Nar Valley Way

The River Nar rises near Litcham in Norfolk and flows by way of Castle Acre and Narborough to King's Lynn, where it joins the River Great Ouse a few miles south of The Wash. The lower reaches of the river are mostly straight (re-routed by human hand) but it's more interesting upstream of Narborough, where the gradient is steeper, and it flows through some extremely attractive countryside. There's abundant wildlife including wildflowers, butterflies, dragonflies and assorted wildfowl.

The Nar Valley Way follows the river closely in places; elsewhere it leaves the river to explore other local places of interest, such as Shouldham Warren. The signposts, although attractive, are sometimes missing just when you need them, so I wouldn't advise walking the path without a decent map (we use the Ordnance Survey 1:25000 explorer maps). The Nar Valley Way is 34 miles long overall, extending beyond the source of the River Nar to Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse. The final stretch of the path to Gressenhall seems to have very little to do with the River Nar, so at the time of walking the rest of the path, we decided not to walk it, assigning Mileham Castle as the end of the Jordanwalks route.

We pass over the River Nar near Setchey every time we drive up the A10 towards Kings Lynn, something we did regularly when my mother was alive and living in a residential home in West Winch (and later, when Richard's parents were at the same residential home). In addition the path passes some of our favourite local haunts, especially Shouldham Warren and Castle Acre, a pretty village with a medieval priory, castle and an attractive church, with Willow Cottage tea room and B&B next door [sadly now closed, though Barnfields Cafe is also nice] . Nearby West Acre is home of the Westacre Theatre and West Acre Gardens, a lovely nursery in a walled garden.

We haven't been to Gressenhall for some years, but we used to visit when the children were younger, and one of my favourite family photographs shows Michael and Helen inspecting the pond life there.

Enough of the advertising...to return to the path. We walk the section between Castle Acre and West Acre quite regularly, as part of a circuit that follows the River Nar through very attractive water meadows and woodland and passes close to a couple of fords. The circuit leaves the Nar Valley Way just before West Acre, climbs a hill then follows a track to Bartholomew's Hills Plantation and returns to Castle Acre by way of South Acre and another ford (thankfully they all have footbridges!).

We started a more serious assault on the Nar Valley Way on two rather grey Saturdays in February 2006, parking at Shouldham Warren and heading to the River Nar first to the east (where there's the remains of a priory just as you reach the river - one of many sites of historical interest that you pass on the path) and then to the west. We returned to the path in summer 2009 and walked several sections in very variable weather conditions, including ice and snow on Boxing Day, eventually passing the source of the River Nar and reaching Mileham on 7th February 2010.