This was my route today - pretty faithful to the planned route, but it ended up slightly longer at 13.5 miles, largely through being a little unsure of what path to take at one point.
Maybe it has been my recent reading and the enforced walks in isolation, but I had a sense today of connections, the walking again one way or other and the crossing and recrossing of paths walked before with the echoes of previously shared walks. The connections of the routes and with the people who walked them with me. I was walking alone but not lonely.
It is very odd. When I stopped working full time 2 years ago, this is just what I expected to be doing - walking on my own and enjoying the countryside, collecting walks to share with others. But then I started walking with others and that became a way of life and gave me a whole new group of friends with a shared love of being out in the countryside exploring the paths and where they led. created and used by generations of walkers.
And today I was joining up with so many I had done over the last 2 years, although there were a couple of miles of paths I hadn't walked before..
Anyway, here are some of my photos from along the way and links to some of those echoes. Not as many photos as usual today as I forget to put my memory card back in my camera so was limited to about 30 shots on that and then my phone.
The first and last parts of the route are well trodden, but still have some new delights to enjoy.By the fencing around the new Lark Grange 2 development, I found some wild fennel. I must go back and pick some!
Work has restarted at the new development around the old Flying Fortress. Will it ever be reincarnated as a new pub? When will we be able to go back to the pub again as we used to?
The hawthron blossom alongside the dual footpath and cycle path is profuse, with a delicate creamy off-white colour.
As I headed on up the path past Rougham Airfield, I found this little rabbit quietly lurking in the undergrowth.
Skip forward a bit. This signpost featured in a post from Gavin in the Bury St. Edmunds Ramblers facebook site a couple of weeks ago. I knew I had seen it recently, but not where. It was on my Great Barton Church and Thurston walk at the end of March. It is by Great Barton mere.
This time I went along the path it was signposting past Kiln Cottage.
I remembered coming along this path in the opposite direction on the Theatre Royal 200 for 200 walk last day last April. Little did I imagine how I would get another reminder of that later in my walk.
I took a little detour off the path through the trees to the edge of the mere with a view of Bartonmere House.
Soon I was in Pakenham and crossing with a walk I did there last year.
Here is the village sign. I thought of Glen and his collection of village sign photos. I bet he has this one already.
I followed the path up the hill behind the back of Pakenham Church and then on past Pakenham Wood. They are lovely paths. Here I was truly out in the country and saw almost no-one. I heard chiff-chaffs, robins, wrens and even a cuckoo along with others I couldn't recognise.
At one point I hesitated over the route. My shadow didn't seem to be pointing in quite the right direction. But I had forgotten to allow for it being British Summer Time. I thought I should be heading across the field in front, but instead I had to take a left turn. I wondered about the "BEWARE Low Flying Aircraft sign"...
But 1/2 mile further on it became clear when I reached the runway at the little airfield next to the Norton to Thurston road.
And here I was back on familiar territory by Little Haugh Hall....
...and the Norton and Black Bourn Valley walk I did with the Ramblers back in January. And now I was on part of that route past the folly...
...and on via the edge of Norton to the Black Bourn Valley Nature Reserve. But, just as I was turning off the road onto a footpath, an open-top car stopped on the road. I was somewhat startled when the elegant lady in the snazzy hat said in a familiar voice, "Hello. You maybe didn't recognise me in my hat." It was Dawn, chief perpetrator of the Theatre Royal 200 for 200 walk. She said she had recognised me from my gait. We couldn't chat for long as she was blocking the road, but it was lovely to bump into her so unexpectedly.
The cows looked on, unimpressed.
Now I was on the path through the Nature Reserve followed before.
I was surprised to find a family at the bridge.. the first walkers I had seen for about 4 miles.
This used to be one of the muddy bits.
I remembered what we had encountered in January...
Nobody minded, and, most importantly, nobody fell into it.
But now I turned off that route to head for Thurston. This lovely cottage had some honeysuckle in the garden.
And now I joined another remembered walk - the Tickety-Boo Walk. Just past the "Toads Crossing" sign, I turned onto this footpath with a view of Thurston Church in the distance.
Then it was home via Thurston and the monstrous footbridge over the railway.
Well that was lovely walk on a perfect Spring afternoon. I may have been walking on my own, but I could feel my walking friends with me in spirit. Oh how they would have loved it!
You can see more details of my route here on MapMyWalk and more of my photos here on Flickr.
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