Day Three

Monday 21 June – Harleston to Wortham.

Originally I had intended walking as far as Diss, but three extra miles to Wortham would leave me a shorter, if still long, walk to Thetford next time. I started bright and early (both true, honest), and Harleston was in washing down and touching up mode, ready for the retail day.

After half a mile of suburban pavements, I took a footpath across a wheatfield , in the midst of which stood three “no entry” signs ( the red and white sort), nowhere near a road. Very strange. Crossing the A143 (mercifully quiet) and then a B road, oddly busier, I soon crossed the Waveney back into Suffolk.

Thus began an idyllic stretch of paths along the Waveney’s flood plain, enough little twists and turns to keep it interesting, but little chance of getting seriously lost. Then the Angles Way turned to the North West to enter Brockdish (and Norfolk again). The route once more became all corners, adding at least 50% to the route any self-respecting crow would fly.

I kept nearly bumping into the A143, now much busier, each time pulling away with yards to spare, until the Way turned its back on the road and flirted with the Waveney once more, on a very good path beside a particularly beautiful stretch of the river. Then it was back to the main road, this time to cross it, finding a byway past the very splendid Hall Farm at Billingford.

Reaching the top of another climb (you tend to remember them round here) I came across “St Mary’s Church (remains of)”, as it said on the map. The “remains of” consisted of two jagged fingers of masonry, looking very romantic against the blue of the sky and the white of the fluffy clouds, reminding me very much of Hadleigh Castle in Essex.

After fighting my way through a crop (beans, I think) which had been allowed to obliterate the path, I crossed the A140 trunk road on a bridge. The traffic was squeezed on to one carriageway while the other one was being resurfaced, hot work on this increasingly sunny day. Then I followed another byway. Odd fish byways. Usually unsurfaced or partially surfaced, most used to be theoretically open to all traffic, although you would be nuts to drive the family saloon along many of them. Restricted byways are limited to unpowered vehicles and pedestrians; sometimes the restriction has been introduced to curb the immense damage done by four-wheel drive vehicles. So far, the byways I have encountered in Norfolk and Suffolk have been peaceful affairs, the heaviest traffic being the creatures (including hares and small deer) which have hurried to get away from me.

Frenze Hall did not look very interesting, but there is a fine little redundant church next to it. The last of today’s byways took me under the railway before it became an approach road to Diss, passing the usual depressing crop of new build, an estate of bungalows, and then some between-the-wars (I guess) “council” houses.

The stars of the show in Diss are, in order of appearance, the handsome church and the Mere, a 6-acre lake around which the main streets of the town are wrapped. The church stands proudly above the market place where, in the now wilting heat, an ice-cream van was doing brisk business. At the South end of the mere is an attractive little park where benches command fine views across the lake to the town’s older buildings, with the church tower rising highest.

After a quick lunch break, I hurried off for the final push to Wortham. The choice was to take the three miles or so at an easy pace, hang around for an hour for a bus and go straight to the station for the train home, or go like the clappers in the hope of getting an earlier bus, leaving me time to relax back in Diss before train time. Of course I chose the latter.

Most of the cloud had cleared from the sky by now, so the sun was unrelenting. The early road walking was easy but, almost as soon as I turned off the road on to a footpath, I got lost again in another all-pervasive crop. I got a grid reference from my phone, hacked along some field edges and found a very narrow road. I was nearly certain exactly where I was but, just to be even more sure I asked a lovely lady who was just disappearing into her garden.

She came straight back out to the road, pointed in the direction I had expected, and then was assailed by doubts as to whether I should take the first or second on the left. I hovered, my time running out, anxious just to get on again, but I could hardly repay her kindness with a snub. Eventually she settled on the second on the left. I thanked her warmly, and almost immediately took the first on the left.

The method in my madness was that, since I could well miss the bus at its appointed stop, I might waylay it as it headed for Diss, which is exactly what happened. After a ten-minute route march down the road, stopping to retrieve my phone which I had dropped – seemingly unharmed - in the road, I reached the main road in Wortham, spotted the bus heading towards me, and stuck out my hand. The driver took pity on me, remarking amiably that I was lucky, as he was not supposed to stop there.

