Clare to Bury Walk - Part 1

Today we had a linear walk from Clare to Somerton - the first of a two-part walk of the waymarked Bury to Clare Walk (but in the opposite direction).

This was the invite from Joyce.

"Thursday October 22nd. Please find your own parking in Clare. I’ll be at Small Town Bakery 8 High Street, Clare, CO10 8NY for coffee from 10am. We will start walking at 10.30am. Please bring enough sustenance for the day. The route officially starts from the beautiful Clare Country Park if you want to be a purist. There is parking and toilets there if you don’t wish for coffee beforehand.  The route is very rural and the total ascent is 535 ft so there are some ‘slopes’. It has a mixture of field edges, field crossing’s, woodland, road portions, farms etc so the whole mix. There will be field crossings and no cover for lunch that I can think of so please check forecast. Our finish point will be Somerton Church where we will be collected and taken back to Clare. There will be 2 pick ups so please be prepared to wait up to 40 minutes for your travel back. I will have boot covers for the cars as it will be muddy. I have asked for the church to be open. The mileage is about 9 miles."

This was our route today.

Here are some of my photos.

Jane and I parked at the Country Park. On our way to the bakery we passed this. The low oblique sun highlighted the pargetting beautifully.

We had our pre-walk drinks at the Small Town Bakery.

Off we go through Clare.

We were soon out in the countryside on the waymarked path.

We crossed large fields and got some great views.

Looking back towards Clare.

We stopped to enjoy the views.

We had some other paths too.

Our drinks stop.

We came to a view of Stansfield. church and post mill We weren't going there today though.

A red kite soared over us.

We could see Somerton Church, out destination for the day, in the distance.

Looking back to Stansfield church.

We stopped for lunch here.

Karen and I took a slight detour from the route to get a view of  the magnificent moated Thurston End Hall through the gates here.

The footbridge here is no longer useable.

The footpath sign here was almost completely obscured. Joyce and Jane did some work to make it more visible.

Nearly there - this is Somerton church.

The village water pump.

Our chauffeurs awaited 😀....

...to take us back to Clare, so we didn't need to wait in the church. Part 2 next week!

Thank-you Joyce for leading us and Kieron and Nick for the transport back to Clare, and to everyone else for the additional company.

You can find more details of our 8.7 mile route here on MapMyWalk or here on OS Maps (or download a GPX file here) and more of my photos here on Flickr.

Other related walks you can find on my blog include

• Clare to Bury St, Edmunds Walk (Sep 2018)
• Theatre Royal 100 for 100 Practice Walk (Feb 2019)
• Hawkedon Horizons Walk (most recent version) (May 2023)
• Hawstead Walk (July 2023)
• Clare to Bury Walk (Aug 2023)
• U3A Rede Walk (Feb 2025)