Mildenhall Walk

 

This was the invite from Joyce...

"Monday's walk leaves the free car park at the Jubilee Centre Mildenhall (IP28 7HG) at 10am. Just make sure that you don't park in the Sainsburys car park but further towards the big field/river. There are toilets at Sainsburys. I've a 8-9 mile circuit by the River Lark and through the woods. We walk under RAF Mildenhall flight path too! We can grab a takeaway coffee stop at McDonalds en route but looking thru the names I think we would prefer to come ready with our flasks so pls bring a flask! I think we should have 'quite' a clean walk underfoot but come prepared for a bit of mud/puddles. Looking forward to showing off the local area! Joyce "

I had walked from there twice before, although one was with the U3A and so not blogged, although you can see from the route here, that it overlaps somewhat with the first and last parts of our walk today. The other walk with the Ramblers last year went further west. and stayed closer to the river.

This was our route today...

A bit of a change of plan with less walking along the River Lark as the paths are rather muddy. Instead we went through the lovely village of Barton Mills and through Mildenhall Woods up to the RAF airfield.

Here are some of my photos.

Joyce giving us our briefing at the start.

Steve and Glen asked me later if I knew the collective noun for swans. It had come up on a previous walk and I knew, thanks to Joyce, the answer was "a bevy".

We crossed the river and headed past the Nora Hanbury-Kelk Nature Reserve to Barton Mills. Here we came to one of the eight information boards for the Barton Mills Millennium Walk. We passed 6 of them on our walk. What a great amount of information! (You can see zoomable photos of this and the other 5 we passed in my Flickr album)

We passed St. Mary's church and tried to visit. The porch was open but the church door wasn't. Shame.

We went passed The Dhoon, the country retreat of Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin.

This house, The Old Reading Room, had the letters OETE in the wall. Kim and I wondered what that meant. I googled and am none the wiser. [Edit: Joyce tells me Board 4 has the answer... it means Silver Fern in Maori - click the link to read from my photo of the board yourself].

The Lord Mayor's Cottage is up for sale for £760,000.

After skirting the historically important junction of the modern A11 with the A1101 and A1065, we headed into Mildenhall Woods.

Joyce wrote a lovely article about the area for the Ipswich Outdoor Group... see here. Today we admired the silver birch trees...

..and fungi.

Joyce pointed out to us that the larch trees, although coniferous, are actually deciduous and lose their needles in autumn. I didn't know that, but you can also read more about it here if you like.

We stopped for our drinks break at the closed Mildenhall Caravan and Motorhome club campsite.

 

 

We headed on through the woods and a large clearing.

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We visited "Mildenhall beach" at the Cutoff Channel.

 

In the clearing in  the woods lots of new trees had been planted....

There were plenty of fungi too.

An aircraft landed at the airfield going almost over the top of us.

We visited a field of exotic cattle...

 

...who came to say hello....

...although Jane seemed unimpressed.

We came to the landing lights for the airfield, but they weren't on. No more planes landing for us today.

Returning now towards Mildenhall town centre we went through some housing estates. We admired this house's Halloween decorations.

We said goodbye to Kim and Jane before the rest of us stopped for our lunch break here. nicely sheltered from the blustery wind.

We had a short saunter along the river, enduring a little sprinkle of rain....

 

...before doubling back round the other side of the cricket club

We passed some almshouses. I must see if they are mentioned in the article I found recently. [Update: No they don't get a mention].

St. Mary, Mildenhall church is very impressive.

We returned to our starting point via the river.

We got some interesting shadows crossing it for a last time.

...and a late flowering hibiscus just before the end of our walk brighened up our day even further

So thank-you Joyce for the lovely walk. Sadly no more group walks after Wednesday, but "It's Only Four Weeks", they say.

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