To Lenwade from Freeland Corner and return

Walked by Sally and Richard, Wednesday 30th December 2020

Approximately 7.7 miles of walking (just under 3 hours, including break), 3.8 miles progress on Marriott's Way.

For photographs taken on today's walk click here

When we reached the little car park at TG160165 by Freeland Corner, the corner of Fir Covert Road and Reepham Road to the north of Taverham, we had it to ourselves so had to establish the "correct" parking direction. We set off walking shortly before 9.30am and soon realised that this would actually be a rather pleasant walk. We were sometimes in cuttings through woodland and sometimes on an embankment above the surrounding fields. It wasn't wildly exciting, but the countryside was pretty, quite reminiscent of that you pass when on the railway line near the West Sussex village of Hartfield where Richard lived as a boy, but the Marriott's Way had fewer other walkers and cyclists etc. this morning than we had seen when walking on what is now the Forest Way more recently, for example in April 2018. On the outward leg today we saw one horserider, a couple of dog walkers and slightly larger numbers of cyclists and runners, but neither they nor occasionally muddy stretches of path were a problem.

At the former Attlebridge Station the station building is now a private house, so the route heads around slightly to the north, returning by way of another car park which was rather busier than the one where we had parked. Soon afterwards we had our first view of the flooded River Wensum in the distance, and then we crossed the river and associated floods from a safe vantage point above; the only slightly frustrating thing was that it was difficult to photograph the floods to the south because of the position of the sun, but it seems wrong to complain that the sun was shining!

The route was getting somewhat busier and we now had industrial buildings to our left (we think this was probably the site of the Cement Works which kept the railway line open until the 1980s) and a fenced off area of attractive woodland to our right. A little research on our return home, revealed that this land is probably part of "The Warren" where the turkey farmer Bernard Matthews lived prior to his death in 1980 after initially living, along with his famous turkeys, at Great Witchingham Hall just slightly further north. The countryside round here is "really bootiful"! We soon reached the former Lenwade Station, like Attlebridge Station now a private house, and the car park in which we had parked at the start of our walk on the Wensum Way in September. Then, the car park had been much reduced in size because of repair work on the Marriott's Way further on, but the normal route and car park were now fully open. This car park was pretty much full, and there were distinctly more people about on the return leg of our walk to Freeland Corner. This wasn't a problem most of the time and we were still able to stop at the River Wensum crossing for a snack of Christmas cake; there was just one occasion when we were trying to pass a group of cyclists at the same time as two other sets of walkers were coming towards us. Social distancing and mud both added somewhat to the difficulty!