U3A Hockwold-cum-Wilton Walk

It was the first Thursday of the month today and time for the first Bury St. Edmunds U3A Longer Walks Group walk of 2025.

We had a circular walk today in South Norfolk from Hockwold-cum-Wilton via Weeting  led by our group leader Rosalind. This was her invite.

"First Walk of the Year, January 2nd 2025. Meet at  Hockwold cum Wilton for a circular 10.5 walk, via Weeting, on forest tracks and ancient ways.  Boots on and walking 9:45am, picnic lunch in Weeting with the possibility of pub at the end of the walk.

Meet at 

• Post code                        IP26 4LW
• What Three Words         ///steers.slopes.stitch

Please could you let me know if you can make it, so that we don’t wait unduly. "

It was a lovely sunny, if rather cold, day for it and 10 of us met at Hockwold Village Hall for the walk,

This was our route (although it was a couple of hundred yards before I started my tracker and I stopped it when I went into the pub), going clockwise.

According to the Norfolk Heritage Explorer site... "Hockwold cum Wilton is a large parish in the southwest of the county. The parish encompasses various different types of landscape; the fens in the west, the chalk uplands to the north and the river valley of the Little Ouse to the south. The two villages of Hockwold and Wilton are now barely distinguishable from one another, and the two villages have been treated as one since at least the 16th century. Hockwold comes from the Old English meaning ‘wood where hocks or mallows grow’, and Wilton means ‘farmstead or village where willow trees grow’. 

The Domesday Book records that in 1086 Hockwold was held by William of Warenne, and was part of a holding, or manor, that included land in Feltwell and Castle Rising. The holding has enough woodland to support 200 pigs, and 17 beehives. Wilton was also held by William of Warenne, and was a relatively larger and more valuable holding in comparison with Hockwold. Wilton had 6 fisheries, 200 sheep and was worth £10." You can read more about the history of the parish and the rich archaeology of the area here. The village is at a height of 6.8m above sea-level. We really are at the boundary of fenland  and breckland here.

Here are a few of my photos.

All wrapped up warm at the start as Ros briefed us on the walk.

As we headed north we got sight of the radomes at RAF Feltwell.

In the shade it was quite frosty, and indeed stayed so all day. A proper winter walk!

The paths were mostly wide and sandy and our feet stayed dry.

We stopped in the sun for our drinks break

Any puddles or mud we came across were easy to walk around.

We reached the Pilgrim Ways route which goes north to finish at Walsingham Shrine, which Dawn and I visited last year on a U3A trip (see here). But today we went south along it rather than north. I recognised where we were at Home Farm.

Just along the road from the farm was St. Mary's Church, Weeting which was our lunch stop.

It wasn't open so we couldn't go inside but there were plenty of seats in the churchyard.

We took a short detour to look around the ruins Weeting Castle "a rare surviving example of a grand 12th-century manor house, and a typical example of an East Anglian ‘great house’."

Then it was onwards through Weeting, past The Towers, They were originally the Stables block and coach House for the Hall, built by the 7th Earl of Mouthrath, "Charles Henry Coote" Around 1770.  Around 1954 the Hall was Demolished but the Stables block was mainly left untouched. The tall structure on Top of the Building was once the clock tower, and had a large Bell in it which was cast in 1787. 

We returned to Hockwold via Hockwold Heath, which has been restored from Forestry land. Tomorrow's Heathland Heritage has cleared 91 hectares (225 acres) of pine trees to create a new nature reserve.

It was still frosty in the shade as we neared the end of our walk.

We finished at the Red Lion....

...but I first took a quick look at the churchyard. St. James, Wilton  church dates from the 14th Century and has an impressive spire.

I was here to see if the snowdrops were out yet (they were lovely when saw them  at the end of January 2022 (see here).

But they are just beginning to come out now.

I returned to the pub.

We were in good time to have a drink before the pub closed at 3pm.

A lovely walk, and a very welcome pint of Taylors Landlord beer at the end. Thank-you Ros for organising and leading us round and to the others for the additional company.

You can find more details of our 10.7 mile route here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here) and see more of my photos here on Flickr.

Other related walks you can find on my blog include:

• Weeting Walk (Jan 2022)
• Hockwold-cum-Wilton Snowdrop and River Walk (Jan 2022)
• U3A Weeting Walk (Jan 2023)