The Two Grundles Walk

Today was the first Thursday of the month and so time for the monthly walk of the Bury St. Edmunds U3A Longer Walks group. This time it was Tim's turn to lead.

He took us on a circular walk from Stanton in a version of the Two Grundle Trundle. This was our route.

Here are a few of my photos.

We started by walking through Stanton towards the Stanton Grundle.

Here we are entering it.

"...a deep and mysterious half-mile long trackway, linked in language to the Anglo-Saxon lairs of monsters, demons and man-eating beasts". Read more about it here. It is in fact a stream bed that was formed by glacial melt-water. No meltwater today and it was (nearly) all dry so we were able to stick to the low path along the bottom.

The banks are quite steep, rising to 5.5m in places.

 

We emerged blinking into the daylight. Now we were on a field edge with an abundance of filed scabious flowers - our flower of the day.

We passed the Vajrasana Retreat Centre. It didn't look like there were any group retreats are happening at the moment. It is in a lovely peaceful location.

Some of our paths were a little overgrown. I needed my secateurs along here.

We stopped for our drinks break in the shade by what used to be Shepherds Grove Airfield. You can read more about it here.

We walked around the edge of Walsham-le-Willows village.

I liked the variegated-leaved thistles we passed here.

We had to pass through a field of oil-seed rape. Almost ready for harvesting, by the look of it.

In the distance we spotted a couple of deer, but we didn't get another sight of them.

Then we came to Wattisfield Grundle - not as long or as deep as the Stanton one, but still quite impressive.

We stopped in the Community Garden by the Village Hall in Wattisfield for our lunch.

Onwards through the village. This cottage was rather colourful.

We crossed the A134 and had a peaceful series of paths through farmland.

A horse with its foal.

We passed through the centre of Hepworth village but, curiously, saw little apart from the village sign.

This is Ringers Farm, which has a small herd of Dexters cattle.

Heading back towards Stanton now we got a view of Stanton Mill....

...and the tower of the ruined St. John's Church,

Our list fields before crossing the A134 again and returning through Stanton to the village hall....

...passing this fragrant honeysuckle on the way.

A very pleasant and varied walk in the summer sunshine. It was interesting to join up some other paths and walks I had done. Thank-you Tim for leading us round and to the others for the company.

You can find more details of our 12 mile walk here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here) and see some more of my photos here on Flickr.

Related walks on my blog:

• Stanton Grundle Walk (Sept 2020)
• Stanton Grundle Walk (Nov 2020)
• Stanton Walk (Sept 2021)
• Stanton Walk (Mar 2022)
• The Two Windmills Walk (Sept 2020)
• Wattisfield Walk (Nov 2021)