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.