Today we did a varied circular walk from Snape Maltings through marsh, heathland and forest.
This was the invite from Joyce.
"Tuesday February 27th Change of Plan as it won’t stop raining. We will now meet at Snape Maltings, Snape IP17 1SP for coffee at their on-site café called Malt from 10.30am. Approx. 11am start for walking. I have a circular 10 mile walk. I haven’t walked the Gromford part so if it’s flooded we will have to turn about! The Blaxhall, Tunstall and Iken parts should be OK. Come on and let’s have an adventure. Please bring a packed lunch. Just check your emails on Tuesday morning to make sure that the weather hasn’t cancelled our plans."
A total of 10 of us met today and we enjoyed a leisurely coffee before setting off just after 11am. This was our route. We went anti-clockwise from the Maltings..
Here are some of my photos.
The car park was surprisingly full, I thought, for 10:30am on a Tuesday in late February. Business must be OK then.
We assembled in the Malt café.
Time to get walking. Joyce is showing Rachel the planned route.
Crossing the bridge we got a good view of this redshank...
...and the Maltings complex.
Walking on the boardwalk through Snape marsh we saw this grey heron.
The concert hall. We have visited it many times with Sarah and William in the West Suffolk Youth Music ensembles and Suffolk Youth Orchestra. See
here, for example, for a post with some links to the orchestra playing.
The estuary had lots of birds on the mudflats.
Some of the woodland had some flooding which looked rather atmospheric.
We passed close to Snape church before turning west towards Gromford.
Passing beneath the power lines we spotted some workers in a pylon.
Here we said goodbye to Glen, who was off to explore some different paths.
We wondered why there was an avenue of eucalyptus trees here.
We recrossed the power lines a little further on. We were glad we were on the dry road rather than having to walk through the flooded fields.
We crossed the meandering River Alde.
I don't think I've seen a spotted horse before. Is it an
appaloosa?
I liked this weather vane with an owl hunting a mouse.
We stopped for our lunch here where there were some logs to sit on.
We walked along the edge of
Blaxhall Common (aka Blaxhall Heath) and into Tunstall forest. We had walked the first bit of this path before. This tree-lined section is rather pretty.
At Heath Cottages we saw some camellias in flower.
We came to a large pig farm. We had to climb over a low fence here, as instructed to by this sign.
But where are the piglets?
They were in the next field.
Lots of them. This adventurous group came close to use for a moment.
We passed a grass turf farm. It was surrounded by fences with these tied-on strips fluttering in the breeze. We guessed it was to deter the deer from invading. They reminded me of Tibetan prayer flags.
We crossed Iken Heath and descended towards Iken Reach. Here we got a view of
St. Botolph's Church on the headland known as The Anchorage.
We were on paths we had walked in March last year (see links at the bottom of the post). We walked along the shore for a bit and passed the car park with the replica wooden Saxon cross at the top. I remember passing this new house before too.
The garden gate must have some history.
From here it was but a short walk back to Snape Maltings along the Suffolk Coast Path.
A lovely walk with plenty of variety and lots to see. And we had only a couple of bits of mud to circumnavigate. Thank-you Joyce for organising and leading us round and to everyone else for their company too.
You can find more details of our route here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here) and more of my photos here on Flickr.
Other related walks on my blog include:
Brilliant blog John. Such great photos, really capture the day. Thank you
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