It is the first Thursday of the Month and time for the U3A Bury St Edmunds Longer Walks Group monthly walk. Today it was Sheila's turn to lead and she took us on a circular walk from Felsham via Cockfield.
This was the invite from Sheila...
"We will meet at Felsham village free car park ready to walk at 10am. Lunch stop at the church grounds in Cockfield. We can end the walk with a drink in The Six Bells in Felsham. Around 10 miles. Did have a plan for a walk around Nayland but have to be next time now. It had some hills 😊. This walk has a bit of mud but nothing too bad. Look forward to seeing those that can make it.
Planning to park in the Village Hall parking near the shop. Ros just let me know more than one parking area in Felsham."
This was our route today.
Here are some of my photos.
We met at the village hall.
We had a great turnout today - 13 of us, which almost the whole group.
We were shortly at the church.
There was a suggestion that we could visit the church and then just cross the road to the pub.
But we followed Sheila on the walk instead. We had some nice paths.
Here we admired the 3-seater bicycle up against the wall. We wondered what the proper name for one might be. I asked Google just now and it told meit is called a triplet, triple or triple tandem.
We passed some honey for sale but I didn't get any as Dawn had just got some at the makers' market in town last Sunday.
We were impressed by Willow Cottage, although I initially misread the sign as "Yellow Cottage".
It looked like someone had started their bonfire night bonfire a little early.
We walked through a field of
Phacelia (aka purple tansy), grown as a cover crop. It grows fast, suppressing weeds, capturing nutrients, improving drainage and conditioning the soil.
We stopped here for drinks with the trees providing a bit of shelter from the biting easterly wind.
We walked along the side of
Bull's Wood Nature Reserve without going into it - a place to visit in the spring for its Oxlips. Anyone visiting between March and June will also be treated to abundant displays of early-purple orchid, spurge-laurel, wood anemone and herb-paris.
Thee are still plenty of sloe berries to be picked but I'm not making any sloe gin this year.
We arrived in Cockfield and walked through the village....
...and on to the church.
St. Peter's Cockfield is a large church dating from the 14th century. As Simon Knott tells us, among other things, "
It sits in what was one of the county's wealthiest medieval parishes; a 19th century Rector here would take home £1050 a year, roughly £200,000 in today's money. He would also get to live in the stunning former gild house, on the south-eastern side of the graveyard.An unlikely name associated with Cockfield given its long history is the author Robert Louis Stephenson. His cousin married Churchill Babington, the redoubtable Rector of Cockfield. Babington was better known in his day as a naturalist, antiquarian and writer, and was greatly admired by Prime Minister William Gladstone. The young Stephenson came often to visit and stay with his cousin and her remarkable husband, writing enthusiastically of his adventures and explorations in and around the village".
This is the splendid listed guild house Simon refers to, known as Church House or Church Cottage. You can read the Historic England listing
here.
The porch was big enough for us all to fit on the seats for lunch. Here we were warmly welcomed by some ladies in the church who provided those who wanted with cups of tea.
I was not the first to take one of the jars of Seville Marmalade.
An unusual feature in the church interior is this medieval door.
This impressive modern stained glass wind depicts St. Michael and St. George above the City of God. It was designed and created in 1964 by Rosemary Everett..
You can read more about the history of the village church in the guide
here. Time for us to head on back to Felsham now.
We did have a couple of fields to cross, but they were quite dry so our boots (inclouding Andy's brand new ones) didn't get muddy.
At last the sun came out and brightened up the landscape.
It's the wrong time of year to see any, but we stopped at the butterfly glade for a last drink stop.
We were soon back in Felsham.
We were a bit early for the published 3pm opening, but the landlord kindly opened up shop for us.
A lovely walk in the autumnal countryside. Thank-you Sheila for leading us round and everyone else for the additional company.
You can find more details of our 10.6 mile route
here on MapMyWalk or
here on OS Maps (or download a GPX file
here).
Other related walks you can find on my blog include
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