Knettishall Heath Walk

It was a bit of a dreary morning, but I wanted to go for a walk. I realised it was almost 2 years since I first led a group walk, for the Ramblers at Knettishall Heath (see here). It's a good place to walk in the late autumn/winter as it doesn't get too muddy, so I thought I'd re-visit it, with a few tweaks.

This was my route today...

I took the path past Nick's Hill I had done on my recce for that walk and missed out the road section. On the Nature reserve I took a detour before the end along the road to where I had seen the ponies as I arrived before returning via the blue walk.

Here are a few of my photos.

The river was running quite high.

I found that part of the path was blocked off...

...but I decided to follow it anyway. Lots of trees had been felled and I could see the soil is very dark.

There were plenty of little birds flitting about and twittering in the remaining trees. I think this is a chaffinch.

There were lots of leaves to rustle by walking through.

Crossing the road on the Icknield Way I came to this post. It looks like the dog-poo fairy has been and taken away any bags that were there.

The green walk enters the heathland part of the reserve here, but I carried straight on as before....

...along the Icknield Way.

My route past Nick's Hill took me over an old landfill site.

These little chimneys are presumably to release any gases generated.

Back on the nature reserve I followed some of the red and green paths.

After finding the main group of ponies at the eastern end (see photo at the top) I returned via the blue path and found the rest of them here.

Then it was just a short stretch back along the river to the start.

A gentle 4.7 miles walk.

On my way home I thought I'd visit the former Knettishall church. It is now a private dwelling (with a fierce guard dog).

I also passed the memorial to the USAAF fliers who were based at Knettishall Airfield.

That was a nice tie in to my related walk proposed for the Suffolk Walking Festival done with just Dawn and Ann this May (see here) which I hope to do for real in 2021.

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