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.
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... t
he plaque says Humphrey
Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester died in this hospital building in Feb.
1447.
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"
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment