Felixstowe Walk

Today we had a walk at Felixstowe with a welcome late breakfast/early brunch stop to keep us going as we headed from Cobbold Point to Landguard Point and back via the town centre and Ferry Road.... and a chance to avoid walking through late-winter mud. Well we had had 3 winter storms in 5 days! Good call, Joyce!

This was the invite.

"Tuesday February 22nd Felixstowe Walk. Something a little bit different. Please park near to Cobbolds Point at 10am  (opposite The Fludyers Hotel, Undercliff Road East, Felixstowe, Suffolk IP11 7LU). To start, we will walk to The View SmokeHouse at Beach Street for refreshments ...you may fancy a cooked breakfast or something a little lighter? 

Then we will walk to Landguard and then to Felixstowe Ferry but via the town and some different footpaths. Back to Fludyers late afternoon and I expect 11-12 miles walking. but you can make it shorter.  Please let me know if you'd like a space at The View as they are kindly reserving seats for us.  Transport available too from Skyliner - get in touch. "

This was our route.

In the end we didn't go all the way to Felixstowe Ferry, but we still managed 10.3 miles, which was plenty.  Here are a few of my photos.

I arrived and parked at Cobbold Point only to see Ann and Mike walking away from me. Ah. Fludyers Hotel was the rendezvous, I remembered belatedly.

We walked along the front to The View Smokehouse, next to Mannings Amusements...

...where I had an excellent Breakfast baguette with my coffee.

Well refuelled, it was onward to Landguard Nature Reserve, which I learned all about on this walk in the 2019 Suffolk Walking Festival.

At the docks we saw the huge Ever Grade, sister ship of the Ever Given, infamous for blocking the Suez Canal in 2021 (see here).

We descended to the beach to walk to the point.

Here we were sheltered from the wind for a while walking along the sand back towards Felixstowe town.

The beach huts stand unoccupied waiting by the shore for summer to come.

We stopped in the town centre for our lunch stop.

This house we passed reminded me of the Bayko set my grandparents had kept for us to play with when we visited. 

we finally left paved paths to follow this footpath....

...where we found these pretty blue violets alongside the path....

..and peonyy roses overhanging from neighbouring gardens.

We walked through this new estate. It was just a building site when I walked this way in 2019 (see here).

We got some great views across the Deben to Bawdsey.

But then the rain came and we had to take shelter for a few minutes.

But it didn't last long and we were soon on our way again.

Eagle-eyed Joyce spotted this bird in a tree. What was it? 

Joyce initially thought it might have been a marsh harrier, which Ann says are quite common hereabouts, but having seen my photo she thinks it is a kestrel. I'm inclined to agree.

Not far to go now, as we descended Jacob's Ladder....

..with some interesting views of mixed louring skies and sunshine

Thank-you Joyce for leading us and everyone else too for the company.

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