Day Five

Sunday 22 August - Thetford to Mildenhall

This was to be a strange day. More than any day’s walk I could remember, it was to consist chiefly of walking in straight lines. Not always in the same direction, but very straight between turns. But it was a bit wiggly to start with.

Taking leave of the Captain, still sitting to attention on his bench, I set out South on yet another named path, in fact one with three names - the St Edmund Way, the Icknield Way, and the Angles Way Link (I had never heard of this last). They love them! Show them a footpath and they’ll give it a name. If I walked along just another footpath, I half expected a sign to declare it the Just Another Footpath Footpath.

My way lay across Barnhamcross Common.Thetford is singularly blessed with commons, still nudging into the outskirts of the town despite recent housing developments. After a bit of shilly-shallying (too many tracks on the ground) I picked up the first of my straight runs.

The nature of the tracks went with the territory. This is Breckland. Wikipedia tells me that “”The Breckland as a landscape region is an unusual natural habitat of England. It comprises the gorse-covered sandy heath that exists in the north of the county of Suffolk and the south of Norfolk. An area of considerable interest for its unusual flora and fauna, it lies to the south east of another unusual habitat, The Fens, and to the south west of the Norfolk Broads. The typical tree of this area is the Scots Pine. The Brecks are one of the driest places in England. The area of Breckland has been substantially reduced in the twentieth century by the impact of modern farming and the creation in 1914 of Thetford Forest.”

What this means in practical terms is two things: firstly, you are walking mostly on sand or sandy soil; and secondly that you walk old-established tracks which went straight across the landscape because they could. No hills or other natural features got in the way, and the rivers could be forded or easily bridged.

I was walking through woodland. To my left, signs urged me to keep out of MOD property, and from my right, deep in the woods, came the sound of gunfire. The map revealed the existence of a firing range. I relied on the fact that there is a presumption against shooting civilians on public footpaths unless absolutely necessary. This had been confirmed to me on my coastwalk, some years ago. As I passed Chickerell Sands range (behind Chesil Bank), carefully walking along the recommended route for firing days, I was hailed by an embarrassed officer, who urged me to move further off as he could not guarantee that his troops would miss me.

Trusting that the present lot would be better trained today, I pressed on. I turned South for a 2½ mile straight run down to Barrow’s Corner. I passed (and kept passing) pockets of Access Land, declared under the CRoW Act, on the grounds, I think, that they were “unimproved” heathland - that is, never altered by farming methods from their original state. They were lovely to look at, especially the land covered in gorse, now aflame with spectacular purple blooms, but these parcels of land are not much use as alternative through routes, since they are still fenced and access points are limited.

West from Barrow’s Cross, the route was not quite straight - on the map it looks as though it had been pushed from both ends, forming a series of pleats. The surface was lovely, semi-hard sand, settled by the heavy overnight rain, was a joy to walk on, like seaside sand just after the tide has gone out. I trotted happily along. A small animal with a long tail, its colour matching the sandy soil, crossed my path; dragonflies looped and swooped above my head; a pair of spotted-pink diaphanous knickers hung from a bough.

Ahead, rising above the trees, rose a very tall monument (a Corinthian column about 30 metres high and surmounted by an urn, I read on the Listed British Buildings website). Standing beside the A11, at the meeting place of three parishes, it commemorates the war dead of all three.

The track had the status of a byway - in effect this meant that any traffic could use it. I was passed by a few cycists, and I heard some motorcyclists, but only the occasional land-rovery vehicle drove past, until I had just turned off this track on to another heading South. When I looked back, a cortege of 4x4 vehicles, five of them, was processing very, very slowly. The effect was weird. Later, the same procession passed me. It was an outing of, I guess, 4x4 enthusiasts accompanied by partners and children. Each gave me a cheery wave, which naturally I returned. The use of byways by these vehicles is often controversial - large chunks of the Ridgeway have been ruined by them - and there was a stretch here where the sandy surface had been rutted, but you couldn’t fault this lot for courtesy and consideration - no crashing gears and clouds of dust in my vicinity. I hope they had a nice day.

The byway ended at Icklingham, which suffers from being on a winding main road. There was nothing here to detain me, so I turned West on to another byway. The main road led to Mildenhall, but I had another way to get there. I was after a lark, the River Lark, along whose banks I would reach the town. Some stretches of the river had, I think, been fairly recently reinforced or tidied up to maintain the effectivess of flood defences - these were boring to look at. But other stretches has been left alone, plants softening the bank, and these were delightful. A young woman in a brightly-coloured sarong was picking blackberries. She offered me one from her punnet - delicious! Further along, a girl and a woman were examining a decent catch of crayfish in a bucket. They were friendly but didn't offer to share them.

As I approached Mildenhall, familes were enjoying the lovely sunshine. A recreation ground bordered the path. Boys were fishing. In most places, signs declare that fishing rights belong to this or that club. Here the fishing is limited to residents to the parish of Mildenhall. I didn’t check anyone’s credentials. The town, apart from Sainsbury’s, was sleeping through the hot afternoon, so I bought an icecream and wandered a little way out of the centre of town to find my b&b.