Stoke-by-Nayland Walk

 Today was my fourth walk in Joyce's Mini Walking Festival. This was the listing in the brochure...

"Thurs: 17th Sept *FAVOURITE NEW WALK* A 9-mile circular walk on the Suffolk Slopes.**"

This was a walk that Glen was going to lead for the Suffolk Walking Festival.. which was cancelled. It was somewhere I hadn't walked before and I was looking forward to it. Suffolk Slopes? Are there any? Oh yes there are!

This was our route...

 

This walk was popular enough that we had two groups of walkers, the first led by Glen and the second by Joyce. I was in the first group and there in plenty of time, but one of our group fell victim to a closed road and lengthy diversion so we started only a few minutes before the second group. 

Here are a few of my photos. It was another beautiful day and everything looked very picturesque.

Some of the second group had already arrived before we left.

We started with a loop around the village via "The Downs". Here we are climbing again towards St. Mary's Church.

The garden over the wall from the church was beautifully tended. We had a chat with the owner. "It looks better from up there than down here", he asiad. "You can't see the weeds."

The other church that was prominent on our walk was St. Mary's, Polstead, which we would walk past later.

We climbed another incline and looked back towards Stoke.

We stopped at the top of the hill for a drinks break. Oo look. Group 2 are not far behind us!

Before we entered the woods, we popped through the gap to have a look at the view.

We saw some lovely houses and gardens as well as lovely landscapes.

This barn was rather pink.

And this house rather orange.

We had our lunch break in Polstead....

It was rather warm again so we were glad of the shade, just by the 17th Century Cock Inn. I had a pint of beer with my lunch, of course.

 

 

There are plenty of desirable residences in Polstead..

The village pond is quite sizeable.

We walked by the church we had seen from afar earlier.

Another hill!

And another view of the church as we headed back to Stoke.

As we walked along here, Glen reminded us that he had pointed out the railings where we would be walking later from the other side of the valley earlier in the walk.

We descended again to a farm with a large pond...

...and some banded Galloway cattle.

We climbed back into Stoke by Nayland past more qunitessentially Suffolk village houses....

...to reach the church once more...

...and then the car park.

Thanks Glen for the beautiful walk with spectacular views and delightful villages... and slopes, and to everyone else for the company.

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