Newbourne

We walked into the area to the northwest of the town yesterday, along the edge of the high land that overlooks the Deben estuary, skirting some of the villages - like Falkenham, above - each with their carefully-preserved church.

Much of the land is down to intensive arable farming, the fields divided into neat geometric rows and separated from the next by rather brutally-cut hedges and lines of trees, but others cut....

....by extensive excavations which wandered across the countryside. We assumed these might be the routes of recently-buried pipelines, but have no idea what they were carrying or from where to where.

However, much of the route is clearly marked footpaths and bridleways with neat wooden bridges across slow-moving streams. Most are evidently ancient, worn into the landscape by the countless walkers before us. Only in one place had the footpath been lost but the short detour which took us back to it did avoid an area of bog.

By one in the afternoon we were badly in need of refreshment so stopped at The Fox Inn in Newbourne, a lovely-looking English pub which was spoilt by the pneumatic drill being used to dig up the carpark and by the menu, one of those very fancy ones with a wide range of expensive foods which did not include something appropriate for walkers, such as a ploughman's or wholemeal sandwiches. Fortunately, the Adnam's bitter did not disappoint.

We then followed a  footpath down the the Deben, passing the church in the village of Hemley. The church is large, the village, today, virtually non-existent, so it must once have served a much bigger population - or a lord of the manor who was determined to have an impressive church even if he could not fill it.

Much of the return walk was along the banks of the Deben estuary in warm sunshine with the may still in flower.

In all, we were out for almost seven hours and covered at least twenty kilometres, the longest walk we've done in several years.