Friday 6 October 2023

Mildenhall Walk

Today we did a walk from Mildenhall to Isleham.

This was a repeat of this walk I'd done with Joyce in April last year (see here). Sarah and William came along with me then, but Dawn hadn't done it and I thought she might like to see The Ark.

This was the invite from Joyce.

"Friday October 6th. We will park/meet at the Mildenhall Hub leisure Centre, Sheldrick Way IP28 7JX for 10am. There are toilets here. We will then walk 3 miles to West Row using the tarmac cycle path and stop for refreshments at West Row village hall to support a St Nicholas Hospice fund raiser.   Afterwards we will walk onto Isleham via a riverside path for a tour of The Ark church. The whole linear walk is 7 miles. I can arrange transport back to West Row and/or Mildenhall but some will want to walk the whole 14-15 miles. Please bring a packed lunch and let me know your mileage preference so I can arrange.

Well 15 miles is a bit much for Dawn so we opted for the 1-way walk and a lift back.

This was our route.



Here are a few of my photos.

Meeting at The Hub. We had a good turnout of 12 on the walk today,


We were soon on the tarmac path. We were surprised to see poppies growing among the sugar beet in the fields we passed.


Across the River Lark we got a glimpse of Worlington church.


We got to the centre of West Row passing the village sign and St. Peter's Church




But we didn't stop there as we were heading for the Coffee Morning at the village hall.


It was very busy! Joyce told us later they had raised an impressive total of £3580.73 for St. Nicholas Hospice.


We eventually reached the River Lark and walked along it to Isleham Lock.


It is, I'm told, a great year for pumpkins.


Nearing the lock we started to find boats on the water.


Oh look. There appears to be an archaeological dig going on in this field the other side of the path from the river.


This article tells us "In 1942, the Mildenhall Treasure, a hoard of 34 pieces of richly decorated Roman silver tableware was discovered at West Row, close to the Lark. The most spectacular object is known as the Great or Oceanus dish, which has the face of Neptune at the centre with an inner freeze of sea monsters and nymphs and an outer one of drunken revellers including Hercules, Pan and Bacchus. The Treasure is now in the British Museum but Mildenhall Museum has replicas and gives a fascinating account of the still mysterious circumstances surrounding the hoard’s discovery"


The lock


Crossing the bridge we could see a spectacular gathering of geese further down the river at The Wash.


Crossing the bridge.


We got this reminder that our walking friend Miranda wasn't with us today.


We crossed over the loop of the river that goes round Isleham marina into Cambridgeshire.


Going through Isleham, but this isn't the church we are visiting.


It's this one! The Ark church.



We were treated to fresh coffee and some lovely flapjacks.

Thanks Joyce for leading as there, to the others for the company and Pru for the lift back to Mildenhall.

You can find more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our 6.8 mile route here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here).

Here are a few related walks from my blog:

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