U3A Ely Walk

It was the first Thursday of the month today, so time for a walk with the Bury St. Edmunds U3A Longer Walks Group. Tim was our leader today for a circular walk from the centre of Ely.

This was his invite:

"The walk on Thursday 7th March will be a 10.7 mile, around 4hrs, circular walk starting in Ely. Meeting in the Ely Forehill/City car park at 10am. This is a free car park.  Post Code: CB7 4AF What3Words ///erupt.napped.succumbs. I’ve always be able to find a parking space there, but sometimes it does seem fairly full. So, it might be an idea to car share and if anybody want to share from Bury, just let me know.

In view of the weather we’ve been having, some parts are likely to be wet and/or muddy. Although I walked it on Tue 20th after a very wet weekend and was able to avoid most of the mud and puddles. 

Kind regards Tim"

It was a cold and grey day with a bitter wind from the East so we were glad we were wrapped up warm. Just five hardy souls today with none of the ladies in the group joining us. This was our route, which included, for me, some new paths and places 

Here are a few of my photos.

We set off through the centre of Ely and headed north-west along the Bishop's Way, which we followed for most of our walk. Following medieval tracks out across the fens, The Bishop's Way takes you along the route used by the Bishops of Ely to their Palace in Downham. Hundreds of years ago before the fens were artificially drained, Downham-in-the-Isle was a real island among flat and boggy reed fen.  It was here that Athelwold, Bishop of Winchester set up his monastic settlement in 970.  The estate grew and prospered for 500 years and played host to many bishops from Ely.

The first part of our route was shared with the Hereward Way. It is a 110 mile route that starts in Oakham in Rutland and ends in Thetford. In fact we had walked another part of it on our Weeting Walk in January.

We soon reached the A10 and crossed it into the countryside, heading north now on a broad track towards Little Downham.

As Tim had warned us, it was rather muddy in places, and muddier than when Tim had done his recce.

Our drinks stop was at Little Downham Nature Reserve, which had a picnic table where we could sit and a community orchard. It was the wrong tome of year to find any apples, though.

We walked through Little Downham. Here we left the Hereward Way, which continued northwards.

This magnolia tree was about to flower.

We got a view back towards Ely with the cathedral dominating the skyline.

More cheerful blossom in the village.

We continued south-east towards the small village of Chettisham, which has about 180 inhabitants. Our lunch stop was to be at the church, St Michael and All Angels.

The church was locked, but we were able to stand in the porch out of the wind to eat our packed lunches (although Dave sat on the bench at the bottom of the churchyard).

We walked up the road past an industrial estate to the level-crossing and turned onto Kettlesworth Drove, another broad track. On the industrial estate was this large building. We wondered what it was. It turns out to be an animal feed factory producing ExtruPro.

Looking back towards the level crossing.

We left the Bishop's Way and crossed the railway track of the main line to Kings Lynn.

This brought us to the River Great Ouse and the Fen Rivers Way, which we followed for a while back towards Ely.

At Queen Adelaide, Tim's plan had been to take us across a field a bit like this one.

He said it was about an inch deep in water when he did his recce. We decided it was likely to be, if anything, wetter today, so took the dry route along the road through Queen Adelaide village 

We passed welcoming sign for the city...

...before turning onto a path that led us to the road down towards Rothwell pits. I've taken this photograph before on our visit to Ely last year (see here).

This old tree has a sign at the bottom saying the Tree Preservation Order on it has been confirmed protecting it in perpetuity.

The land along  the railway line was flooded....

...but we had pleasant dry paths through Ely Country Park.

We reached the marina.

Here we found some rowers out on the river.

We turned back towards the city centre through Jubilee Park. The winter garden was quite colourful.

Yes. That is a giant eel statue.

Along the road back to the car park we got a final glimpse of the cathedral.

I enjoyed walking new paths and visiting new villages. It was just a shame it wasn't a bit drier underfoot and a bit warmer. Thanks Tim for leading us round and thanks to the others for the company.

You can find more detail of our 11.2 mile route here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here) and see more of my photos here on Flickr.

You can find  one other related walk on my blog:

• A Day Out in Ely (Feb 2023)