Weeting Walk

The sun was shining today and I will be in my car heading north tomorrow, so I thought I'd get out for a walk. I chose to go north of Bury St. Edmunds and plotted a circular walk from Weeting via Grimes Graves.

This was my actual route, which was not exactly as planned, as you will see.

Here are a few of my photos.

I parked at the village hall and passed the pretty cottages in The Row in the centre of the village, discovering I was on a Weeting Circular Walk route for the first part of the walk....

...including this pleasant path.

Soon I was out into the countryside.

At Brick kiln Farm...

...they have peacocks and guinea fowl.

Into Thetford Forest now which is not all conifers.

I got to the Grimes Graves site, thinking I might be able just to walk across it, but it is surrounded by a barbed wire fence. I passed this gate, but it was locked. Maybe I could get in at the main entrance?

but that was locked too....

...and this dissuaded me from climbing in.

There is no oath on the outside of the NE corner, so I had to head up the access road. Here I found another locked gate, but the owner of Grimes Graves cottage saw me coming up the path and came out to offer me a walk through his garden to avoid climbing. We had a very pleasant chat for a few minutes before I set out on the road to head back towards Weeting.

Back on track, I had a short stretch on the Mundford road before taking the path through Emily's Wood. I emerged from the forest here, where the path went along the edge of these trees in glorious autumn colours.

The sum was getting low and there was already a bit of a mist forming.

I passed Weeting's St. Mary's Church, but didn't have time to visit. From Simon Knott's description it doesn't seem likely it would have been open, anyway.

But I did have a little look around the ruins Weeting Castle "a rare surviving example of a grand 12th-century manor house, and a typical example of an East Anglian ‘great house’."

From there it was just a short walk back to my car as the parents and carers gathered to meet the children from school.

Well that was about 2 miles more than planned. If I'd known it was closed  I wouldn't have walked all the way round the outside of Grimes Graves and avoided that stretch along the road. But it was a lovely sunny day and I had some great Breckland sights.... and no mud, so no complaints.

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