Sailors' Path Walk

Today was the last day of Joyce's Mini Walking Festival, the longest of the walks and a repeat of the last walk of the September festival - The Snape Walk. This was the invite from Joyce...

"Our last walk of the Festival is a cracker! It's 14.5 miles long and the terrain is sandy!  We will park at Snape Maltings IP17 1SP ( for free ) and meet up about 10.10am in the main car park. This gives people the chance to use the toilets and/or grab a drink when they open at 10am. We are using the Sandlings Way to Thorpeness through the village of Friston. We arrive at Thorpeness Meare after 7.70 miles and we will have a 30-40 minute break here if the weather is co-operating. There are toilets and 2 good cafes to use. The final part is using the Suffolk Coastal path and the Sailors' Path back to Snape Maltings for the remainder 6.8 miles. As we are a group of 10- we will split into 2 groups with me leading one group and John the other. Let’s hope for good weather!"

So as well as the Sailors' Path we got to walk a stretch of the Sandlings Walk to Thorpeness. In the end there were 9 of us - Joyce led the first group of 5 including the fastest walkers and I led a group of 4 following along behind.

This was our route. Can you spot where we missed a turn?

Here are a few of my photos.

We met at Snape Maltings as planned. Concerts will be resuming here soon.

There goes the first group.

We followed on a few minutes behind. We would return by the path on this side of the river.

Going through the village we saw that we would be walking along a designated "Quiet Lane". Before we got to the end of it, though, we had had to make way for a bin lorry, and animal feed lorry and 6 cars!

Snape micro library is quite a spectacle. It has DVDs (The village screen) as well as books. It has expanded since last time with a new What's On section... a groanworthy pun on Dr. Watson.

There seems to be extensive building work going on at Friston Hall.

Arriving at Friston we walked through a field of happy pigs.

But now it had started to rain. Time for the waterproof trousers...

...and umbrellas. This was not what the forecast said and I only had my light showerproof jacket. In fact we seemed to have a cloud hovering over us all along the Sandlings Walk.

We saw some bluebells, but failed to spot the turning to the left at the woods before.

We could have just gone back, but I chose to take us along another path and round a couple of field edges to get back to the Sandlings Walk. So we got to see these bluebells that the others wold have missed.... and an extra 3/4 miles walking.

It was still raining as we entered Thorpeness, passing the House in the Clouds (which is available for holiday let) and the Windmill...

...which was built in as a corn mill 1803 in nearby Aldringham and moved here and converted to pump water in 1923. It was restored in 1976.

Then it was on to the meare and planned lunch-stop....

...where we found the first group huddled under an umbrella and about to leave.

As we had our lunch I unfurled the remains of my soggy map. But there were to be no more navigational mishaps.

Some Egyptian geese with goslings. We saw some of those at Alton Water on the Bluebell Walk the other day.

The rain had stopped and Joyce had promised ice-creams, so both Roland and Glen got one each for dessert before we left for the return leg. 

A bit of beach walking to start, but we only got about 1/2 way to Aldeburgh before turning inland.

Crossing the North Warren nature reserve we got a view of the House in the Clouds and the Windmill with Sizewell B power station behind.

We passed The Red House, which was Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears' home. The Britten-Pears Foundation is a major heritage site and archive based at The Red House It is open to visit in the afternoons from Tuesdays to Sundays between March and the end of October.

Now were on the Sailors' Path, which we had also walked in February last year (see here).

We liked the new boardwalk.

The sun came out as we did the last stretch back to The Maltings.

...where we found Joyce, Julian and Jane waiting for us.

A bit of a walk of two halves we thought. We were glad it stayed dry in the afternoon. Thank-you Joyce for organising it and the rest of the mini-festival, and to the others for their company. Sadly, we missed Tim and Helen who had already left and missed the team shot before the rest of us headed for home, but it made a great end to the Festival.

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