely walks and to everyone else for the company. Yes. I think we can say we've done the Rougham footpaths now! And this felt like the dying embers of autumn. But I'm sure we will have some nive winter walks too.

You can see more detail of our routes (part 1)  and (part 2) on MapMyWalk and more of my photos here on Flickr.

Labelled

This is the label for my latest beer...

And here are the 11 bottles labelled at last...

Dawn thinks they look good. I hope the beer tastes good. I'll find out in a couple of weeks.

Ramblers Santon Downham Walk

This was the listing for today's walk.

Who is that leader? Yes it is I! I first did this walk as a back-marker on a Suffolk Walking Festival walk in May this year, which you can read about here. I thought at the time it would make a nice autumn walk, so I volunteered it to the Ramblers programme. At this time of year it is hard to avoid mud, but being in Breckland I thought we had a fair chance of doing so. And so it proved!

We assembled in the Car Park by the Forestry Commission offices. I hadn't expected the car park to be so busy, but, fortunately, there were plenty of spaces to spare. The rain, though light, was persistent as we started and many umbrellas were in use. But after only about 10 minutes of the walk they became redundant and, though we never got to see the sun, it stayed dry.

Here are a few of my photos from the walk (and my recce a couple of weeks previously).

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

The river was tranquil and the path mercifully unmuddy.

We soon got to the tiny church  of All Saints Santon, with its interesting octagonal tower, which was made redundant in 1998.

We had a slight climb to the site of St. Helen's Well and Church. Here we took a little detour to look at the view of the river and Little Lodge Farm, where you can bring your horse on holiday.

We passed signs for 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.


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

We had our drinks stop about halfway at this interesting crossing of paths....

...before recrossing the river back into Suffolk.

And now we came to the challenge. Could I lead everyone through the woods to find the Two Mile Bottom Bat Hibernaculum? Yes I could!

You can read more about it here.

Now it was back to the start via the horse holiday home and the forest, with some lovely autumn leaves.

Well that turned out quite well, I thought. Thanks to all who came and I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can see more details of our route here on MapMyWalk.

Chestnut Brown Ale

Bottling day today... My Chestnut Brown Ale needed bottling. It was a lot of work for 11 bottles. We'll see if it was worth it when it is ready in a few of weeks time.

Fermented and ready to bottle.

First step was to syphon into my mini barrel where the honey for bottle conditioning is added.

Bottling done. Now all I need is some labels... and patience before drinking.