Today it was my turn to lead a walk for the Bury St. Edmunds U3A Longer Walks Group. I chose to do a walk that was familiar to me but not to most of the other members of the group - from Knettishall Heath.
This was my invite.
"Hello All,
This month it’s my turn to lead a walk for the group.
Called “The princess the bombers and the ponies”, we will meet at Knettishall Heath
Main Car Park,
Postcode IP22 2TQ, What3words ///frostbite.bluff.ambushed…
…to start walking at 10am. The route will be
somewhere between 9.5 and 11.5 miles depending on what I find in my recce (if I
get time to do one)
We will stop at either The Well (if they’re not too busy)
or Hopton Church mid-way.
Toilets in the Car Park at the start. Please let me know if you intend coming so I know if we
need to wait at the start.
John"
We had a total of 6 of us this month, including our injured group leader Rosalind who said she could manage to walk with us for about an hour. This was the route we followed today. It was in the opposite direction I'd done it before so we could have the loop around the Nature Reserve at the start and give Rosalind a short walk back to the car park.
Here are a few of my photos.
Assmbled in the Car Park at the start.
I modified the route to avoid the riverside walk along the
River Little Ouse as that was all completely flooded. Even the usually dry bits were rather soggy.
We stopped at the signpost where the three long distance paths converge. Both the
Icknield Way, heading south and the
Peddars Way heading north start here and the
Angles Way used to finish here before they added on another 15 miles to Thetford.
Rosalind found a stamp you could use to show you had been here.
Kermit still gets preferential status on this sign.
We passed the Shetland ponies.
We has a bit of sunshine for a while.
At the edge of the nature reserve, we said good-bye to Rosalind leaving her a 1/2 mile walk back to the car park.
Now we headed onto the old
Knettishall Airfield, home in the second world war, as described
here, to 500 Flying Fortress air crews. In the distance we could see lovely memorial line of tress planted along the original main runway.
But now the weather turned against us and we had a couple of heavy showers as we walked the perimeter path around the northern edge of the airfield. Through the rain we could just make out the remains of All Saints, Knettishall Church, now a private dwelling.
Our path was concrete so we were spared any mud.
At the far side of the airfield it had stopped raining so we stopped for a drinks break in a bit of shelter from the wind.
Here we could see Hopton Church - our planned lunch stop location.
When I did my recce on Tuesday I found the the path I'd used before across the end of Market Weston Fen was closed due to an iffy brdge.
Instead we continued along the quiet country lane. We passed this offering of walnuts....
We turned off the road onto footpaths. We could now see
St. Mary, Market Weston church, but we weren't to get any closer.
We agreed this old house had been very tastefully extended.
...before meeting and walking along the main road towards the centre of the village, passing thes e bluebells...
...and these grape hyacinths.
We sheltered in the porch for our lunch (apart from Ian who chose to go the
The Well instead).
We admired the ceiling, the bells and the kneelers.
Passing The Well we joined the Angles Way for our walk back to Knettishall Heath.
It was raining again as we got to Hopton Fen.
Here we saw two grey herons and I managed to photograph one of them before it flew off.
A little further on we saw a couple of deer as we bypassed a short stretch of flooded path.
Over the river now into Norfolk. The sun had come out now and we kept dry for the rest of our walk.
We came to
Gasthorpe Village which is where Bill Gates' family originated. It has a working telephone box....
...but the old post office is now a private house.
This 3-bedroom cottage on The Street is for sale for £475,000. See
here.
This house used to be the school for children of workers on the Riddlesworth Hall estate.
Riddlesworth Hall School, which Princess Diana attended between 1970 and 1974, closed in April 2023. The school website says... "
After 76 wonderful years, It is with a very heavy heart that we announce the closure of Riddlesworth Hall School on Friday, 28th April 2023."
From there it was just a short walk back to the start. Here we are recrossing the Little Ouse back into Suffolk before truing into the car park.
Well that was a little wet at times and we did get a surprise stretch of flooded path that I had not got to on my recce the other day, but it was a good walk. Thank-you all for joining me and it was good to catch up with Rosalind.
You can find more details of our 10.8 mile route here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here) and more of my photos here on Flickr.
Other related walks you can find on my blog include:
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