Suffolk Walking Festival - Kersey

Today I was helping Joyce on one of the 9 walks she is leading for the Suffolk Walking Festival this year. The walk was "Is Kersey the most picturesque village in Suffolk?" As the festival brochure describes it: "From Hadleigh this long distance walk follows a lovely, undulating walk from Hadleigh to the popular village of Kersey." 

It was a total of about 12 miles and this was our route.

It is largely based on this excellent Discover Suffolk leaflet of Kersey Walks, entitled "The loveliest village in Suffolk". But is it? - hence the question mark in Joyce's walk title.

We assembled at Cork Lane car park. There used to be a sign here saying it was for users of the playground only, but that is gone so we didn't have to use the swings before going on our walk. It was raining when we arrived but the rain stopped on the stroke of 10am as the 22 of us got going. Perfect!

Here are a few of my photos.

We set off along the path through the Riverside Walk on the west side of the River Brett.

After climbing Broom Hill and Constitution Hill and crossing the busy A1071 by Coram Street Farm, we got our first glimpse of Kersey....

...but we weren't going straight there and it would be a while yet before we actually got to the village. Our route first took us down to Kersey Vale.

The path up the other side through the oil seed rape was less colourful than before as  a lot of the seed has now set.

We had our drinks stop at William's Green under the oak that was planted to commemorate the coronation of George VI on 12th May 1937.

As we neared Uplands Farm we could hear the peacocks calling. This is one of them.

This herd of sheep with their cute little lambs were rather noisy too. Maybe they were trying to scare off the buzzard circling over them.

At Bridges Farm we passed some artificial insemination in progress. That wasn't in the walk description!

We eventually approached Kersey via Kedges Lane.

As the Discover Suffolk leaflet says...

"As with many East Anglian villages, -ey in the name indicates 'island', and with 'Kers' referring to cress, Kersey means 'cress island'. The Kersey Brook regularly flooded a large area to the west of the village yielding commercial quantities of cress. This was harvested and brought into the village on 'kedges' , rough  handpulled sledges, giving 'Kedges Lane' its name. The Kersey Brook was realigned in the late 1900s ending the growing of cress."

The cottage running along side Kedges Lane has a lovely garden behind some ornate gates.

Here we found a house being rethatched. It looks a precarious job.

We climbed the hill towards the church. This house features an old AA sign.

Our lunch stop was at  St. Mary's Church. You can read all about the church's history here, 

There is a lovely view down across the village from the churchyard.

Suitably refreshed, we descended from the church through the village and across 'The Splash' (see photo at the top of this post) and up again to the other end of the village. Here is the view looking back.

We carried on north of the village, swinging east and then south towards Oaks Tye. We were never far from Kersey and continued to have views of it.

We crossed Kersey Brook not far from Kersey Mill.

This chap showed us the way at Noaks Tye farm.

After a final drinks break we had one more hill to climb... which we had come down this morning. Yes we had visited Kersey Vale again.

Descending once more into Hadleigh we passed the entrance to the showground - it would be Hadleigh Show this weekend. I was amused to spot a glass of beer on the gatepost. What was that doing there?

As we waited  atToppesfield bridge for the last of the walkers to catch up, we saw this poor chap with a small lawnmower mowing the car parking area. He gave up shortly afterwards.

We crossed the River Brett into Hadleigh and passed St. Mary's Church...

...the Grade 1 listed  Deanery Tower, dating from 1495. "It was built by the Rector, William Pykenham, in the late 15th century as a gatehouse to the mediaeval rectory."...

...and the Town Hall and Guildhall.

Then it was back across the river...

...and along the Riverside Walk again to our starting point.

That was good! Thank-you Joyce and all the lovely people who came along with us. But there was one thing we forgot... did people think the answer to the title of the walk was "Yes"? I think I do.

You can see more of my photos from today here and from our recce last month here on Flickr and more details of our route here on MapMyWalk.