Today we had a walk in some lovely May sunshine from Needham Market, a favourite place for a walk.
This was the invite from Joyce.
"Friday May1st I am going to park at the free car park at Needham Market Lakes. There is lots of parking if you enter Needham Lakes from the B1078 off the A14 slip road. There is a toilet here and The Duck + Teapot café if you would like a drink before we start our circular 10-mile walk. We will visit Barking, Baylham, Darmsden and head back to the River Gipping at Pipps Ford to finish with a stretch along the River."
This was our route today.
We met as planned at Needham Lakes and stopped at the station to collect Caroline, who came by train. Here are some of my photos.
Ready to go at the start.
We passed Needham Lake reflecting the blue sky.
We crossed the railway through the Cattle Tunnel, which dates from 1846.
After collecting Caroline from the station we set off up The Drift, passing this great example of pargetting.
We were soon out in the countryside and on the path known as The Causeway, aka the "
Corpse Way" or the "Coffin Trail" towards Barking church, where people were taken to be buried.
It was nice to walk along some leafy paths with dappled sunshine today as it warm and sunny.
But we bypassed the church and were soon passing through a colourful rape field.
We passed Barking forge and continued roughly south-east through the countryside.
This was our drink stop...
...where we had a view back towards Barking...
Some of the fields looked rather parched already - and it's only the beginning of May.
We saw Grade II listed 17th Century Baylham Hall in the distance.
There are still a few bluebell flowers in the woods.
We passed under this pylon as we had done on
this walk when the path was closed for work on the pylons (but we were allowed to pass).
In the distance we could see
Shrubland Hall.
The laburnum trees were in flower - a shade of yellow I prefer to the garish rape flowers.
Some enjoyed the sun outside.
We followed the road through the rambling Darmsden village. I liked this new windmill.
We came to this sad looking old Morris Minor. It still doesn't look like it has moved since
this ramblers walk I was on in 2019. I got an entertaining comment on the blog last time from a lady called Val in Alaska "
..the old car in the photograph was bought new by my gramps in 1963...
and there are many adventures in it's memory (and now do I nag my
brother to give it a wash or not ...lol)". It doesn't look like it has been washed either.
We descended towards the River Gipping....
...crossing the railway line...
...and passing a lake in an old gravel pit with plenty of waterfowl.
We joined the Gipping Valley River Path for the remained of our walk along the river by Pipp's Ford lock.
We came to the new bridge. At last the old broken one that caused the path to be closed has been replaced!
It was a pleasant walk along the river back to Needham lake.
And here we are back where we started.
What a lovely walk. It was great to be able to finish with that stretch along the River Gipping - it has been a while since we were last able to do that, Thank-you Joyce for leading us round and thank-you everyone else for the additional company/
You can find more details of our route here on MapMyWalk or here on OS Maps (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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