Ixworth Stowlangtoft and Pakenham Mills Walk

We still can't do group walks, but I arranged another 1:1 walk with my friend Jane. We postponed it twice because of the weather, but, 3rd time lucky, the weather was OK today. We were doing a walk I'd done a couple of times before that used a lot of quiet country lanes and there was a good chance we could avoid getting muddy boots. It was this figure of 8 walk, starting and finishing at Ixworth visiting both Pakenham Windmill and Pakenham Water mill, with an extra loop via Stowlangtoft.

This was our route.

 Here are a few of my photos. We started at the Car Park for Ixworth Village Hall and Library and set off just before 10:30.

We were very quickly in the country. Over to our left through the lingering mist we could see the Grade I listed Ixworth Abbey house, which incorporates ruins of the 12th century Augustinian Ixworth Priory.

Look. No mud!

We saw only this one deer today. I wonder where the rest were?

I said to Jane before we set out. "I'm hoping we'll see plenty of blossom today"... and wildflowers too. Here is a swathe of dog violets.

I hadn't spotted before that you can see Ixworth church behind the mini-windmill next to the real thing.

We enjoyed the gardens at Grimstone End before we turned towards Stowlangtoft. Here was some blossom we had been looking forward to.

Approaching Stowlangtoft we passed this patch of lesser celandines.

Before stopping for our lunch we visited St. George, Stowlangtoft church. It wasn't open...

...but we had a little look around the graveyard and admired the magnificent rectory, which even has its own swimming pool!

We lunched at the bench by the village sign opposite these 17th century almshouses.

We agreed that Stowlangtoft Hall, now a care home, might be a nice place to end up in for our sunset years.

Returning to Grimstone End we crossed the Black Bourn again via Baileypool Bridge.

Just before the watermill we took a little detour off on a path to the left to admire the blossom.

We imagined a wedding party shaking the trees to shower a newly wed couple with blossom confetti.

It turns out that neither of has visited the watermill. Some thing for the to-do list when it's allowed again.

Here, behind Jane, is one of the willow trees in that shade of light green they have as they begin to come into leaf.

We heard plenty of birdsong along the way. This little bird's song was very mellifluous, but silhouetted against the sky it was hard to see any colours so we couldn't identify it.

We had a good view of the windmill again just before we crossed the main road back into Ixworth.

Another favourite spring flower of mine the muscari or grape hyacinth - here are some in the verge.

Then it was back to our cars via the splendid village sign.

Well that was a lovely walk and we saw plenty of flowers and wildlife... and our boots were mud-free! Thank-you Jane for the company.

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