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.