Clare Walk

An end-of-summer walk today from Clare, a "Walkers are Welcome" town and a favourite place to walk from.

This was the invite from Joyce.

"Friday September 20th  We will meet at Clare Country Park Platform 1 for drinks at 10am  and get walking at 10.30am. We will head over to Cavendish for our lunch stop. I have devised a circular walk of about 11-12 miles. It’s pay n display at Clare CP but you can park on side streets for free." 

This was our route. We went anti-clockwise via Cavendish to Wales End.

Here are some of my photos.

As we arrived, the local Nordic Walkers were just finishing.

We congregated at the café in the old station.

All ready to go.

We tried shaking this tree in the country park to get some apples, but they refused to fall.

We were soon out in the country. Lots of fields were straw-yellow with stubble or freshly ploughed.

We were following part of the newly waymarked Wool Towns Walk, which several of the group did on the Suffolk Walking Festival Challenge Walk last year (see here). Some of my photos got use for the brochures of the walk, so I was invited to the official launch in July (see here). Steve, who was alking with us today, was part of the team that did the waymarking.

You can't see much of the town looking back from here, but you can see the castle.

We were soon in Cavendish, where we stopped for refreshments.

I visited The George to use the toilet... and have a 1/2 pint of Nethergate's White Stout. Very tasty, but very odd. It didn't look like or taste like a stout to me.

We continued along the Wool Towns walk towards Glemsford for a while...

...before turning north and walking up Duck Hall Lane.

We had our lunch stop to the East of Easty wood.

We had some great views from here although it was a little hazy.

We took a path through the wood to reach Wales End.

I recognised where were were here from this Glemsford walk last year.

We headed down to Robb's Farm but the paths hadn't been maintained and we had to take a detour.

At Colt's Hall, checking our route.

We had stopped by the pond here for lunch previously.

But this time we  headed round the north of Colt's Hall and continued west and then north-west.

I liked these rows of trees in the distance.

This path didn't seem to have been used much and the crossing of the ditch here was rather overgrown.

We didn't get as far as Brynbank Farm before turning south-west and passing The Old Orchard 

We got to the Bury to Clare path and turned towards Clare. We would follow it for the rest of the way.

We passed some borage.

New we could see the outskirts of Clare as we descended towards the town.

Some more trees on the skyline made a seasonal picture.

Then it was back into Clare passing the church and the Ancient House.

Thank-you Joyce for the leading us around the lovely route and to the others for the additional company.

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

Other related posts you can find on my blog include:

• Bury St Edmunds Ramblers Walk - Cavendish (Jul 2018)
• Clare to Bury St Edmunds Walk (Sep 2018)
• Theatre Royal 200 for 200 Practice Walk (Feb 2019)
• Suffolk Walking Festival - Magna Carta Walk (May 2019)
• Clare and Cavendish Walk (Jun 2019)
• Clare Walks (Jun 2020)
• Clare Walks Recce (Jun 2021)
• Clare Walks (Jun 2021)
• U3A Walks from Clare (Aug 2022)
• Suffolk Walking Festival  - Wool Towns Challenge Walk Day 1 (May 2023)
• Suffolk Walking Festival  - Wool Towns Challenge Walk Day 4 (May 2023)
• Glemsford Walk (Jun 2023)
• Clare to Bury Walk (Aug 2023)
• Wool Towns Walk Launch (Jul 2024)