Today was our long-awaited completion of the walk we started last September - the second half of the Boudicca Way. You can read all about Part 1 here. This was the invite from Joyce...
"Dear Gavin, Robert, John , Julie and Jane,
As the original party , that walked the first half of the Boudicca Way last September with me, I’d like to offer the second part of the walk towards the end of September. I’m just gauging the interest in finishing the walk which I think will be around 19- 20 miles to the centre of Norwich. I would prefer to walk from Tasburgh where we finished and Head to Norwich and catch a bus back to Tasburgh at the end. Please let me know if you are interested and I’ll progress. Joyce".
After some discussion,we settled on today for the walk and the original suggestion for walking from Tasburgh to Norwich and getting a bus back.
"Option 2 is what we are going to do. I have studied the bus time table a bit more and it appears that the Purple Line bus 38 runs every half an hour so we should be okay to get back to Tasburgh. However I feel we would rather opt for a bus that wasn’t in any ‘rush hour’. I just need you to communicate start times at Tasburgh with me. I am happy to meet at 7.30am or 8am or 8.30am? I estimate a 19 mile walk to Norwich train station and then maybe a further walk to Castle Meadow for bus. I can’t see that the pub at Shotesham is open so pls bring all the food/drinks you need. If weather looks atrocious then let’s walk it on a more pleasant day so not to miss the countryside. Expect road and lane walking too. Joyce."
We opted for the 8am start. The weather forecast wasn't great, but in the end we had only a little bit of drizzle from about 11:30 onwards. Robert and Julie didn't join us, but Roland did.
This was our route today, starting in Tasburgh, where we left off last time. How had it taken us so long to get to do it? Well Part 1 was training for Marbella and after that the clocks went back and the days got too short.... then COVID-19 stopped us doing a linear walk with public transport to get back to our cars.
It's not a very direct route, but takes you through some lovely countryside and villages. As we were walking we wondered what the Boudicca connection was and whether it was a route she had taken... and realised we didn't know much about her or the origins of the walk. I thought a bit of googling was in order. Wikipedia tells us, inter alia... "Boudica or Boudicca also known as Boadicea or Boudicea, was a queen of the British Celtic Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the conquering forces of the Roman Empire in AD 60 or 61. She died shortly after its failure and was said to have poisoned herself. She is considered a British folk hero."
We all remembered her as being called Boadicea. "From the 19th century until the late 20th century, Boadicea was the most common version of the name, which is probably derived from a mistranscription when a manuscript of Tacitus was copied in the Middle Ages. Her name was clearly spelled Boudicca in the best manuscripts of Tacitus."
You can read more about Boudicca, described as "...tall, with tawny hair hanging down to below her waist, a harsh voice and a piercing glare. She habitually wore a large golden necklace (perhaps a torc), a colourful tunic, and a thick cloak fastened by a brooch" in the Wikipedia Article.
As for the walk, it says here...
"Named after the legendary warrior and Queen of the Iceni whose tribes once inhabited the area, the Boudicca Way runs for approximately 36 miles between Norwich and Diss, roughly parallel with the old Roman ‘Pye’ Road (now the A140)."
So not the route she took, once widowed, visiting her suitors, as Jane fancifully suggested. Nor her warpath which took her and her army to Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St. Albans), each of which they destroyed, although it does roughly follow the first part of the route she might have taken. Furthermore, we were walking it in the opposite direction! It was first established (it says here) in 2000.You can find a leaflet about the walk here. The website for the route, however, is now defunct.
Here are some of my photos from our walk today.
We started from the Tasburgh Village sign and marker post for the walk.
What is everyone looking at?
The first fingerpost sign has been uprooted!
The route took us North-west at first towards Lower Tasburgh. We laughed at this in the garage of a house along the road. I wonder what it is for?
We were to see plenty of horses, not least as we passed through Redwings Horse Sanctuary.
The waymarker signs have been updated. Here is one of the new ones is on top of the old one.
But there are still some of the old ones (which I prefer the look of).
What is this? Some sunshine? We weren't expecting that!
These two horses followed us up to the end of their paddock.
Here we dodged the gate to avoid some mud.
Manor Farm looks very des-res.
Soon we were at Saxlingham Nethergate.
At nearby Saxlingham Green there is an information point in the old telephone box.
Joyce checking the map for where we are to turn right.
We could see 2 churches, Shotesham St. Mary and the ruins of Shotesham St. Martin (on the left).
As we passed through the wood just before Shotesham village, we came across this sign.
We also found another of these marker posts (there was also one in Tasburgh by the village sign and we came across a couple more later).
We had a drinks stop at Shotesham All Saints church in the centre of the village, winner, as the plaque says on the village sign, of a Best Kept Village competition in 1968.
This house with the dutch gables is called Dukes Head, built in 1712, as described here. So I wasn't imagining the 12 on the side of the house - Joyce wasn't convinced.
We liked the village sign, wondering if it depicted Boudicca.
As we headed off, Jane and Roland didn't follow immediately... they were struggling to get Roland's rucksack cover on. While the rest of us had our drinks, Roland discovered he had left his lunch at home. Oh no!
We admired this house on its own at the bottom of a dip
Some pretty fungi.
Our lunch stop was at Arminghall Church. Roland got plenty of donations so didn't have to go hungry. I didn't offer him any of my pate and tomato sandwich, though - he is vegetarian.
Soon after we got sight of Norwich.
We entered Norwich via Trowse.
When we got to the church I recognised where we were. We had been here on our Norfolk Nomads walk in January,
Passing a fragment of the city wall, we were near our route's end.
But first we got to walk along the river for a bit.
The official end to the walk was at Norwich Station...
...but we had to get to the bus station for the bus back to Tasburgh. What a rainbow of buses Norwich has!
And here is ours, the purple one. We timed it perfectly, arriving at the bus stop at 1:57pm, our bus was due at 2:02. We just needed to wait for the driver to have a loo break before we got on.
We enjoyed the ride back to Tasburgh to find our cars and head for home.
Well that was a lovely day's walk and we only got a bit of drizzle. Thanks Joyce for leading us and to the others for the company. So what next? No Marbella this year. Will we have time to do the last bit of the Norfolk Coast Path we hadn't done yet before the days get too short? We'll see.
You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more detail of our route here on MapMyWalk.
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