Hooray! The easing of restrictions on traveling to exercise and being allowed to meet one other person outside your immediate household when you do, means that Joyce's Weekly Walks have restarted! Except they are now Joyce's Daily Walks as she has to walk with each of the members of the group one at a time. And today it was my turn. She asked where I wanted to walk and I thought it would be nice to do one of the walks I had led for the group when she was too busy. So I suggested the Ixworth. Pakenham Mills and Stowlangtoft walk we did without her in February. She liked the suggestion so we met at Ixworth Village Hall to start walking by 10 am.
This was our route.
Almost, but not quite as I did it last time, as I paid less attention to the map of the route than I should have and took us the wrong way at first at Grimstone End and then walked along the edge of the woods rather than on the path just inside it for a while a bit later. But then we might not have met the binmen and the model aircraft enthusiasts.
Here are some of my photos from our walk. Maybe a few less than usual as we had a lot to catch up on - it was over 2 months since our last walk together and she has walked with several of the group already, so was able to give me their news.
Our start was just across the road from Ixworth Church.
I was glad I had found somewhere Joyce hadn't walked before as she hadn't seen Ixworth Priory and it is well worth seeing.
We crossed the Black Bourne, surrounded by vibrant green cooling foliage.
In fact the whole countryside has a wonderful array of greens. Here was our view towards Ixworth Church.
We passed Pakenham Windmill. Joyce asked if I'd ever seen it operating. I hadn't, and neither had she. It sat proudly against the blue sky background. According to wikipedia, "It is a five storey tower mill. It has a domed cap with a gallery and is winded by a fantail. Two of the three pairs of millstones remain.The governors for the millstones are driven by chains instead of the more usual belt... The mill is open to the public daily "during working hours" for individuals, and by appointment for parties. It is open on both Saturday and Sunday of National Mills Weekend from 14:00 to 17:30". It didn't look open for us to visit, but, to be fair, we never tried.
Joyce pointed out the ravages made by Hawthorn Moths here. The branches were completely stripped of leaves under the silky covering.
We stopped at St. George, Stowlangtoft church for a drink and a snack.
In the grounds we found a bench long enough for a socially-distanced sit down together. We need a photograph, but how? I put my backpack in the tree as a base and put may camera on top with the self-timer on.
Success!
As we set off on our return leg we wondered what this tree was.
I think it might be a Common Lime, but I could be wrong.
We walked along a quiet country lane through the Stowlangtoft Estate. In the meadow by the stream we crossed was a profusion of yellow buttercups.
We passed Stowlangtoft Hall, now a nursing home....
...but we didn't go in search of the scariest tree.
We came to the new house that was waiting for an official footpath diversion, as we found on my previous walk.
But then I made a mistake by not going round the bend to find the footpath through the edge of the wood. Instead we walked the other side of the trees and came across a couple of model aircraft enthusiasts. It was interesting hear about their hobby. But when one of them tried to get his plane air bound...
..the plane came in reverse straight at us! He had something connected the wrong way round. We left them to it.
A little further on we came to a patch of cheerful purple tansy. Very pretty, but not as impressive as the fieldful Joyce had seen the other day.
As we headed back to Pakenham we got another view of the windmill.
The warm day and the spray reminded us of a previous walk when Joyce and Nicky ran through a similar spray to cool off. But when was it? I remembered.. it was this one
As we passed the first gardens of Grimstone End, we saw a pretty goldfinch. We saw another little bird on a power line a bit further on which we guessed was a chaffinch, but my photo of it shows it, too, was a goldfinch.
Neither of us had seen a sign like this before.
Soon we were at the coolly inviting mill pool of the Pakenham Water Mill,
As we headed back to Ixworth we saw the windmill again.
Mickle Mere looked a lot drier than it did last time, but there were still plenty of waterfowl about.
Coming back into Ixworth we passed some lovely white violet....
..and honeysuckle.
But neither of us could small any scent from it. Oh no! Had we got the lurgy? But a quick rub of some rosemary leaves next to it showed we were able to smell OK.
And so back to Ixworth.
Well that was a lovely walk on a perfect spring day. It was interesting seeing the change in the landscape from when I last did it in February. We didn't get to see the herd of deer today, but we enjoyed a vibrantly verdant landscape.
So thanks, Joyce, for the company and news about the rest of the group. Another walk soon, I hope. But if only we had the same relaxation as in Northern Ireland where six of us could walk together!
You can see more detail of our route here on MapMyWalk and more of my photos here on Flickr.
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