Sproughton Walk

Today's walk was another new area for me once again taking on some of the Gipping Valley River path. This was the invite from Joyce...

"Wednesday 26th May a new walk for many: Park for free at Morrison’s, Sproughton Road, Ipswich IP1 5AQ. Toilets and refreshments are available here.  We will start walking from the car park entrance (near garage/Boss Hall Rd) at 10am. It’s a 9.5 mile circular walk with good views, woodlands, River Gipping (again!). Our lunch break will be at Bramford Picnic (pub nearby). There is some walking along the main road pavement but you’ll soon forget about that and soldier on. Sometimes, we have to use less than perfect paths to join up routes."

In fact is was our group member Teresa's walk - one she developed during lockdown as a walk from home. This was the route.

Here are a few of my photos.

We started by heading for Sproughton village passing the Amazon distribution hub, which was dwarfed by this giant 41m high warehouse...

We didn't know who's it was, but this article says it was "...built for LDH (La Doria) Ltd – a major food company that sells and distributes a range of foods to supermarkets. Its brands include Cook Italia, Mrs Ball’s chutney, Glenryck tinned fish, and Bonduelle tinned vegetables."

In the village we saw the sights there including the  late 16th/early 17th Century Tithe Barn...

...the former Almshouses...

...the village sign and The Wild Man pub, sadly closed since Jan 2020, named after the legend also depicted on the village sign - read about it here.

Soon our road-walking was behind us as we set off up The Grindle towards Thornbush Hall, some of which dates from the 17th Century.

We passed through Bullen Wood...

...where there were still bluebells flowering among the stitchwort.

At the top of the hill there is a switching station where they have been planting hundreds of new trees.

Here we found lots of these caterpillars. I think they might be yellow-tail moths.

We were never very far from Ipswich and had regular views of the giant warehouse...

...and the prominent Landmark House office. They must have good views.

We were delighted to find, as we walked down the hill towards Bramford, poppies at the side of the lane.

We walked through the churchyard of St. Mary's, Bramford with its spikey spire.

..and past the colourful Grade II listed Bramford House, dating from (probably) 1693.

We headed on to the Bramford picnic site for our lunch stop.

We walked through Hazel wood...

...before joining the Gipping Valley River path. We saw plenty of comfrey, as we did a little further along the path on our recent Quarries Quest walk.

We were glad of the boardwalk in places where the river overflowed into the water meadow.

We soon reached Sproughton Mill again.

We saw some birds overhead. What were they? We think they are red kites.

Right underneath the birds was this sign. Who was flying them?

We passed the Anglian Water plant that extracts water from the river.

A loud squawk alerted us to this moorhen on the river.

This graffiti artistry is quite classy.

We recrossed the railway line underneath a freight train....

...and we were soon back at Morrisons where we started.

Lovely walk. Thank-you Joyce and Teresa. A big disappointment at the end, though...  Morrisons have stopped selling scotch pies. Oh no!

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