Our Walks

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.

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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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Today we decided to head to West Stow Country Park, near Bury St Edmunds. (This was another excellent walk from our ’50 Walks in Suffolk’ book.*) Initially, this caused some panicky flashbacks for Mrs W, when she realised it was the start line of a very painful half marathon undertaken last year, but really we can’t fault the location!

We paid £2 to park for the whole day and then headed into the surrounding woodlands for our 6km walk. The route led us round a lake, populated by geese and ducks (most of which we didn’t recognise at all – we certainly aren’t birdwatchers!) and there were lots of opportunities to stop and enjoy the view. Throughout this first section of the walk, we were passing lots of families, as this path round the lake is an accessible route for children or even pushchairs.

After a loop round the lake, we passed into more woodland and trekked through a wide variety of scenery and pathways. In total, the walk was just over 6km and took us an hour and a half to complete.

West Stow is known for it’s Anglo-Saxon heritage and the country park is also home to a work Anglo-Saxon village. The whole area is steeped in local history, from a variety of periods. This meant that along the route we saw some lovely sights, such as a fascinating stone head, a small wooden shelter, and an old pump house. We love finding little details like this when we explore somewhere new, so this was a real winner for us!

We also took a short break sitting in a bird-hide, which was a first for us both. Overall, an interesting walk that wasn’t too challenging. The route also runs alongside King’s Forest, which (although tricky for half marathon running!) has a lot of options for extending the walk with beautiful woodland trails.

Mrs W’s highlight: Trekking by ourselves through a thickly wooded area, where we couldn’t really see out very far, but we could hear the river rushing by beside us.
Mr W’s highlight: The wooden dragon head that was poking out from under a small hill, with obvious plans to grow something else on top.

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If you’re in the area, this is definitely a route we would recommend. You could follow the AA book* directions, or you can easily adjust this route to make it shorter or longer to suit your needs. There’s also lots for children to see and do around the country park. Definitely suitable for a beginner and you won’t need any particular equipment or footwear.

We started off 2020 with a fantastic walk through Falkenham and round the River Deben. A chilly but wonderful 8.7km cross-country ramble.

This was our first venture into a walk from the AA book ’50 Walks in Suffolk’*, which has been collecting dust on our shelf for far too long! This walk is number 20 in the book is rated as an easy walk, with very little ascent.

We would definitely agree that this walk wasn’t too hard, as we were able to walk round it quite quickly in our predicted minimum time. The whole route 8.7km and took us just over 2 hours to complete. The weather was cold but dry, perfect for a New Year’s Day walk.

Finding the start of the walk was relatively easy and we were able to park on the road outside Falkenham’s St Eltherbert’s church. The church itself is quaint and pretty; a lovely place to start a walk. From there, it was just over a kilometre of farm tracks and small roads, before the route took us through a field and round the surrounding marshlands.

The highlight of this walk for us was definitely the range of scenery. From wide open fields and reed-fringed brooks, we were astounded by the view after we climbed a small embankment to start our walk around the Falkenham Marshes. The marshland stretched on for a few kilometres before we began to walk alongside the River Deben. The path was easy to follow and it was almost silent the whole way round. We finished off the route by walking through more fields and on farm tracks. Even though it had been raining, the route wasn’t too muddy or slippery.

The changes in scenery kept us interested and it was a really pleasant two hours. This walk is definitely on our list to repeat. It’d be interesting to see what this area looks like in the sunny weather.

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Mrs W’s highlight: Climbing an embankment and then suddenly looking over the marshes!
Mr W’s highlight: Spotting a National Speed Limit sign stuck in the middle of the marsh!

If you live around Suffolk, we would definitely recommend this route. Grab the AA book and follow the easy directions like we did. This is certainly suitable for a beginner, just make sure you have some sturdy footwear that can withstand grassy and possibly muddy routes.

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