Woolpit, Rattlesden and Shelland Walk

Today it was my turn to lead a walk for Joyce's group. I combined a couple of other walks to make a 10 1/2 mile route from Woolpit.

This was the invite:

"Thursday 24th November. John will lead a circular walk from Woolpit via Drinkstone, Rattlesden, Shelland and Clopton Green. We will meet at the village car park, Church St Woolpit, IP30 9QQ  opposite Woolpit Church, https://w3w.co/struck.devoured.tiger to start walking at 10am. The walk will total about 10-11 miles with a drink stop at Rattlesden Church and lunch at Shelland Church (where there is a toilet). Afterwards we can visit the Teacups Tearoom in Woolpit for refreshments. Expect some road walking and plenty of country paths and views…. and lots of pheasants. For a shorter option of 7 – 7 ½ miles contact John to arrange a shuttle to park at Shelland. We will aim to be back in Woolpit by about 3:15pm."

This was our route:

In the end, no-one chose the shorter option so 6 of us set off to do the whole walk.

Here are a few photos:

Assembling at the Car Park. But where was Roland?

He had missed the car park and parked round the corner in the centre of the village.

The first and last part of the walk were based on this one from 3 years ago, although we took a less direct route to Rattlesden and added in a loop to Shelland.

We were soon out in the countryside and got a good view of Drinkstone's two mills - the 18th century smock mill and 16th century post mill, thought to be the oldest in England.

We walked through Drinkstone Churchyard...

...and past All Saints' Church, but we didn't go in.

I hadn't noticed on my recce that this used to be almshouses.

Back out in the countryside we could still see Woolpit church in  the distance.

We had lovely sunshine even though the sun doesn't get very high in the sky this close to the winter equinox.

Near Drinkstone Green we came across an alpaca farm. We laughed at the dirty knees.

Our drink stop was at St. Nicholas's church Rattlesden.

Church Cottage is at the bottom of the churchyard.

The church has an impressive set of bells dating from 1754.

We passed Clopton Hall and headed back downhill towards the Rattlesden river.

Gipsy Lane was very pleasant.

King Charles the Martyr Church Shelland, one of only 5 in the country in his name, was our lunch stop.

We had a lovely view across the fields and could se the tower of Buxhall church.

One corner of the graveyard is strewn with apples.

Inside, the church is quite plain but has some impressive box pews.

Suitably refreshed, we continued along Shelland green.

and headed west around field edges towards Clopton Green. Here we had another view of Clopton Hall, which we had passed earlier.

When we got to the road I offered and alternative but longer path back avoiding walking along it. But nobody seemed to mind one way or the other and with the clouds gathering I decided to stick to the road back to Woolpit.

One last field edge when we got to the edge of the village...

...before walking through it back to the start passing the village lock-up on the way.

That turned out well. Lovely weather, with the raining holding off till well after we'd finished and, despite all the recent rain, it wasn't too muddy. Thank-you all for joining me.

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