Oulton Broad to Beccles
Walked by Sally and Richard 26th March 2011
About 9 miles, almost all on Angles Way
Click here for all our photos from this walk.
This section of the Angles Way includes an uninterrupted seven miles of walking by the River Waveney; very pretty but not terribly exciting. It was a cold and cloudy day, but it stayed dry whilst we were walking (we passed through heavy rain on the way home). We parked in a free car park near the Quay in Beccles (TM424912) and had plenty of time to explore the town before catching the 10.25 train back to Oulton Broad South. Beccles is an attractive town, but the station is a dump, and half the teenage population of Beccles seemed to be waiting for the train (presumably heading for Lowestoft). It was fine once we were on the train and we were soon passing very attractive marshes and wooded 'carrs'. We reached Oulton Broad South Station before we had time to pay - sorry National Express, we owe you!
From the station we walked through a holiday park and past some derelict multicoloured caravans, with sails on Oulton Broad visible beyond. We emerged onto marshes, passed a hotel and restaurant and reached the car park of the Suffolk Broads and Wildlife Centre. The instructions and route shown on the map are not quite right here - the route leaves from a corner of the car park; you don't need to go onto the road at all. This part is well signposted, but the Angles Way signs then become rather thin on the ground; you need to have the courage of your convictions to keep following the track across the marshes until you approach a river bank - but don't go onto this river bank (the rivers round here are very confusing, this is a spur of Oulton Dyke, not the River Waveney). Instead you keep following the track round to the left, where you are eventually rewarded by an Angles Way sign. The only problem for us was that there were flood defence works in progress, so we then had to have the courage to keep going past various 'danger' signs through the works. Eventually we picked up paper 'Angles Way Alternative Route' signs, which was something of a relief. These took us across the marsh to reach the River Waveney at the place shown as 'Share Drainage Mill' on the map (there are only remains of drainage pumps now).
The Angles Way guidebook says 'turn left for seven miles into Beccles', so we did. Most of the time we were on a bank a short distance from the river bank; occasionally the river was slightly further away and made invisible by reeds; occasionally we were closer, and as we got towards Beccles we passed several little 'staithes' and platforms for people to use when fishing. For the first few miles we didn't see anyone else, but later on we met a few other walkers, and there were a few boats on the river.
Whilst the river was on our right-hand side, to the left were attractive marshes, with swans grazing and swimming in drainage ditches. There was a distinct lack of benches, so at lunchtime we sat on the bank overlooking Castle Marsh. Later we passed 'Worlingham Wall' built to keep Worlingham's flood waters separate from those of Beccles!
Eventually the river (and so the path) looped round towards Beccles and we began to approach the town. Beccles is obviously an ancient town. It would have been on the coast once (with sea where the River Waveney and marshes are now), and a series of 4000-year old wooden posts have been found on Beccles Fen, possibly markers for a route across the marshes. More recently, the town gained its charter in 1584 from Elizabeth I and there are many attractive buildings. One of the surprising things is that the 16th Century Church Tower, visible for miles around, is actually not attached to St Michael's Church. We had a lovely cup of tea at Farrier's cafe and an excellent journey home.