And I was lucky. I got my hour in Diss, including coffee and something from the park kiosk, and a few minutes in a very decent second hand book shop near the church (it’s OK to do this at the end of the trip!). As I later found my seat on the train, the words “National Express regrets…” came over the public address system, taking me right back to day one.

Day Two

Sunday 20 June – Beccles to Harleston.

Quitting my modest b&b (big room + generous ensuite + garden room + patio/courtyard, not to mention a big welcome and a great breakfast – name on application) I took a lumpy, unadopted road back towards the river and the Angles Way.

But this was not to be a riverside walk; when the Ramblers devised the route, they had to contend with the fact that the riverbank above Beccles is not a right of way. So they had to string together other paths, bridleways and unfrequented lanes with the odd burst of busy road. Consequently, this part of the Angles Way is all angles (arf arf). A bit like a tacking yacht, I slewed to the right, back to the left and so on all day. But most of the walking surfaces were good or very good, and the signage was near-perfect – I have rarely experienced a “promoted” route with so little doubt as to the directions to take.

After following mostly farm tracks across the Waveney’s flood plain, I emerged on to a main road at Shipmeadow, whose village sign features two sheep. But this is not sheep country nowadays. A few sheep were to be seen, and more cows and horses, but this is essentially breadbasket country, cereal crops spread over vast fields, catching the wind today like a yellow-green sea. Footpaths headed South, then West, then North again, with distant views in the West of the church tower at Bungay.

Malthouses, or maltings, seem to be an ugly breed, judging by the two I passed on the outskirts of Bungay. Yes, I know – they have a sacred purpose, but they are not pretty.

The Angles Way describes a semi-circle round the town, but I wanted a quick look and some lunch, so I diverted. My main impression is that Bungay is a town of pubs. There seems to be one on every street corner, and others spread along the narrow streets in case you get thirsty between corners. I had a sober lunch on a bench in the churchyard, before having a quick burst of tourism and inspecting Bungay (or Bigod’s) Castle.

Originally this was a Norman castle held by the Bigod family. It was confiscated by Henry II in 1157 but restored to the Bigods around 1164. The castle was rebuilt by Hugh Bigod in 1165. It was again confiscated following the 1173-4 revolt and the great tower was pulled down. However it was restored yet again to the Bigods and was further developed in 1294 by Roger Bigod. The curtain walls and the twin towers of the gatehouse remain today, as well as a fragment of the keep. (Wikipedia)

I didn’t go into the castle through the café/visitor centre: I could see everything I needed of the romantic ruins over the fence.

The path across the water meadows, to rejoin the Angles Way, was particularly lovely. And then a strange thing happened – I climbed a hill, the first and I had climbed and almost the first I had seen on this trip. It rose to all of 80 feet, heady stuff. I continued without oxygen, and soon descended to a more manageable 50 feet.

A woman with a (well-behaved) dog approached me and confessed to being lost. I soon put her on the right road – it’s quite easy when you’ve got a map. I joined what looked like a fairly old concrete roadway. This was part – either one of the runways or the perimeter road – of Bungay (otherwise known as Flixton) Airfield, built in the Second World War to serve American bombers, and afterwards used by the Royal Navy and the RAF. Long closed, a few vestiges of the buildings and the concrete I was walking are all that remain. The airfield itself is covered in wheat.

I was now very close to St Peter’s Hall, which dates back to the Thirteenth Century and is claimed to be the most romantic venue in Suffolk for weddings. Much more interesting is that behind the hall is St Peter’s Brewery, which produces a range of very interesting beers in bottles which look as though they should contain cough medicine.

After a long Westward stretch, the Way started zigging and zagging again, eventually taking a suspiciously wide and well-made track past Flixton Park’s home farm. The reason for the network of superior tracks soon became apparent. A large chunk of Flixton Park is being excavated for sand and gravel. This has clearly been going on for some time – worked-out holes have been flooded and now provide a haven for waterfowl.

