Stoke-by-Nayland Walk

Today we did again a walk first done in September 2020 (see here). It was one of Glen's that he had offered for the 2020 Suffolk Walking Festival that got cancelled, which he called "Suffolk Slopes". And indeed there is quite a bit of up and down (for Suffolk, that is).

This was the invite from Joyce:

"Monday 26th Sept Stoke by Nayland. We will meet at the Recreation Ground (School Street, Stoke by Nayland CO6 4QY) at 10am and start with a drink at The Crown pub. If you don't want tea/coffee, then join us at 10.30am at The Crown instead. I suspect we will walk around 10 miles. It is quite undulating. Please bring a packed lunch. "

This was our route today, which added in a short extra loop and left  the "The Downs" loop until the end.

We met in the car park and headed to The Crown first for a cup of coffee (or tea) before we started walking. The forecast wasn't great but the weather was better than expected with just a couple of showers and some nice sunshine at times. It wasn't long before I took off my jumper and started wishing I'd been wearing my shorts.

Here are some of my photos.

We had our tea and coffees at The Crown Inn.

It was very comfortable.

We remembered admiring the flowers in this garden opposite  St. Mary's Church. This year it is full of apples...

...and vegetables, including some burgeoning pumpkins.

We had an early sighting of St. Mary's, Polstead which we would pass later.

A red kite.

Shortly after crossing the River Box by Valley Farm...

...we had to stop to put our waterproofs on.

We remembered this barn at Bobrights Farm.

At Wintermarsh Green they had been laying something down the road.

By the time we got to our drinks stop in the woods near Scotland Hall, the sun was shining brightly. Here is Joyce taking a photo to show Glen the new picnic table we had found.

As we walked through the wood, Steve drew our attention to the soughing of the wind in the trees.

We came to a new house that used to be a very pink barn.

Soon we were in Polstead. We stopped on the green for our lunch. The 17th Century Cock Inn wasn't open today.

There are some lovely houses in Polstead.

This is the village pond.

Now we passed the prominent  St. Mary's Church which featured in so many of our views today next to the war memorial.

We had plenty more lovely views in the early afternoon sun.

Was this a service tree we found?

In retrospect I think it is more likely a walnut tree.

We were pleased to see there were still banded Galloway cattle... 

..at Grade II listed Scotland Hall.

We also admired the GradeII listed  Scotland Place, last sold on 2007 for £1.5m and recently valued at £2.293m.

Here we deviated from the original route to do an extra loop before returning to Stoke-by-Nayland, heading along the Box valley first...

...and passing Grade II listed Polstead Mill.

As we climbed towards Steps Farm we had a lovely view looking back towards Polstead.

But we weren't finished yet. We did the loop Glen started with via "The Downs", climbing one last hill from the bottom.

Nearing the church we took a little detour to visit the Cherry Wood Community Woodland and then returned to the church for a toilet stop as the rain came down again.

Inside we found some marvellous Harvest Festival displays....

...and a reproduction of the John Constable full sized sketch of his painting of Stoke-by-Nayland, painted between 1835 and 1837.

That was a lovely scenic walk including some very pretty and impressive dwellings. Thank-you Joyce for leading us round and for the lift from Dobbies. And thank-you also to the others for the company.

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