What a pity. I forgot both my camera and my phone today on what was a very pretty winter's day. It was the first Thursday of the month, so the first walk with the Bury St. Edmunds U3A Longer Walks group of 2022. This month it was Chris' turn to lead. We met in Santon Downham at 9:30 to start our walk and the thermometer reading from my car was -5 degrees.
Well most of us did. Dave went to the wrong car park at first, but eventually found the rest of us.No we didn't do the trail shown in the map at the start and without my phone I was unable to track our our route, but I think it was something like this.
This is where we met.
We started by crossing the Little Ouse via the bridge that appeared in a
Dad's Army
episode, as described
here.
Our drinks stop was on the green in Weeting...
...just across the road from these cottages on The Row.
Then it was back through the forest to Santon Downham, where we visited the
St. Mary's Church, known as The Church in the Forest. This photo is from Simon Knott's excellent Suffolk Churches site.
This is some of what Simon has to say about the church (you can read more here) explaining the peephole we had noticed in the rood screen...
"The most memorable survival though is cut into the south dado of the late
14th Century rood-screen. This is a simple Y-tracery window, about 15cm
high. Small holes in roodscreens are not uncommon, particularly in big
churches. There are circular holes in the screens at Blythburgh and
Southwold, for example. The reason for them has not been firmly established,
but the mundane explanation that they were peepholes does not seem
unreasonable. If so, they were made by ordinary people kneeling and saying
devotions, not for priests celebrating Mass at other altars. Special squints
were always prepared for that purpose, and many survive. But to find a hole
in the wood that is so elaborately shaped is most unusual."
Thank-you Chris for leading us and the rest for their company too. You can
find a GPX file of the route I plotted
here. No link extra photos, but you may be interested in these other related
walks...
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