Nowton Park to Hawstead Walk

This was the invite from Joyce... 

"This week's walk is Thursday Oct 22nd and it is one from our recent Walking Festival. We will park/meet near Redwing Road/Mayfield Road, Bury St Edmunds at 10am. You can park at Nowton Park for £2 if you wish where there are toilets/coffee but pls stroll to meet us. It's an 11 mile circular walk with outdoor/undercover coffee stop at Maglia Rosso, Hawstead. We will be using the St Edmund Way & Bury to Clare routes. There's some road walking, fields and old railway line too."

It was one of the few I missed from the Mini-Walking Festival, so I was keen to do it, although a lot of it was on familiar paths. This was our route today.

Here are a few of my photos.

Joyce briefing us about the walk at the start.

We were soon out in the countryside and seeing some autumnal hues.

This path was familiar, although I think we went on the other direction last time. We are on the Bury to Clare route here.

There were gaps in the clouds the illuminated the landscape in changing patterns and patches. The sun was catching these trees in the distance here.

At the meeting of paths with the St Edmund Way we were glad Joyce had taken us the way we came to avoid this!

Shorty afterwards we arrived at this trig point, at 84m, but not quite the highest point on our walk. Somebody mentioned you could adopt one. There is some discussion of it from a while ago here, and according to this tweet you still can. Find more information about trig points here and see some great photos here.

Looking northwards, I think, this looks like the Westley Rd water tower illuminated by the sun.

 

 

Here is a photo I took of it on this walk in May

The sugar factory was also sunlit.

We came to the first of two very similar Y-plan houses, Parklane Cottage formerly the estate cottage for Revd. Sir Thomas Cullum in the 1840s. It is GradeII listed - see here. Each wing has a chimney at the meeting point in the middle. It was restored in c1980.

As we passed this field of sunflowers several flights of pheasants emerged from among the flowers.

We approached at All Saints, Hawstead Church.

In the distance was another church, possibly St. Mary Magdalene, Little Welnetham?

In the churchyard Joyce directed us to this monument to the family of William Biddell. It commemorates William, his wife Ellen, 4 of their children who dies young and their son Percy, who's sad epitaph reads "I was dumb. I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it". There was also a  younger daughter Bertha, who was a painter.

The church has a nice field with a picnic table... and a mis-spelt sign.

We came to the second Y-plan house, Cullum House, which was originally the village school, built in the same year as the first.

The village sign is in front of the impressive Metcalfe Almshouses. There is a rather nice article about East Anglian almshouses, featuring photos of several I have seen, here.

Jane and I stopped to admire Little Owl house. We wondered about the door in the roof. Not one to open when you are sleepwalking!

A gap in the clouds lit up the path soon after.

At Hawstead Green we stopped at Maglia Rosso for a drinks break.

Just off the green is a secluded little picnic area by the River Lark.

We had a couple of ploughed fields to cross but, fortunately, they weren't too sticky.

We passed the impressive Old Rectory....

...before arriving at St. Thomas' Church, Great Whelnetham, which, according to Simon, is in the style of Essex churches.

We headed east again.

We passed this impressive barn conversion, just by Great Whelnetham Hall. It looked familiar, but I can't find the walk when I passed it and photographed it before. Time I built an index to my walks, I think!

Here is an aerial photo...

We crossed the main road to the old Bury St. Edmunds to Long Melford  railway line, wher we stopped for our lunch break.

And who is this striding oujt at the front along the path of the railway? Thanks, Joyce.

 On our final leg now, we got views of Bury St. Edmunds ahead.

We passed some blackthorn bushes, but they had very few sloes left.

In Nowton Park we said hello to the panda....

...before one last path back to our cars.

Thanks, Joyce for the great walk and to the others for the convivial company. What a lovely day out.

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