Reinterred: St Edmund Way Part 1

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

We are walking it in 7 stages and, as we did with the Angles Way last year, we are walking it in the opposite to the official direction - i.e. from Brandon to Manningtree rather than the other way round.. Today's first stage took us from Brandon to Thetford. This was the invite from Joyce.

"Friday March 1st Brandon to Thetford 10 miles. Please park in the small riverside car park at Nuns Bridges (What3 words - bumpy.magnets.pounces) opposite Mill Lane, Thetford or nearby at 10.05am so you are ready to walk 10 minutes to catch the 10.20am bus to Brandon. After alighting near to Tesco’s Brandon, we will walk into town for a refreshment break at No 30 Coffee Lounge before we start our official walk. I am proposing to keep to the actual route as much as possible. There will be toilets at Santon Downham and then a lunch stop so please bring a packed lunch. I expect we will be back at our cars by 4pm."

This was our route from our start (the official end) of the walk.

Here are a few of my photos.

We set off from the carpark at Nuns' Bridges to walk to the bus stop in the pouring rain...

,,,but by the time we got off the bus in Brandon, walked to the café and had our drinks, it had eased off and we only had occasional showers during our walk.

We posed for a group photo under the sign marking the End of the St Edmunds Way (our start) (see photo at the top of the post) and off we went - fifteen of us in total.

We were soon in Thetford Forest and got a bit of dappled sunshine.

We passed St. Mary's, Santon Downham church, but didn't go in.

We had plenty of puddles to dodge.

We crossed the River Little Ouse into Norfolk.

After passing through St Helen's picnic site....

...we stopped to visit the tiny church of All Saints Santon, with its interesting octagonal tower. The church was made redundant in 1998 but is still open.

It has some cheerful little narcissi by the wall.

We had a slight climb to the site of St. Helen's Well and Church (not that you can see anything of it as the remains are buried). Here we took a little detour to look at the view of the river and Little Lodge Farm, where you can bring your horse on holiday. There was quite a bit of flooding down there.

We got another shower - this time with some hail, but it didn't last long.

...and the sun came out again as we approached our lunch stop....

...by the model aircraft flying field, home of the Breckland Model Aero Club.

Some more pleasant sunshine as we continued through he woods north of the river.

There were a lot of young silver birch trees along this stretch.

Here we decided not to take the path close to the edge of the river, which looked high enough for a section of the path to be flooded. Furthermore, Joyce didn't want anyone falling into the river (or pretending to, like the last time we walked that path).

We rejoined the riverside path at the bridge under the A11.

We saw plenty of flooding alongside the path here through the outskirts of Thetford.

Crossing the river once more.

We passed the town bridge....

...and crossed to Butten Island which sits between the River Thet and the Little Ouse River.

Here we found the statue of Maharajah Duleep Singh, the last maharajah of the Sikh empire surrounded by water. He came to England and settled at the nearby Elvedon estate.

Look how fast the river is flowing here!

We continued along Spring Walk to the Nuns' Bridges. They took their name from the nearby nunnery (the Priory of St. George) and they carry the ancient trackway known as the Icknield Way over the Little Ouse River and the River Thet. Once the site of the towns ducking stool during the middle ages, Nun’s Bridges has a story attached to it concerning the death of a young child and his ghost. Read all about it here. But we didn't see the ghost today as we crossed the river one last time...