This Week’s Walks
July 21st-27th, 2024
It’s been mostly drier this week and my ankle’s feeling much better, so I’ve been able to get out and do some decent walks this week. Here’s what I’ve been up to:
Sunday 21st July
Today I was leading another walk for Blossome’s Walking Through Emotions programme and this was another one along the coast, this time a little further north in Suffolk, following a route at Shingle Street similar to the one I walked a few months ago and wrote about here:
It was another nice walk, and a quite tiring one going across the millions of pebbles that make up the beach, feeling the way they grind and shift under your feet as you walk.
One thing I hadn’t considered, having been here a few times before is how it looks to someone who hasn’t been on this stretch of coast before. The land here is very low, and all the way out from Woodbridge to the coast you rarely get much of a glimpse of the sea, and on the final stretch of road from Bawdsey to the car park it can’t be seen at all because the sea wall is in the way. The gasps I heard from my walking companions as we took the steps up to the top of the wall (and it’s only a couple of metres, it’s not a tricky ascent!) were surprising for me.
When we got to the village we got chatting to a local resident who told us about the history of some of the houses, including how one built before the First World War still maintained the old name for the North Sea as the German Ocean Mansion. It’s the sort of thing that makes you wonder what it would like to live there, but having looked up an estate agent we discovered that a two-bed terraced house in the old Coastguard building was available for just £575,000 so it feels that question will be one that comes after “what does it feel like to win the lottery?”
And another discovery at the end was a nice little cafe in the old boathouse at Bawdsey Quay, complete with views over towards Felixstowe and the boats swarming in the River Deben. Might have to make that part of another walk in the future.
Monday 22nd July
Didn’t travel for any more walks last week, but kept up by doing some more of my local walks. Summer was finally arriving during last week, so was getting hotter during the day meaning walking was best left for the mornings and evenings. And as I was having a bit of a slow week and getting caught up with household chores and general dithering in the mornings, that meant walks in the evening.
Monday I did a circuit that started east and took me down to the River Colne, then following the river all the way through to Castle Park and then up through there and back home. Just under five miles, and a useful discovery that it comes out at almost exactly ten thousand steps which is good to know for days when I need to hit my target.
Wednesday 24th July
Another evening walk, and this time I remembered to take some photos while I was out. This time heading south from home past the cemetery and then all the way down to Friday Woods and then through the woods down to the Roman River, where the ground’s still muddy and a dog was cooling itself off in the water.
Then I came back up through the woods and had my usual thought that I need to spend more time exploring there as there are lots of paths there heading in all sorts of different directions and quite a lot of places I haven’t found yet. So I tried to follow a slightly different route, didn’t get lost and even when it started raining, it was only a few little spots, not enough to get me soaked.
Friday 26th July
Another short walk in the early evening, just a loop around some of the local paths, which I thought would be about five kilometres but turned out to be six. A nice way to relax as the day started to cool down.
Saturday 27th July
A bit of Parkrun tourism today, and a part-jog, part-walk around Mildenhall Hub as I pushed my ankle a little bit harder than last week. Three minutes quicker than I was at Mersea the week before, and not so much of a walk, but I did have to walk along a path from where I parked to the start. That twas lined with some lovely wildflowers, and I wanted to share a photo of it:
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