Today was the last day of the 4-day Wool Towns Challenge Walk as part of the 2023 Suffolk Walking Festival and many of us were wearing our souvenir T-shirts we had been presented with yesterday.
This is the description of the walk from the Festival brochure.
We met in Clare at the end point of our walk and were bussed to Lavenham where our walk today started.
This is the description of today's walk...
...and this was our route.
Here are some of my photos.
It was a lovely morning as we assembled at Clare Country Park for our buses to Lavenham.
Our leader Phil giving us our briefing in Lavenham where we finished yesterday. Once again I would be walking along many familiar paths, but some new ones.
We passed through the churchyard of the impressive
Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. It was built in a single, lengthy campaign from
the 1480s to the 1520s, and was bankrolled by the wealthy cloth merchant
families, particularly the Springs and the De Veres.
The church stood proud behind us as we walked along Bridge Street Road.
We were soon in Long Melford, where we had a drink stop at the top of the green.
We had a handover to Steve, our final walk leader of the 4 days. Here he is telling us about the remaining 9 miles of our walk.
We got a good view of Long Melford church from the drive.
Holy Trinity Church is very impressive. According to
this article, "
The nave,
at 152.6 feet (46.5 m), is believed to be the longest of any parish
church in England. There are nine bays, of which the first five at the
western end are believed to date from an earlier structure."
This field had an amazing profusion of buttercups.
We passed the front of Kentwell Hall.
Steve warned us we would be passing some longhorn cattle, but they didn't seem to be bothered by us going along the edge of their field..
After Pond Plantation there was a junction of paths and we turned left,
continuing along the Stour Valley Path towards Glemsford. As we descended past Cranmore Green Farm we came across another group of walkers going the other way.
David was there to meet us and gallantly helped people down the steep bank to cross the road at Mill Farm.
We crossed the River Glem on a rather bouncy bridge.
We walked along the valley a short way before turning left onto a path up the hill. We stopped at the top to catch our breath and let others catch up. We had a good view across the valley to Stanstead village...
...and up the Glem valley towards Boxted.
We could see
St. Mary, Glemsford Church, which dates back to the early 14th century, with the earliest recorded rector being Hugh de Poynton in 1302, but we didn't get any nearer.
Our lunch stop was at Glemsford Village Hall.
Some of us were grateful the bar was open and had some additional refreshments to go with our packed lunches.
Suitably refuelled, we continued towards Cavendish through fields of barley with lovely views.
This was our first view of Cavendish Church.
At one gate we were met by a group of friendly horses. T
Then we came to some more Scarlet Clover, as we had seen yesterday.
But today our path took us through it.
We stopped at the green near the village sign and were given a little while to explore.
The name Cavendish refers to a Saxon by the name of Cafa, who owned an 'edisc' or meadow beside the River Stour. The village has a long connection with another famous family, that of the Cavendishes, Dukes of Devonshire.
In 1547 William Cavendish, a native of Cavendish village, married Bess of Hardwick. The couple were the forebears of the future Dukes of Devonshire. Their son William was the 1st Earl of Devonshire, and grandfather of the 1st Duke.
St. Mary's church turned out to be open, so several of us visited it. I'd not been in before. We met someone inside valuing the treasures in the church, so maybe it was open because he was there.
Curiously not mentioned by Simon Knott, there is a moving display of wooden crosses from the battlefields of World War One. 33 men from the village died in the conflict - 30 directly due to fighting on the Western front. Of those 30, only 18 have identified graves. The original wooden crosses of 11 of these men were brought back to Cavendish after the war. The two crosses of the men who had died from their wounds after returning to Britain are also displayed.
As Simon Knott says, "
The most striking feature which faces you across the church from the north aisle was not originally from this church at all. This is a large canopied reredos by Ninian Comper, made in 1895 for the private chapel in London of Athelstan Riley and brought here after his death. The central part of the reredos is a 16th Century Flemish panel, presumably once part of an altarpiece, depicting an animated Crucifixion with plenty of figures milling around beneath including Roman soldiers casting lots for Christ's garments. The gilded figures beneath are Comper's.".
The plain glass window at teh east end of the church have a tantalising fragment of stained glass.
We regrouped on the green and continued on our final leg to Clare. Some nasty black clouds seemed to be over where we were heading, but we finished our walk without any rain.
After a few ups and downs, one last up...
...before our view of Clare Castle and downward path to the town.
We waited to regroup before crossing the road and entering the country park together to finish the walk.
Here we were met by the Town Crier who set us off on our journey 3 days ago.
Once again, he gave us a speech from his scroll.
This is Ben's photo of us all at the end...
Then it was on to the community centre by the bowling green...
...where we had tea and cakes...
...and celebratory presentations of a certificate, woolly fridge magnet and book of Clare Walks.
Here is my certificate 😀
Thanks to Sudbury Ramblers and Clare Walkers for creating and hosting the walk, David and his team for the support and my fellow walkers for the company. A lovely four days.
You can see more details of our 13 mile route today here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here) and more of my photos here on Flickr.
You can find the following related walks on my blog:
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