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.