At the entrance to the village of Homersfield stands a sculpture. Apparently known locally as the Totem Pole, it is a tree trunk, about ten feet high with, carved at the top, a man sitting in a boat, one hand dangling as he looks dolefully into the middle distance. Around the trunk, fish are carved from the wood, together with he words “I dreamed of a beautiful woman who carried me away”. This, I learn from the website Wayside Art in East Anglia, is a reference to Roman times when the River Waveney here was called Alveron which means “beautiful woman”. The sculpture was Homersfield’s Millenium project, and the sculptor is Mark Goldsworthy from Bungay. I liked it a lot.

From Homersfield to Mendham, the Way takes a wooded path just above the flood plain of the Waveney. Mendham has a pub called the Sir Alfred Munnings, for the good reason that he was born here. Munnings was a pillar of the art establishment in the first half of the Twentieth Century, and a respected horse painter, who became notorious for his farewell speech as President of the Royal Academy, in which he attacked modernists such as Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso. It is said that he was more than a little “tired and emotional” when he made the speech, which was broadcast on the BBC. His pictures continue to command high prices, especially in the USA, but not quite as high as those of Cezanne, Matisse or Picasso.

Crossing the Waveney, I entered Norfolk for the first time. Was there any difference? Not really. A few degrees cooler in this more Northerly county? Nah. Joking apart, the landscape on this side of the river was slightly more hilly, gently rippling rather than rolling. What must, most of the way into Harleston, have been a country lane now passes through some very recent housing of a density which seems wholly inappropriate this far from an inner city. Off-the-peg boxes are artfully arranged in squares and precincts, all of which does little to disguise the lack of fresh air between the buildings.

Harleston itself still looks like a market town. Of course there was some snarling traffic, even on a Sunday afternoon, but the old pattern of the streets remains, with a market place, a fine clock tower, and two coaching inns. In one of these (The Swan) my room had a balcony (the balcony, actually) commanding the main street. I considered giving a speech or holding an election hustings, but I had a coffee and a snooze instead.

Day One

Saturday 19 June – Lowestoft to Beccles.

I started walking an hour late, courtesy of National Express (poor train service division). Because of engineering work, the itinerary I had booked was for train travel to Norwich, connecting to a bus service to Lowestoft. Except that it didn’t – connect, that is. The train was five minutes late, and the bus just went. Despite the fact that it is a rail replacement service, no attempt is made to coordinate the bus with the trains. This was hardly a shock – National Express have already forfeit the East Coast franchise because they couldn’t manage it, and they are just waiting to lose the East Anglia one as well, meanwhile simply going through the motions.

But after that things went according to plan. A ten minute walk took me to Lowestoft Ness, the Easternmost place in England and the Grand Ceremonial Starting Place (!) for my walk to St David’s Head, the Westernmost place in Wales. Actually there was little ceremony; the biting North wind and the first of a series of very short showers did not encourage me to linger on the North Sea coast. The concrete promenade is protected by huge boulders, so a quick dip of my toes in the sea was not possible, but the large stone disc marking the Ness was washed by the remnants of wind-whipped waves, so I trod quickly in a dribble of foam and hurried away.

The seaside-y bit of Lowestoft is further South, beyond the docks and harbour (which looks like the mouth of a river but isn’t). The harbour’s connected to Lake Lothing, Lake Lothing’s connected to Oulton Broad, Oulton Broad’s connected to the foot bone – sorry, got carried away. Oulton Broad is joined to the River Waveney by the Oulton Dyke. Don’t try to remember all that – it’s all part of the work carried out since the Seventeenth Century to connect up the Broads, lakes formed by the flooding of peat excavations, into a navigable network for trade. So while the Waveney flows North to join with the Yare and reach the sea at Great Yarmouth, the quicker route to the sea is through all of the above-mentioned bodies of water. Enough history for now? OK, let’s press on.

