Today we reached L in our alphabet of walks. It was a circular walk from Little Cornard Village Hall.
It followed the route of a walk we did last November (see
here) which started at Great Cornard Country Park, a couple of miles into our walk today. Here is the invite from Joyce...
"Friday May 9th L is for Little Cornard and this is just over 9 miles. We will explore Little Cornard and the Essex villages of Twinstead and Great Henny. With kind permission, we can park at Little Cornard Village Hall, Spout Lane, CO10 0NX. We head up Spout Lane to Little Cornard Church and then to Great Cornard Country Park. Over Shalford Meadows and to our drinks/toilets at the lovely pub, The Henny Swan. We have some great views nearly all day. Let’s meet at 9.30am and please bring lunch."
This was our route today.
Here are some of my photos.
There was plenty of parking at Little Cornard Village Hall. Just as well as there were 17 of us today.
Joyce gave us a briefing about the walk before we started. It was another lovely warm and sunny Spring day and plenty of us were in shorts. Just shorts and T-short for me and I didn't bother with any extra layers.
We started with a climb but then got lovely views across the River Stour to Essex, where we would be for the majority of our walk today.
We could make out the spire of Great Henny Church, which we would be visiting later in the walk.
Little Cornard Church, in contrast, was hard to spot.
We had started quite early and the Henny Swan wasn't due to open until 11:30 so we had time to take a short detour and visit Little Cornard Church. On the lane to it, looking into the grounds of the house on our left we saw a magnificent peacock displaying its feathers.
We came to the Grade 1 listed
Little Cornard Church. The site tells us.. "
The bells were silent for nearly 200 years. We
know very little about the history of the bells or why they ceased to
be rung, but we can guess that when times were bad and there was no
money to effect repairs, they simply fell into disuse and then decay.
The Tenor Bell is the oldest, dating back to 1399. It could have rung
out to celebrate the English victory at Agincourt in 1415.
In memory of the Rev. Tony Moore, the Little Cornard Church Bells Committee had been fundraising since 2014, and in late 2017 had raised sufficient funds to have the bells removed and transported to John Taylor’s Bell Foundry, Loughborough to be restored to their former glory.
In 2018 a new Treble Bell was cast and the bells were reinstalled in the tower. The blessing of the bells by the Rt Rev Martin Seeley, Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, along with All Saints Vicar the Rev Stephen Morley, was on the 30th of September, 2018. The dedication of the bells by the Right Rev Dr Mike Harrison, the Bishop of Dunwich, followed on the 1st of December, 2018."
We found plenty of people here today preparing for this weekend's flower festival.
Onwards now to Prospect Hill.
We descended, passing the car park at the allotments where we had started this walk last time.
Nearing the railway line we came across a flat well-mown field.
And then we spotted the light aircraft that used it as a runway.
We crossed this bridge over the River Stour into Essex.
This nice house overlooks the river.
We arrived at the
Henny Swan a bit before they were ready to serve.
It has a seating area by the river.
Onward once more and a bit of a climb up from the river.
Somehow, about a quarter of a mile further on, 6 of us at the back of the group failed to spot the rest taking a left turn onto a footpath. Sorry, Joyce, we should have been paying attention. I didn't have my map of the route at the ready so it took a few minutes to sort out where we had gone wrong and get back on track. Apologies to the rest of the group who had to wait for us.
I remembered this view of Great Henny church spire appearing over the brow of the hill.
I also remembered to look back at where we had come from. We had some great views today.
We reached
Great Henny.
St. Mary's church is thought to have first been built in the 11th or 12th
century and then later extended in the 14th century. The church is also
registered as a Small Place of Pilgrimage.
This is the wooden decoy that was built because woodpeckers were attacking the church's wooden spire. On a previous visit someone told us that, alas, it didn't work.
The cross on the roof has lost an arm.
There is a maze laid out in the grass next to the church.
It was a little early for a lunch stop so we continued towards Twinstead passing the impressive Fenn Farm.
Entering the church we heard a whistling sound. It was coming from the organ. I recognised the sound as a cipher - a sound made by a pipe or pipes caused by an air leak. Joyce used the light on her phone to help me find the switch (to the right of the keyboard) to turn the organ blower offer and let silence descend.
We lunched outside and admired the polychromatic brick and stone dressing.
We liked the lych-gate too.
Not much further to go now. We headed east towards the river and got a good view back to Fenn farm and Great Henny church.
Some low branches here made even me duck.
We crossed this meadow...
...near this monster pylon which had wires going in three directions.
I recognised these bales of hay.
The thistles were pretty, but I got spiked by one walking along the edge if a field shortly after this.
A striking element of our walk was the number of isolated buildings there were.
One more hill to climb and I strode out in front to take a picture backwards at the others. Dan spotted what I was doing and posed for this shot.
We nearly went wrong here. No we don't go under the railway line yet.
We had to cross the river first.
There is lots of comfrey along the path here.
We were nearly back when we heard the sound of a cuckoo here.
Someone said Spout Lane was well named - water from a burst main was flowing down it.
And here we are back at the village hall.
Thank-you Joyce for leading us round and to the others for the additional company. You can find more details of out 10 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..
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