This was the listing in the Suffolk Walking Festival brochure.
"A circular walk along the Little Ouse River to Hopton, taking in some of the Angles Way and passing where Princess Diana went to school. We return via Knettishall Airfield, a wartime base of Flying Fortresses, and through SWT Knettishall Heath Nature Reserve where we'll hopefully see their Exmoor ponies."
It is based on a walk I led for Joyce's Weekly Walks last June (which you can read about here) and is a favourite of mine for the variety of habitats and historical interest. It's a shame it got cancelled as I was due to have a special guest join it - Clare Balding. The plan was to use it as a basis for an item on her walking radio show Ramblings.
As the rules are that you can exercise with one other person outside your immediate household, I invited my walking friends to come along - first one to volunteer gets to come. Today my wife Dawn and I were joined by Ann. It was lovely to catch up with her. I think the last walk we went on together was on our Day Out at Wimpole Hall. Ann had come on the walk last year and had booked to go on it in the Walking Festival, so was glad to get to do it after all.
We met in the main car park as planned shortly after 10am. The weather forecast said we were likely to have a shower between 10 and 11 so we packed our waterproofs. We needn't have bothered; it stayed fine throughout. We hoped we would see plenty of wildlife with it just being the 3 of us, and we weren't to be disappointed. Pretty flowering plants, birds (and plenty of birdsong), lambs and deer were a-plenty.
This was our route.
Here are some of my photos taken along the way.
We joined the Angles Way just after crossing the River Little Ouse. For the next couple of miles we would be in Norfolk.
At the side of the road we found a line of comfrey plants, blue flowers nodding in the wind. Ann told us about the uses she had put it to in the past. It is a well-known herbal remedy.
Passing Riddlesworth Park Glamping site (now without any tents) we soon reached Riddlesworth Hall School, which Princess Diana attended between 1970 and 1974. Read more about her time there here.
A little further on we came to the Old School House, originally built to educate the children of the workers on the Riddlesworth estate which remained in use as a school until 1951,
We came to Gasthorpe village, from where Bill Gates family originated. By the Dragon House we heard a bird singing and saw it on the telegraph wire. It was a goldfinch. We saw two of those on Tuesday's walk.
Dawn was chatting to the owner of the house in her garden. She said they had had a squirrel climb up the telegraph pole and get stuck there for a couple of days recently.
Across the road a sparrow was eying up the horse statue on the roof top.
Not mentioned in my previous blog, we got a view of the ruins of St. Nicholas Church. Our route didn't go past it. Maybe another time I'll add a short detour to visit it.
Shortly after we came across this deer in the field next to the path. It skeltered away from us.
After recrossing the Little Ouse back into Suffolk, we skirted Hopton Fen. Here we heard a sedge warbler singing among the other birds.
I think next time I will add another little diversion to the route to do the circular walk around the fen.
From here, it was up a short incline and across a field to get to Hopton Village. Sadly both the delightful little coffee shop, The Well ...
...and The Vine pub were closed, but we were able to use the table outside the pub for our mid-walk stop.
Leaving the Angles Way we set off back to Knettishall Heath. We passed the village sign and library - in the old telephone box.
There are some interesting buildings in Hopton Village. This is the Old Hall.
After this lovely meadow full of buttercups we navigated the edge of Market Weston fen via a a boardwalk.
The dappled sunshine lit up this Yellow Iris.
As we followed Fen Street past the fen, we saw some more deer in the field on the other side.
Now we were heading up to Knettishall Airfield, home in the second world war, as described here, to 500 Flying Fortress air crews, the bombers in the walk title.
We walked around the perimeter concrete path and around the lovely memorial line of tress planted along the original main runway.
We glimpsed another ruined church, All Saints, Knettishall, one of a number of churches in north Suffolk that fell into disuse and dereliction in the early years of the 20th century.
Soon we had a view back at Riddlesworth Hall.
Now we returned to Knettishall Heath and took a route following a combination of the green and blue walks back to the main car park. Would we see the ponies?
Yes we did!
Our final stretch was along the river.
Here we came across some swans with 4 fluffy little cygnets.
We followed the river until we got to the pool by the bridge we had crossed at the start of our walk.
The park was much busier know with plenty of families out enjoying the sun, but there was plenty of room for them to keep their distance.
That was a lovely walk, full of variety and interest. I think people doing it as part of the Suffolk Walking Festival would have enjoyed it. Maybe I should offer to lead it again next year?
You can see more details of our route today here on MapMyWalk and more of my photos here on Flickr.
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