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.