Reinterred: Clare to Bury Walk

I was surprised to find I had actually done this only once with Joyce, in September 2018 (see here), so was pleased to do be able it again today, although I was a bit nervous about lasting the distance.

This was the invite from Joyce.

"Wednesday August 30th the famous Clare to Bury walk. This is a long walk of 19 miles and it will test you as it doesn't have any refreshment stops en route. Therefore please bring enough food/drink. We will catch the 9.18am bus from West Suffolk hospital which gets into Clare at 10.04am. I will be parking on Mayfield Road, opposite Raven Road at 8.55am and then walking across Hardwick Heath to the hospital (less than a mile)."

Actually, I had done a lot of it another time in a practice for the Theatre Royal 200 for 200 walk, but that walk stopped in Sicklesmere (see here).

This was our route today. We parked on Mayfield road and took the bus from West Suffolk hospital instead of the bus station and finished at our cars rather than do the extra half mile or so to the official finish in Nowton Park and then back again.

Here are a few of my photos.

Our start in Clare took us through the town. Here is the splendid St Peter and St Paul'sChurch.

Our first waymarker, as we left the town. And it pointed across a field that we had to walk round as the farmer had put in place an electric fence to protect his/her sheep.

We had lovely weather to start with and the paths were nicer than I remembered.

We were generally quite high up whcih meant we had good views. Here we could see St Mary's Poslingford church nestling in the valley below.

"What's that in the distance between the two trees?", asked Glen. I zoomed in...

Just a large tree on the a crest in the distance. We were looking towards Cavendish here. Was it this side of the River Stour or over the river in Essex, I wondered?

We stopped here for a drinks break. What are these flowers? Val thought they were Sow thistles. I think she's right.

We had a few fields to walk across. Not a problem here, but...

When I first walked this I didn't have the knowledge of the geography I do now. I recognised Satnsfield Hall.

..and it's drive, with Stansfield Church ahead of us, although we bypassed it.

And here you can see both the church and old mill which we had passed several times on the Hawkedon Horizon walk and more.

We were heading for Somerton Church for our lunch stop but our route meandered around somewhat before we got there.

We walked around the outside of the grounds of the splendid Thurston End Hall. While the others went on I took a diversion of 100 yards or so to get this view of it. See the estate agents brochure for it here from when it was on the market for £2.5m in 2014.

That left me a bit behind the rest as we continued through lovely countryside.

We eventually got to Somerton where we stopped at the church for our lunch.....

...and walked through the village - another familiar sight from other walks.

But now the clouds were gathering and there were showers about... and we were walking straight towards this....

Now it was coming for us.

We sheltered here for a few minutes while the wordt of it passed.

Then it was onward past the excavations of a new pipeline.

No more pictures of our route for a while, but it included crossing 3 pllughed fields that had become rather sticky after the rain, which we could have done without. But the weather brightened up again and we got some road walking to shake the mud off our boots.

Here we were again on familiar territory passing Hawstead Lodge, which we had done a couple of times recently.