Great Finborough Walk

Today I led a walk from Great Finborough. I did my recce only yesterday and we followed my route today as planned. This was the invite...

"Thursday 4th November is my turn to lead a walk for the U3A Longer Walks group. We will, I hope, enjoy a picturesque and varied walk from Great Finborough of about 10 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 a drinks stop at (or in the woods before)  OneHouse Church and a lunch stop by the Lakehouse Café. Expect plenty of ups and downs. We will meet at the car park by the children’s play area off Middlefield Drive to start walking at 10 am. Postcode IP14 3AH Exp 211 TM 013576 What three words verb.ground.obey"

As I had added a little extra into the first part of the walk and the weather forecast was for showers I changed our stops to have an early drinks break at Buxhall Church and our lunch at OneHouse Church.

This was our route, which is a slightly extended variant of  this walk I led earlier this year. 

We met as arranged, and I think Peter was closest to parking in the square designated by verb.ground.obey, although he complained someone else was already parked on the exact spot. In all there were 7 of us. Here are a few of my photos, including some from my recce yesterday.

Yesterday there was a lot of mist early on.

We reached Buxhall.

It's right next to the church but this is not officially 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).

A field nearby had what looked like a great foundation for a Guy Fawke's night bonfire tomorrow.

We had our drinks break at the church and I told the group "There are not many walk leaders who would take you to the end of the world, but that's what I'm going to do now".

We admired the results of ploughing the nearby field,

We liked this spindleberry in the hedgerow, and saw plenty more on our walk.

Buxhall Mill is a residential property these days according to this. 

There were some jolly pumpkins opposite.

We passed a glamping site.

Yesterday I saw this deer here, but not today.

What are they looking at?

These!

I never knew Ros was related to Dr Doolittle,

We got a view of Shelland church in the distance, but we weren't going that far today.

We returned to complete the first loop of our figure of eight walk via Brook Farm and Purple Hill...

...crossing the River Rat again using this bridge we had crossed earlier...

and traversing Stowmarket Golf Course, taking care to stick to the public footpath across it.

We ascended once more past OneHouse Hall...

...to our lunch stop at 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."

We saw plenty of mistletoe in the nearby trees but declined the kind offer from Ros of a snog beneath them.

Then it was on to 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. N.B Antivaxxers!

Another shower gave us a bit of a sprinkle and we saw a lovely rainbow.

On our way back along the river we got visited by a friendly horse.

Back across the golf course, we returned via St. Andrews church....

..and this funny narrow postbox, which I hadn't noticed before.

That was  a lovely autumn walk and we were lucky with the weather just getting a few short light showers. Thank-you to everyone who came for the company. I'm looking forward to next month's already!

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