A planned 9.75km walk turned into just over 11km after a confused start – but worth it for some beautiful views and interesting terrains.
Long Melford is one of many places in Suffolk where we walk around and end up pointing out a list of houses we’d love to live in. It is a picture-perfect village, lifted straight off a postcard, with hundreds of years of interesting history, and most importantly for this blog, some wonderful routes to walk.
Our walk started at the Holy Trinity Church, which overlooks Long Melford from the village green and is well worth a visit by itself. Even after living nearby for quite a while, we never realised just how big the church is! Again, there is plenty of local history to discover here, so we will no doubt be returning to learn more about this ‘wool church’.
Walking in the Suffolk countryside often leads us through muddy fields and down barely-visible paths through woodlands, and this walk was certainly no exception! However, we managed to get ourselves lost before we’d even managed a kilometer! As we walked round the church and through some paddocks towards the rolling fields behind the village, we found that our route and our directions weren’t quite adding up! (We were using our AA Guide* again, it’s great for people like us who aren’t too confident at working out a route just yet.) We managed to get ourselves back on track, but not before we’d taken a quick detour through the wrong fields and annoyed the local sheep.
Eventually, we ended up back on the correct route and heading towards Kentwell Hall. If you love history, particularly the Tudors, or if you have young children to entertain during the holidays, Kentwell Hall is fantastic. There are often Tudor re-enactments that bring the whole property to life, and the hall and grounds are beautiful by themselves. You also might know it as the site of Scaresville – a haunted village event that runs every Halloween. (Mrs W doesn’t like to talk about her visit there!)
Round the back of the Hall and past the main area of Long Melford, we found ourselves walking across rolling fields and across some very muddy farm tracks. We hit another slight confusion in the directions we were following as we approached some derelict farm buildings, but luckily Mr W is pretty handy with a map, and not as creeped out by derelict farm building as Mrs W, so we were back on our way quickly.
This walk had such a variety of terrains, it was somewhat challenging due to the mud, but also kept us interested the whole way round! The next section of the walk took us through some dense woodland (Another creeped out moment for Mrs W. She’s easily scared.), following a windy path for about 1km.
The final 3km of the route followed a brook back into Long Melford, with a couple of challenging inclines and some slippery tracks. All worth it for sights like a large patch of snowdrops next to the water – Spring must be on its way. Although rewarding, the most challenging part of this walk was definitely the mud – we might wait until the Summer to try this one again!
After 11km and just under 3 hours of walking, we had completed a loop back to Holy Trinity Church, and most importantly, the pub. Is there anything more satisfying than rounding off a long countryside walk with a Sunday roast in a good Suffolk pub? We would recommend The Bull if you’re heading to Long Melford, they have some really good food at reasonable prices, although there are also a lot of other options for post-walk pubs in the area.
If the weather had been dry, we wouldn’t say this was a particularly challenging walk, although some parts were very slippery because of the mud underfoot. We also still can’t work out which way we were supposed to walk at the beginning – if you’re going to try this route, you can always start it by walking through the front gate of Kentwell Hall and joining the path on their driveway. Luckily, we appreciated the extra distance!
Mrs W’s highlight: Making friends with the locals – AKA the sheep! I love any walk that involves wildlife. I’m always on the lookout for deer too.
Mr W’s highlight: The concrete track right at the end was a welcome change for the feet!
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Walking With The Watkinses 