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Walked by Sally and Richard, 1st January 2021
About 9.5 miles of walking (3.5 hours of walking including a break), 4.7 miles progress on Marriott's Way
For photographs taken on this leg click here
We'd enjoyed our walk on the Marriott's Way two days ago, and it seemed a good walk to continue on New Year's Day. It was not such a cold morning as we'd had when walking the Fordham circuit (Walk 3 of our "Coronavirus walks") yesterday but the mist never properly cleared and we had a few spots of rain; however the weather was generally better than it appears to have been Denver whilst we were out - the roads looked distinctly wet - and there was further rain during the afternoon. We retraced our route to the car park at TG160165 by Freeland Corner; thankfully Wednesday's flooded section of road en route had disapeared. When we arrived around 9.30am on Wednesday we'd had the car park to ourselves, but despite being 20 minutes earlier today there were a few cars already parked. The others out on the path at this time on New Year's Day seemed to be mostly dog walkers; as on Wednesday, the number of users increased as the day wore on but it wasn't generally a problem.
Whilst the railway line had been heading just slightly to the south of east on our return leg on Wednesday, today it was heading more distinctly to the south-east and whilst it had been through woodland as we returned to the car on Wednesday, now we were in open countryside. Having realised that the metal structures by the side of the path every so often were "milemarkers" we also realised that these were labelled in miles from the Norwich end of the route. We passed the 7 mile marker, took a bridge over the new Norwich northern by-bass. We made rapid progress to the 6 mile marker, on the approach to Thorpe Marriott, a residential area named after William Marriott, like the Marriott's Way itself. There is an attractive "Marriott's Way" sign by a road crossing and after I'd photographed it, I was impressed that a car stopped to let me across the road.
It wasn't too far from Thorpe Marriott to Drayton. Here there is a short diversion from the route of the former railway line, towards the centre of the village then back towards the river, passing a "Road closed; flooding" sign. Soon after climbing up to rejoin the railway line we reached the "A Frame Bridge" over the river, as yesterday with quite considerable flooding both sides of the river. The river meandered away to the north and there were misty views across open fields to the Church in the original village of Costessey (pronounced "Cossey") to the south, with several footpaths crossing our route.
The River Wensum reappeared, just to our left, and we passed the 3 mile marker. We passed Red Bridge Lane and the Gunton Lane Recreation Ground to our right. We were looking for parking to use on the next leg and I suspected we'd find something by cutting through to Gunton Lane, but we wanted to carry a little further on. Unfortunately the next section was rather wet underfoot, but we emerged close to Gunton Lane, at TG196104 and walked along the road. We were rewarded by a car park close to where Red Bridge Lane emerges (TG191108). We followed the lane back past the River Tud (a tributory of the Wensum) to the railway line. We stopped for some Christmas cake, with me perching on a tree by the River Wensum, then we walked back to the car.
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