Ramblers Thetford Warren Lodge Walk

Photo appropriated from Chris F's Facebook post.

Hooray. No staying in for heating engineers this week so I was able to go on today's Bury St. Edmunds Ramblers walk. This was the listing.

This was our route (approximately).

I say approximately because I managed to start my stopwatch rather than my tracker on phone at the start (doh!) and I had to reconstruct the route up to the point I realised.

Here are some of my photos.

There were 37 of us today and, as a result, the car park was full. Chris sent us to the remains of the  Warren Lodge, which dates from around 1400,  to assemble for the start.

We all read the information panels.

Here's Chris giving her briefing on the walk. There was a cold wind blowing so she didn't keep us standing about for long.

We set off across the heathland of the old warren.

We crossed the Thetford-Brandon road and went through the forest down to the River Little Ouse.

We regrouped at the Abbey Heath weir  before crossing the river.

The Little Ouse Path along the river was pleasantly dry and there were still plenty of last year's fallen leaves.The full path starts in Thetford mainly following the river towpath through Santon Downham to Brandon.

As often happens when walking around here, we had air cover at times.

We passed Thetford Power Station, the largest one in England to run on poultry litter (a mixture of straw, wood chips and poultry droppings). It produces high quality fertiliser as a valuable by-product.

We didn't see many swans on the river, but here are a couple.

We stopped for our drinks break by the model aircraft flying field, home of the Breckland Model Aero Club.

I mentioned to Chris that we had now joined up with my Ramblers walk from Santon Downham in November (read all about that here). I mentioned we had visited the Two Mile Bottom bat hibernation tunnel (aka a  hibernaculum). (You can read more about it here too). She was taking us past the sign about it but didn't know where the tunnel itself was. Would I like to take everyone past it?

But first we had to recross the river....

...and pose for the group photo at the top of the blog entry. Here is Chris lining it up.

Fortunately I remembered how to find the hibernaculum. Here is the entrance....

...and the far end....

...and the information panel.

The sun was out now. After some more pleasant walking alongside and through Warren wood, we had to cross the road again.

A helpful motorist had stopped to let us cross, but I don't think everyone behind him on the road was that pleased.

Then it was back through the forest via the exit to High Lodge and were soon back at the Warren Lodge.

Thanks Chris for the lovely walk and taking us through plenty of trees to shelter us from the cold wind.

You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our route here on MapMyWalk,