Today we took our first steps on our mission to walk the entirety of the 93 mile Angles Way.
Today's leg was from the start in Thetford to
Knettishall Heath. This was the invite from Joyce.
"I propose to tackle stage 1 of The Angles Way on Friday Jan 27th. The first stage is Thetford to Knettishall Heath which is around 14 miles. We will finish at the main car park where the toilets are. Refreshments are available here but only until 3pm on a Friday so bring your own to avoid disappointment. Please meet/park at Nuns' Bridges in Thetford in the free car park there. John is offering a car share from Bury so get in touch with him asap .
The route is sandy underfoot for many miles and it is a bit churned up from motorbikes in places. There could be some mud 🤔. Starting time in Thetford will be 9.35am."
I brought 3 with me from Bury and a total of 11 of us congregated at the Nuns' Bridges car park. As everyone was ready, we set off 5 minutes early at 9:30. This was our route.
As you can see it takes a somewhat roundabout route that turns a 7-mile drive along the road into 15 miles walking. In fact with the extra little bit at the start and additional trail through
Knettishall Heath to the main car park at the end we did a total of 16 miles.
Here are a few of my photos. It was a bit cloudy at the start but we soon got breaks in the cloud and some nice sunshine. The north-easterly wind was a bit chilly when we were heading into it later, though. But it stayed dry and we only got a few short muddy stretches.
At Nuns' bridges, where the River Little Ouse joins the River Thet, I looked but didn't see the
ghost.
We paused for a photo at the official start of the trail, just along the road from where we had parked.
As we set off through Barnham Cross common, only a couple of us at the back of the group spotted this little Muntjac deer just off the trail.
I loved the succession of typical Breckland skyline silhouettes of lines of Scots pine trees.
All of a sudden we got a wide view.
We found some handy branches to sit on for our drinks break.
Steve had brought along a brochure he had got several years ago of the Angles Way. I don't know if it is available any more - I couldn't find it online.
We passed through some big fields.
The furrows and ridges, I surmise, are for planting potatoes.
We passed through one of the lines of trees,
Another tree-lined skyline. But wait a bit... what else is there?
...but a small herd of deer.
Glen pointed out this route of a a dismantled railway as we crossed.
Just after I took that photo I spotted a hare haring off away from me.
We crossed the A134 here at the southernmost point of our route. Joyce sent me a link to
Stephen and Lucy's blog of the next stretch starting here from 10 years ago (see
here). You can see their pictures of the bit we had just done
here.
The path here, heading north-east now towards Euston. At first it was a bit muddy....
...but we were soon back on sandy paths. We stopped here for our lunch just a little further on.
At Euston we crossed the Black Bourne.
We had a short stretch along the side of the A1088. Here we came across our one and only patch of snowdrops of the day.
The centre of the hamlet of Euston.
On a permissive path through the estate, we got a glimpse of the
Hall.
Heading east now along a straight sandy path parallel to the Rushford road, we stopped to admire this tree.
Entering Knettishall Heath at its SW corner, we found the Exmoor ponies.
I pointed out this sign we had seen the week before last when we came this way (see
here).
The signpost here shows we have come 15 miles and were at the start of both the
Icknield Way, heading south and the
Peddars Way heading north.
But we weren't quite finished, although this will be our starting point for the next leg. We continued on down to and along the River Little Ouse....
...to get to the main car park.
Alas we were about 25 minutes too late for the refreshments van, but maybe it was a bit of an ambitious target to get to the end before 3pm. As it is, we had had two stops of 10 and 20 minutes respectively along the way so we had done pretty well in completing the 16 miles in just over 5 hrs 20 minutes walking. I don't know about anyone else but I was a bit stiff when I got out the car after returning home!
Thank-you Joyce for leading us, the other walkers for the company and Guy and Nick for the ferrying back to the start.
You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our route here on MapMyWalk. Our next leg is planned for 17th February, so check back here after then to read all about it.
You can read more about today's stage here:
You can read more about the Angles way using these resources:
.JPG)
No comments:
Post a Comment