Great Finborough Walk

Joyce asked me if I would like to lead a walk for the group this week and I said yes, of course. I decided to vary and extend a walk I had led previously from Great Finborough to include a visit to Buxhall and Mill Green as well as an extension to the north from OneHouse church up to Harleston Church and back through Northfields Wood.

This was the invite....

"Wednesday 12th May will be a picturesque and varied walk from Great Finborough of just over 9 miles. It will take in Buxhall Church and Mill, OneHouse Church, Harleston Church, Northfield Wood and a stretch along the delightful Rattlesden River. We will have one drinks stop at OneHouse Church and another at the Lakehouse Café which should be open for outside dining and takeaway drinks. Expect plenty of ups and downs! We will meet at the car park by the children’s play area off Middlefield Drive (IP14 3AB) to start walking at 10 am."

This was our route.

We assembled as planned at the the children's play area car park and started walking just before 10am. I hadn't had a chance to recce the new bits I hadn't walked before, but I had Ann and Lin on the walk who knew the area well. I needn't have worried, though, it all came together without mishap. The weather was pretty good too and we didn't get a single rain shower. Here are a few of my photos.

The path to start our walk is quite well hidden. If you didn't know where it was you could easily miss it.

Almost immediately we came to a magnificent field of buttercups.

We walked around the village of Buxhall to get to the  path to the church. On the way we passed the Old Post Office. Or was it the Old Forge? The latter before the former I expect.

St. Mary's is an impressive church with an impressive rectory. Lin told us they have great church fetes here in the grounds of the church and rectory... but not last year or this. Maybe they will after the restrictions of the pandemic are behind us.

Update: I discovered from reading Simon Knotts description of the church, that this is not oficially a rectory at all, but Copinger Hall, home until the mid-20th century of the Copinger-Hills, who were closely tied to the church and often its rector. It now offers bed& breakfast (see here).

We descended Valley Lane towards Worlds End Lane and then climbed back up to Buxhall Mill, intercepting this walk from Rattlesden Jane and I had done in lockdown  in November last year when only 1 on 1 walks were allowed.

The path we took gave us a view of  the medieval moated Fenn Hall, which is hidden by trees from paths we've used previously.

Omnipresent is the needle of Great Finborough church in the views from the hills....

... but we also got a view of King Charles the Martyr Shelland church, visited during Joyce's walking festival on the Haughley walk

We passed through Brook's farm and its collection of agricultural artefacts. The shop and tearoom is still closed. I wonder if it will be open soon?

After walking across the golf course, we stopped here for a drinks break. Perfect for social distancing, we had a bench each.

Then it was up past OneHouse Hall and its duck house....

...to the charming St. John the Baptist, Onehouse church.As described by Simon Knott in his Suffolk Churches write-up linked to above, "[The tower] used to be taller, but by the 1990s, it had become unsafe, and somewhat barbarically it was reduced by two thirds in height, and then partly built up again with modern battlements."

Now we joined the Haughley walk at this house with the lovely acers....

..heading to St. Augustine's Church , Harleston- remarkable for its thatched roof. We visited the sad collection of graves of the 5 Armstrong family children, killed in 1891 by diphtheria.

We left the Haughley walk route to go through Northfield Wood, where we were delighted to find some early purple orchids,

We arrived at the Lakehouse Cafe to find, to our bemusement, that it was packed out. No table for us, so we had our lunch on the grass.

Not far to go now, we headed back along the River Rat.

Roland spotted a duck and her 2 ducklings in the river.

The wild garlic (or ransoms) were prolific, and I harvested some for... well read the post to come!

Passing the stables, all the horses were out in the fields.. except this one.

Crossing the golf course again, we passed Great Finborough church before returning to the playground car park.

Well that turned out rather nice. Thank-you to Ann, Jane, Lin and Roland for joining me.

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