Coddenham Walk

It was the first Thursday of the month today and time for the Bury St. Edmunds U3A Longer Walks Group March walk, this month led by Chris from Coddenham.

This was his invite.

"Walk in March is 10.5 miles starting at 9.45 and parking at Coddenham Village Hall. Please let me know if you can make it. If anybody would like to share a lift meet at car park opposite church in Woolpit at 9.00."

This was our route, going anticlockwise from the start in Coddenham. It was all new paths for me.

Here are a few of my photos.

Coddenham Village Hall is good place to start a walk as there is plenty of parking... and toilets.

8 of us today and we were all there in good time so we were able to start the walk 10 minutes early.

We almost immediately started to climb up from the village. It was still frosty in the shade.

The village had almost disappeared as we got to top of the climb.

We got plenty of wide green paths like this today.

Some small narcissi are out.

We walked through Gosbeck woods.

It was a bit muddy in places but we were always able to bypass the mud.

Our drinks stop was at St Mary, Gosbeck church which is one of those churches that is some way from the village.

The churchyard was carpeted with  primroses mostly just beginning to come into flower.

Onwards, and we came to some daffodils here.

We had large open vistas a lot of the time as we mostly walked along field edges.

Our early lunch stop (well we had started early) was at the picturesque All Saints, Crowfield church, which is also remote from its village.

Unlike St Mary's earlier, the church was open to visit. The roof is impressive.

Along the edge of the churchyard is one length of the moat the encircles the site of teh former manor house.

The church has no tower but a rather pretty belfry.

This churchyard boasted narcissi and some lingering snowdrops.

Ros tols us the gravestones have been moved here to be in rows.

A little further on we passed another moat, this time only partial, around Sparrows Hall.

We heard, and sometimes even saw, plenty of skylarks in the fields we passed.

I liked this line of trees on the horizon.

We came to Crowfield airfield.....

...walking parallel to the runway as a plane came in to land.

Up in the air I finally caught a picture of one of the skylarks.

Just past the airfield we completed our collection of early spring flowers with a great show of crocuses.

Nearing the end of our walk we caught site of Coddenham village nestling below.

Into the village we go.

crossing this bridge to the playing fields...

...just across the road from the village hall where we started.

We had a beautiful sunny day for the walk. No coats needed today. Lots of  lovely countryside and Crowfield church is a gem. Thank-you Chris for leading and to the others for the additional company.

You can see more details of our 9.8 mile route here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here) and more of my photos here on Flickr.