U3A Newbourne Walk

It was the first Thursday of the month today, so time for a walk with the Bury St. Edmunds U3A Longer Walks Group. This time it was Dave's turn to lead.... and he set a fine example to follow. 

This was his invite....

"I am planning a walk of about 10 miles this Thursday starting at Newbourne Village Hall IP12 4NP at 10 am. The walk goes round the village to the south and returns via the Deben , Waldringfield and a nature reserve. There are pubs in Newboune and Waldingfield (on the river). As several people are away I suggest we rendezvous at Woolpit for 9.15 opposite the church and car share. We might get in one car! Please let me know who is coming."

And indeed we did all fit into Dave's car. 

This was our route.

We headed anti-clockwise around the route shown. Here are a few of my photos.

Dave showing us the route. You can see how we were dressed up for the cold and there was a strong wind blowing throughout. I was the only one with shorts on.

We passed through the edge of the Newbourne Springs Nature Reserve.... we would be back here later.

The path went right across a field. Fortunately it was dry so we didn't get muddy feet... at least not here.

But this was a little trickier.

We found some marsh marigolds in the woods...

...and plenty of wild primroses.

Our route never took us very far from Newbourne. Here's the church sticking out above the trees.

We were surprised to find this bus in the middle of nowhere.

Eventually we reached the River Deben and walked along the shore.

The tide was out.

We saw plenty of bluebells ready to come out.

Some of the path through the marshes has been reclaimed by the river so we turned inland to Hemley, and our lunch stop at All Saints Church.

The porch had windows which shielded us from the passing shower.

The oilseed rape flowers are out.

We emerged at the river edge again just outside Waldringfield Sailing Club.

We admired the hardy ladies going for a dip on such a cold day.

The boats are tethered to a chain that runs along the shore.

We passed The Maybush but didn't venture in.

We returned via Waldringfield Heath. For a while we were walking straight into the wind, which had got even stronger, and got sandblasted by the soil that got blown.

Returning through Newbourne Springs Nature Reserve we found lots more primroses.

We were glad of the boardwalk in places to keep our boots out of the mud.

Back in Newbourne, we visited The Fox Inn and Dave, exemplar walk leader that he is, bought us all a drink before driving us back to Woolpit.

Thanks Dave for the excellent walk.. and the lift and the beer, and to the others for the company.

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