Needham Market Walk

 

Today we did a walk from Needham Lake in Needham Market. This was the invite from Joyce...

"Tuesday 25th May Please park and meet at Needham Lakes free car park (toilets here too). IP6 8AU is the postcode I can find. Our start time is 10am. We will head towards Barking Church, and then to Baylham, Darmsden and Pipps Ford. Lots of great views on this walk and the River Gipping at the beginning and end. Mileage is 9.5-10 miles."

It was cool and cloudy but despite the earlier rain stayed dry for the five of us on the walk. This was our route.

It took us out of Needham Market on the "Corpse Way" aka the "Coffin Trail" towards Barking, which I'd not been on before.

Here are a few of my photos. We set off north along the River Gipping at first...

...before doubling back into the town via Hawks Mill. Here we saw a colourful wagtail perch on the bridge after flying past us.

The start of the "Corpse Way" is by a house with impressive pargetting.

It is a nice leafy path.

Soon we reached  St. Mary, Barking Church. As Simon says.. "Until the 20th century, it was also one of the county's more populous parishes, including as it did the whole of the town of Needham Market, where St John the Baptist church was just a chapel of ease. All the dead of Needham Market came here to be buried, conveyed the mile up the hill on a bier along the Causeway. This is a journey you can still make today, albeit under your own steam. Local legend has it that the word 'causeway' is a corruption of 'corpseway'."

 I liked that a lot of the the churchyard had been left to be a wildlife haven

We carried on the Priestley Wood, where we saw plenty of wild flowers, including comfrey and yellow rattle.

After all the recent rain the crops are growing nicely.

Across the fields to our left we could see Grade II listed 17th Century Baylham Hall illuminated by a brief glimpse of sunshine.

 

 

We passed under a pylon poking up towards a hole in the clouds 

We seem to have had a lot of power lines on our walks recently.

In the distance across the River Gipping we got a view of the impressive Shrubland Hall. I wonder when it will open as a hotel?

St. Peter's, Baylham Church was our lunch stop and it was open so we had our lunch inside.

The churchyard had several laburnum trees.

Our route now took us through some rolling landscape with a couple of charming woods where the bluebells were still blooming.

When we got to Darmsden village, I recognised Kiln Cottage...

...and this old car, which doesn't look tike it has moved since this ramblers walk I was on two years ago. I got an entertaining comment on the blog last time from a lady called Val in Alaska " ..the old car in the photograph was bought new by my gramps in 1963... and there are many adventures in it's memory (and now do I nag my brother to give it a wash or not ...lol)"

We crossed the road and railway line heading for By Pipp's Ford on the river. In this water-filled gravel pit we saw several families of geese and goslings.

At Pipp's Ford there is a replica of the mathematical bridge.

Now it was back along the River Gipping to our start....

...seeing plenty more cute goslings...

..and finishing by going past Bosmere Mill.

 

 A great walk. Thank-you Joyce (and to the others too for the company). I think we may be doing it again soon.

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