Angles Way - Part 5 (reprise)

Today we repeated and finished the walk we had to abandon in March in a blizzard (see here) to finally complete our mission to walk the entirety of the 93 mile Angles Way. 

This was the invite from Joyce.

"Friday June 2nd - hooray we are back! Please park at the Free Public Car park near Bungay + Waveney Valley Golf Club NR35 1DS ( ///crouching.owners.device) for a 9am start. The Golf Club is open from 7.30am if you want a drink/loo beforehand.

Obviously we have to re-walk the section to Shipmeadow (hopefully in the dry!).   I think we should skip the garden centre and spend more time in Beccles for our lunch - does that sound like a plan?  We then start a long stretch along Beccles Marshes. We then drop south to The Three Horseshoes pub at North Cove to finish.

I have pre-booked the Community Minibus to collect us at 4.15pm from the pub and return us to our cars. Mick will be our driver once again.   The route will be approx 14 miles. Please check the weather forecast . We should be back at our cars by 4.45pm. Thank you for investing your time and energy into the walk – I know it’s harder as we drive further away from home.

Please expect some long grass along the river bank which will be tough going."

This was our route today.

Here are some of my photos.

There were nine of us on the walk today. Here we are assembling in the car park next to the Golf Club. No waterproofs and umbrellas today, but it was unseasonably cold so coats and gloves were needed.

As before, we started by crossing Ousden Common. The photo at the top of the post shows us crossing the River Waveney at the other side to get to the Angles Way.

We passed the old Maltings as before and headed towards Wainsford.

We squeezed past some lovely mayflowers at this gate.

We passed through a field full of curious young cattle, who followed us to the gate on the other side.

After passing the Crisp Malt factory, we came to the river again at Wainsford and crossed back into Suffolk.

We turned left at the T-junction and then right onto the path up the hill. We didn't forget to look back this time - this was the view back the way we had come.

We followed a pleasant sheltered path for a while. Rachel had brought her guide to the Angles Way and was tracking our progress and route to come.

When we came to the road we turned right instead of left to take a short detour to see Mettingham Castle. Only the gateway and a part of the wall remain from the fortified manor house which was built in 1342.

Retracing our route we continued along the back road for a short stretch. Here we got a view to the north of Mettingham All Saints Church with its 12th century round tower...

...and St. Andrew Ilketshall  with its grand round tower with an octagonal bell stage to the south-east.

We wouldn't be visiting either of them today.

Back onto field edges now we were exposed to the chilly north-easterly breeze. It was somewhere along here, shortly after passing Highfields Farmhouse, that I slipped into the ditch last time.

We followed the proper path instead of the shortcut we took last time to pass the characterful Viewpoint Mews, the former Beccles and Bungay workhouse. Now it is a group of 24 linked houses.

We passed the Shipmeadow village sign, which illustrates that the name was originally Sheep Meadow.

we had our drinks break out of the wind on the south side of  St.Batholemew, Shipmeadow church.

As Simon Knott tells us, "In the 1970s, Shipmeadow church was declared redundant. In a brief flirtation with lunacy, the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich sold off about a dozen medieval churches for conversion into residential use, and the furnishings were dispersed. Shipmeadow's ended up at Barsham, Rumburgh and Claydon, among other places.

Shipmeadow church underwent a gentle and, Pevsner's revising editor thought, a sensitive conversion. The current residents have also been sympathetic. Indeed, it is hard to tell at first sight that it is no longer in use as a church, and the churchyard is still accessible for those who want to visit graves. Still in situ is the lychgate memorial to the parish's World War One dead, six boys who failed to come back. The church still stands as a sentinel on the busy road, the graves of the Shipmeadow dead all around, and all in all it continues to be a touchstone to the past life of a typical rural East Anglian parish. "

Indeed I hadn't noticed it was now a residential building.

This is the lychgate mentioned...

A little further along the road we turned off  to head towards Shipmeadow marshes. We met this chap along the way.

We had a couple of stiles here - our only two of the day.

We were now on the part of the Angles Way I had been on when I did this walk from Geldeston last year.

At the back with Rachel, we heard and then spotted what we thought was a bullfinch perched just by the path.

A bit further on, looking back, we could see Holy Trinity Barsham church. Rachel told us from her book about the curious lattice windows at the east end and that Admiral Lord Nelson's mother was born in the rectory there. As Simon Knott says, "The most striking feature of the exterior is at the East end of the church. Here, like an extension of the window tracery, a flint lattice spreads across the face of the east wall. It has been variously dated as anything between the late 12th Century and the early 20th Century, but Clive Hart, in his authoritative East Anglian Flushwork, dates it as probably late 15th Century and no later than the early 16th Century. It is most unusual, there's nothing exactly like it anywhere else in Suffolk, although something rather similar was been picked out in brick on the east wall at Spexhall at some point." 

We soon entered the pretty town of Beccles along the delightfully named Puddingmoor. You can read about the towns history here.

We were surprised to pass a brace of Morris Minors.

Off to the left side of the road are a succession of narrow lanes down to the river called "scores".

This was our lunch stop and we arranged to meet back at the bottom of the steps up to St.Michael's Church after 40 minutes.

I climbed the steps to church. It has a separate bell tower which was open today - you can see some people who have climbed to the top here.

As Simon Knott tells us, "The church was built first, without a tower. A bequest of 1369 by Robert de Mutford left money for building the 'new church', and the porch was the result of a 1455 will. But in the early 16th century, in a display of piety, power and civic pride, the great square belfry was built to the south east. Solid, faced in stone and lined in brick, it rises almost 100 ft above the street. The parapet was never built; the Reformation intervened. "

There was a small market on in the market square.

Most of us ended up here at Relish café. The sandwiches were excellent.

There is quite a Flemish influence in the houses along Northgate.

The town sign depicts the presentation of the charter by Queen Elizabeth I to John Baas, the first Port Reeve of Beccles in 1584.

Passing the quay and boatyards...

...we were soon out in the country again, now walking along the River Waveney past Beccles Marshes.

Our final drink stop was at this old pumping station.

At 3m above sea level, we were a couple of meters above the height of the marsh.

We came to some moorings at the end of Marsh Lane. Here we met one of the Broads Authority rangers in her boat on patrol on the river. She said it was much quieter than usual for a summer term half-term.

Just across the river we saw a marsh harrier doing its own patrol.

Not much further now...

The North Cover moorings.

This was it! 6 of us had now walked the entire Angles Way! We got our photograph taken.

Now it was just a matter of getting to today's walk endpoint. Across the railway line...

...through the village and along the path past the church to The Three Horseshoes.

Mick was there with the Community bus to take us back to Bungay.. but not before we had a quick celebratory drink!

Thanks-you Joyce for organising and leading us and the rest for the company too.

You can find more details of our route here on MapMyWalk (and download a GPX file here) and a few more of my photos here on Flickr.

You can read more about today's stage here:

Angles Way L3

You can read more about the Angles way using these resources:

Discover Suffolk Ramblers Guide

Norfolk County Council Angles Way site.

Norfolk County Council Angles Way Points of Interest