The back streets of Lowestoft are dull but not unpleasant. They led me to my first footpath of the day, which took me alongside a recreation ground, past a small lake, and through a scruffy collection of businesses serving the port, emerging at Oulton Broad. This is a lake, of course, but also a village which has been absorbed by Lowestoft. Two lifting bridges take vehicles and pedestrians, respectively, across the neck of the Broad; these were lifting as I approached, to allow a pleasure boat to pass into Lake Lothing. The pedestrians’ bridge is self-service – a polite but disembodied voice from the control point asks the people at the front of the queue to open the gates.

I had now joined the Angles Way. This route was devised by members of the Ramblers Association to connect up with the Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path, thus providing a 227-mile circular walk around Norfolk (although, as we shall see, it is often in Suffolk). I was planning to use the Angles Way, with variations, for the next four days’ walking. So I lost it almost immediately in a maze of narrow private roads through a Hoseasons Holiday Park.

I ended up on a path along the South side of the lake. This clearly doubled up as a flood relief barrier. Those wiggly, interconnected plates you see lining canals had been pile-driven into the marshy ground, sometimes on both sides of the path, with a fill of rubble, shale and chippings. I found the Angles Way again, which pursued a more cautious route some distance from the water, which it left altogether to cut the corner between Oulton Dyke and the River Waveney, which I then followed upstream for the rest of the day.

Again the path was along the flood bank, but behind the protective plates it was here just a simple earth bank, cracked and running to holes after the recent lack of rain. I had to be careful where I put my feet. I was not taking as many photos as usual (sighs of relief all round). The landscape is, in its own way, lovely, but it’s mostly of one colour, which is green, and it’s mostly flat, so one riverside picture is much the same as the next.

A dog and owner approached me. As the dog charged towards me, the woman stumbled after it, muttering “sorry” to me and shouting ineffectually at the dog. I walked past them both. As I felt teeth make contact with the back of my leg, I pulled away with milliseconds to spare. Again the woman mumbled an apology, hopelessly rushing after the now-distant dog. I know it’s not the dog’s fault but, in the absence of capital punishment for the owners, I will be renewing my subscription to the Kill a Dog a Day Campaign.

Castle Marsh, in a loop of the river, is a managed nature reserve. The management consists of flooding the marsh during the Winter, thereby attracting one lot of birds, then draining it again in the Spring, when the Winter birds have pushed off and a new clientele arrives. Cunning, huh?

Most of the river traffic consists of small cruisers and hire craft of the type which looks as though someone very large had trodden on a caravan and plonked it on a plastic barge. But as I approached Beccles, serious yachting was happening, crews battling heroically with the strong and blustery wind.

Beccles New Bridge carries the main road, while the remaining purpose of the Old Bridge seems to be to limit the size of boat which can travel further upstream. The area between the bridges is marinafied, but the town itself is not excessively boaty. Narrow streets have been made into a one-way system, with the usual results – cars hurtle round like Formua 1 competitors, engine noise bouncing off the old buildings. The town centre itself is not overrun with traffic. Small shops still survive alongside the usual retail suspects.

Later, as I walked around the town after my supper, a cloaked horse rider attracted my attention. People in historic costume, including Elizabeth I, no less, were parading round the streets, or just lingering near the church. A gaggle of people without fancy dress was following a man holding up a speaker which broadcast a commentary. I had happened on the History Walk, complete with living characters from Beccles’s past. As soon as the punters were out of sight, the costumed folk all pushed off, probably anxious to get out of the posh frocks and get into something more appropriate for a Saturday evening on the town or in front of the telly.

The idea

While my Alternative End to End Walk proceeds into Scotland, I have planned an East-West walk which promises to provide some walking later in 2012 when the first walk is on hold. This is no insult to Scotland, which I love. Not walking in Scotland during the winter has little to do with weather; as we all know, good and bad weather can come anywhere at any season. But the availability of daylight in Northern Scotland is rather limlited in the Winter months - better to save the Highlands for Spring. Here is a map of the East-West Walk as currently planned.

The plot is to sample a decent cross-section of landscape in Southern England and South Wales, starting at the Easternmost place in England (Lowestoft Ness) and finishing at the Westermost place in Wales (St David's Head). First leg: 19 June.