Thetford Warren Walk

It was a lovely sunny day again, so Dawn and I went for a walk. My plan was to to do again the Bury St. Edmunds Ramblers walk at Thetford Warren that Chris Flood led in February last year.... Read all about it here. Well we did...almost. This was our route.

Here are a few photos.

We visited the ruins of the warren lodge first.

Then it was through a pleasant bit of heath to the road...

...and across into the forest.

But then came our first hurdle... our intended route was closed due to forestry work.

No worries - we just took a little detour. But then a bit more of a hurdle.

The last bit of path to get to the river and the footbridge was flooded. Time for a plan B. Instead of crossing the river and walking along the Little Ouse Path we retraced our steps to here...

...to take a path that went along the West side of the river. And very nice it was too... and with no mud!

In places we were able to get down to the river bank.

Here we could see some swans nesting.

We went to visit the bridge we would have come over...

...and then followed the route from the original walk back to our start, passing the bat hibernaculum....

...and following part of the drive for the exit to High Lodge.

One last bit of woods.

Then we were back at the car park.

A little over 6 1/2 miles, so it was a good morning walk under beautiful blue skies. Then it was home to cook the One-pan Duck with Savoy Cabbage for lunch.

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

Bottled

Yesterday I did the bottling and today the labelling of my latest batch of Imperial Stout and my Whisky. "What are you going to call it?", asked Dawn. I eventually plumped for "St Edmund Whisky". Here are my bottles...

Well that's a few 2021 Christmas presents sorted!

A Tricky Friday Quick Cryptic

Times Quick Cryptic No 1819 by Mara

An enjoyable but tricky test from Mara today to end the week. Some lovely clues with no less than 6 ticks in my copy. Not easy in parts, though, and I suspect some less-experienced solvers may find it a bit tough. It also uses one of those unhelpful grids with the starts of the first 6 down clues all being "unchecked". I found the RHS trickier than the left, but there is nothing unfair, I think. How many of you remember the old coin at 4D? My last two in were 4D and 8A. COD (as it were) to the fish at 18A which took me a while to catch. In all it took me just under 6 1/2 minutes. Thank-you Mara. How did you all get on?

Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is Phil's turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the latest crossword here and the answers here. There is one fun clue that is quite biffable, but can you parse it? Enjoy! And if anyone is interested in our previous offerings you can find an index to them here.

( Read all about it... )

Berner's Heath Walk

I hadn't walked with anyone other than Dawn and William since I took Sarah back to Leeds at the start of the year. But today I had a chance to walk with Joyce and catch up on the last 2 1/2 months since we had last met. She invited me to walk with her to visit Berner's Heath, a Site of Special Scientific Interest with an interesting history. It is only accessible from November to February, so this was also a bit of a last chance until next winter.We met at Rampart's Field near West Stow and headed North along the Icknield Way to start with.This was our route...

Very rectangular! Here are a few of my photos.

It was nice to have a path that was sandy rather than muddy...

...but we are in the Brecks. There was quite a bit of air activity, and it couldn't be Brits going/returning on holiday abroad, could it?

We marveled at these trenches ready for potato planting.

Berner's Heath is open access land... but only between November and February.

These hummocks are interesting.

Soon we got to the cross of trees that was used as a target, as described here.

The deer have been here, but we didn't see them today.

We walked down the middle of the cross of trees.

The gates (and there aren't many of them) to the heath aren't very friendly. You have to climb over them. Perhaps they forgot to remove the barriers in November.

We chanced upon a team of three from the Forestry Commisson at work. Well Joyce's Dad worked for them for 40 years, so we had to have a chat. They had been planting trees since 7:20am... 4 rows of Douglas Fir with a row of Corsican Pine in between. I'm sure Joyce will correct me if I remembered this wrong, but I think we were told they had planted 7000 trees since they started on Tuesday morning and had planted over 2000 today. (I think I remembered wrong when we stopped for lunch that it was 7000 today). Wow!

We stopped for lunch here. Oh dear. Did we break the COVID rules? But here was nobody to see.

On our way back now, this path was very wide.

There are still plenty of last year's leaves in place.

"Are they hares?," asked Joyce. No. Just rabbits.

And just before we got back... a reminder of the classic Breckland tree skyline. I love it.

Thank-you Joyce. Lovely to visit that special place while we can, and to catch you, of course. Looking forward to walks with the rest of the gang soon!

You can find more details of our route here on MapMyWalk,

Weekend Quick Cryptic 19 - by Phil Jordan

Click here to read about the origin of this series of crosswords.

A brief history of the origins of these crosswords for those who are new to them. As a blogger of the Times Quick Cryptic Crossword on Times For The Times every other Friday, I have often had comments on the blog bemoaning that The Times only provides a Quick Cryptic on Mondays to Fridays. When I finally gave up work at the end of February 2020, I decided that I would try my hand at compiling crosswords. It was with some trepidation that I published, in May, the first of these Weekend Quick Cryptics to fill the gap. Well it seemed to go down well so I did another. And then my fellow crossword solver and commenter on Time for the Times, Phil Jordan, volunteered to produce some too! So now we alternate, publishing each new crossword via my Friday Quick Crossword blog. You can find an index to the complete series of crosswords here.

This time it is Phil's turn to provide the fortnightly weekend quick cryptic crossword. You can try and solve it interactively here or download a PDF to print here. Alternatively you can copy and print the image below. Comments and queries welcome here or with the solution post here. I will respond to them as soon as I can.

You can find the solution here and an index to the complete series of crosswords here.

A Little Visitor

With Dawn using the study as her remote classroom, I am confined to the kitchen table for my crosswords, blogging and domestic admin. This morning I had a little companion visiting the sapling just the other side of the patio door....

It's a blue tit. He was coming and going for most of the morning. I hope he keeps coming back.

Ixworth Walk

Dawn suggested we go for a walk before lunch this morning. I suggested we do again the walk we did last January from Ixworth (see here).

Here are a few photos.

We started our walk here at just before 10:30.

It wasn't long before we came to some snowdrops.

In the grounds of Ixworth Abbey...

We spotted this feature, that we hadn't noticed before.

The Black Bourne was rather full, but not overflowing.. well not here, at least.

Out into the country....

...I remembered to look back to get this first view of Pakenham Windmill.

As we had seen them before, we were on the lookout for deer, and we found 3 in a field. This was the nearest.

A little later we saw the two stags having a bit of a tiff.

At the furthest easterly point of our walk was this patch of last year's sunflowers. Were they being left to self-seed, or as feed for the birds?

Down the hill towards the main road and the windmill, there were another couple of walkers in front of us...

...who we overtook just before the windmill.

Onwards to the watermill.

The mill race was running very fast. What was Dawn pointing at?

No it wasn't the topiary animals...

...but a great egret!

In the gardens of some of the houses in Grimstone End we found some lovely displays of snowdrops.

Then it was back to Ixworth.

...where we found these cheerful crocuses...

...before heading back up the High Street to the car.

That was as lovely as ever and we got the triple bonuses of the deer, snowdrops and great egret.

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