Friday 8 March 2024

St Edmund Way Part 3

Following on from the fun we had last year doing the Angles Way (see here), today we continued this year's expedition - to walk the 79 mile St Edmund Way.

Today's third stage took us from West Stow to Sicklesmere. This was the invite from Joyce.

"Friday March 8th. West Stow Church to Rushbrooke Arms 11 miles.  Please park at West Stow Church for 10.30am.  We have permission to use the car park this Weds and Friday. 

There is a toilet here in the grounds (I am told that the key might be behind the loo but of course you could stop at West Stow Country Park toilets as you pass). We are unlikely to have a formal morning stop as there are so many of us but we are passing Tescos at mile 6 and then at 6.5 miles we will be lunching at the Abbey Gardens. 

Please expect some mud and very watery places such as the golf course, The Butts at Bury. We will overcome!  We finish at the Rushbrooke Arms pub, which will be open if you want a drink. We also have 4 cars waiting to reunite us with our cars back in West Stow..

See you Friday in sunnier conditions I think. Joyce 

This was our route today.


We started where we finished on Wednesday - at St. Mary's Church in West Stow. Here are a few of my photos. 

There were 19 of us today.


Our route started by taking us through the grounds of Culford School....


...but we avoided following the path along the river and went past the main school building instead.


It has scaffolding up for work on the roof.

We walked along the road for a short while past some cheerful daffodils rejoining the official route...


...before turning south-west along the edge of South Wood. towards Little Farm. We have often walked this path in late winter to see the snowdrops here.



After a short walk along the road to Hengrave we reached the River Lark at Hengrave weir.


It was our drinks stop.


Now it was along the river on the Lark Valley Path.


We got a glimpse every now and then of the ruined Fornham St. Genevieve Church. To paraphrase the linked site... "The ruined church of St Genevieve is marooned in the park of Fornham Hall to the north of Bury. The tower, which is all that survives, stands on private land, a good half a mile from the nearest road. Although the church is only a mile or so north of Bury St Edmunds, it stands on wild heathland, and is not reachable from the village of Fornham St Genevieve itself. Instead, you have to approach it from the north, along a track which begins on a back road near Culford. In the old days, this would have meant risking the wrath of the owners of Fornham Hall, but today the Hall stands empty, and is being converted into apartments. The church was destroyed by fire in 1782, and was derelicted in 1813".


I liked the reeds waving in the breeze against the blue sky.


We crossed the road and continued along the river through the Suffolk Golf Club course. I love the pale green colour of the new leaves on the willow trees.


We got a view to our left of  Fornham St Martin Church.


We emerged onto the A1101 and crossed the road by these old maltings.


In the back streets we came across this dragon,


...before crossing the A14 on this footbridge.



From here we got a great view of the sugar factory in full steam.


We passed the splendid redbrick railway station which opened in 1847. At that time it was a terminus, but the line got extended to join the Newmarket to Cambridge line in 1854


Looking back along the road we could see these ruins. I checked my blog from when I passed it before... the plaque says Humphrey Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester died in this hospital building in Feb. 1447.
 

Our lunch stop was in the Abbey Gardens.


Shaun, Dawn and I had our lunch on the bench by the old bowling green, now sadly neglected.


We reassembled half an hour or so later at the Abbey gate. The great gate of the Abbey of St Edmund was begun some time after the riots of 1327 but before 1346; and completed after 1353.


We continued through the town....



...and down  Friar's Lane across the River Linnet to The Butts water meadows.


The area was pretty waterlogged. Our official route was supposed to go along this path!


But there was a dry path that took us past these bulrushes up to the hospital...


...and then on to Hardwick Heath.


Here we found a woodpecker sat on the grass.


We continued away from town up to Park Lane....


...passing this trig point - at 84m, the high point of our walk today.


We went by this cottage at High Green.


It has two hares on the ridge of the thatched roof called, as I learnt on this walk,  Harriet and Horatio.


We crossed a couple of fields with a few styles passing Nowton Hall. As this article on Nowton says, "the Grade 2 listed former farmhouse is dated 1595 on the chimney-stack, with the initials A.P. for Anthony Payne (d.1606). The house stands on the remains of a roughly E-shaped moated site. Prior to the Dissolution, the manor belonged to the Benedictine Abbey of St. Edmundsbury"


We came to St Peter's, Nowton church. Not far to go now.


The sky looked a little threatening in this direction, but we stayed dry.


After a short zig-zag  it was downhill towards our destination for today...


...through Sicklesmere village..


...to the Rushbrooke Arms.


After a quick libation, it was back to West Stow in the cars that had been left here at the start of the day  (with Nick coming to provide a fifth one) to get to the cars that had been parked at the church there. A lovely walk today even though I'd walked all of the paths before (and some many times) with lots of variety. Thank-you Joyce for organising and leading us and to the others for the additional company.

You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our 11.5 mile route here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here).

Other related walks on my blog include :

·         Bury St Edmunds Ramblers Walk West Stow (Jun 2018)

·         Culford and West Stow Walk (Feb 2019)

·         Fornham All Saints Snowdrop Walk (Feb 2019)

·         Fornham St Genevieve Walk (May 2019)

·         Suffolk Walking Festival Nowton Park Circular Walk to Great Whelnetham (May 2019)

·         Ramblers Nowton Walk (Nov 2019)

·         Fornham St Martin Snowdrop Walk (Feb 2020)

·         Nowton and Sicklemere Walk (Mar 2020)

·         Lark Valley Path Walk (Apr 2020)

·         Nowton Walk (Apr 2020)

·         Nowton Walk (Jan 2021)

·         Snowdrop Walk (Feb 2021)

·         Fornham Walk (May 2021)

·         West Stow Walk (Jan 2022)

·         Fornham Snowdrop Walk (Feb 2022)

·         Culford Walk (Jan 2023)

·         St Edmund Way Part 1 (Mar 2024)

·         St Edmund Way Part 2 (Mar 2024)



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