This Week’s Walks

August 4th-10th, 2024

A bit more running this week as my ankle recovers more and my pace started picking up again, and I do need to start doing some kind of preparation for running in Langdale in October:

The long road back to Langdale

But that doesn’t meant there weren’t any walks this week. In fact, I started with a longer one. I realised last Saturday that it was a while since I’d been for a walk around Sudbury and Long Melford, where there’s a nice flat path that used to be a railway line linking the two. There’s also lots of nice wide open Suffolk fields so I plotted a route on the map that would take me out over the fields from Suffolk to Long Melford, where I could stop for a break, then have a nice leisurely stride back along the Valley Line.

All perfectly simple and I found my way out of Sudbury quite easily via a bridge over a main road and then passed through an industrial estate into open fields which on first glance weren’t quite as pleasant as I imagined. The early stages of building work have commenced which measn large parts of them were fenced off, but there was still an unfenced section following the right of way across them. Fine, I thought, I can walk through this overgrown grass and weeds for a while, I’m sure it will ease itself off soon enough.

If you’ve been reading my accounts of walking before now, you likely now how this goes from here. It didn’t get easier, and while the grass did get a little shorter, that was because it was being crowded out by thistles and brambles. (There’ll be a lovely crop of blackberries along there in a few weeks, at least) If I was walking with someone else, I would likely have saved face and suggested we turn back and take another route, but on my own a foolhardy stubbornness and a commitment to the walker’s sunk-cost fallacy set in, and I determined to see this path through to the end.

One of the easier parts to pass through

And yes, I made it. My legs were scratched and stung, I had to spend a good ten minutes after it getting seeds and scratchy bits out of my shoes and socks, I’d contorted myself into all sorts of odd shapes to get through narrow gaps and under trees, and I never want to see another thistle again for as long as I live, but I was out in the open and back on the sort of paths I’d been expecting for this journey. I may have to start petitioning Ordnance Survey for a new “it’s a right of way, but there are better options” marker on the map.

This is what they want

The countryside of Suffolk rolls but never quite makes it into real hills, so from that relative high point it was a steady and slight descent into Long Melford, following a piece of the old railway line around the back of the village to emerge in the centre. It was relatively quiet there for a summer Sunday, and I even managed to get a seat outside at one of the many cafes that dot the high street there. A pot of tea, a brie and bacon sandwich and a few winces as I cleaned up my wounds from the first leg of the journey later, I was back off towards Sudbury on a surprisingly quiet path.

The railway has long gone but the bridges and embankments that served it are still there, and the trees are now tall enough to provide dappled shade for almost all of the route, making it a comfortable walk on a day that was getting brighter and hotter. It’s been a while since I’ve done this walk, but this was a reminder not to leave it for so long before returning the next time, taking in the final views over the river as I returned to Sudbury.

Nothing quite like that for the rest of the week, but kept myself active and my step count up. Monday evening was a walk out along the Bourne Valley and then a loop back along the Moors and home, Tuesday evening a quick jaunt round Abbey Fields to get myself moving, and then Wednesday evening was a run in memory of my friend Arthur who died recently, complete with free beer (which he’d have been very upset to miss) at Three Wise Monkeys when we were done. Thursday was a rest day, then Friday was Arthur’s funeral, walking to the crematorium and back to the wake, and also joining with a lot of other local runners and cyclists to form a walking cortege behind his coffin. Then at the wake, we all did a rather slow but very cathartic lap of the Garrison running track in his memory.

Finally, Saturday was meant to be two runs, but ended up as a run and a walk. Parkrun at Colchester Castle first, where a friend was marking her 250th Parkrun then afterwards was one of the two annual organised runs of the Colchester Elephant route.

My sensitive GPS made it a very wobbly and shaky elephant

I had planned to run this, but the original volunteer to bring up the tail of the run wasn’t able to make it because of a last-minute emergency, so I oh-so-reluctantly chose to walk instead of run another 5k but had a nice time doing it, and a decent amount of steps to round off the week.

Then when I got back I had a brainwave about something to do next weekend, but you’ll have to come back next week to find out what that is, though with luck it will involve an actual hill and then, perhaps a mountain too…

Until then, here’s a twisty tree I saw one evening

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