Peter Scott Walk

Today's walk is named after Sir Peter Scott, the famous conservationist and artist (amongst other things) who lived in the lighthouse on the east bank of the River Nene, just south of the Walk. Most people regard the Peter Scott Walk as starting or ending at the lighthouse, and from here it follows the sea bank around the edge of The Wash to West Lynn, a short ferry crossing from King's Lynn. Meanwhile the Nene Way also starts or ends at the lighthouse.  This means that the Peter Scott Walk provides a way of linking the Nene Way (which we started walking at the very end of 2018) with the Fen Rivers Way (walked between 2007 and 2009), the Nar Valley Way (walked over a period of several years, with the leg from King's Lynn completed in 2009) or, for those walking the coast of England, with our own Fen Rivers Way to Norfolk Coast Path link (2012) which leads from King's Lynn to Hunstanton. However, perhaps the natural link is from the River Great Ouse to the River Nene or, in walking terms, from the Ouse Valley Way (completed in 2015) to the Nene Way. The direction in which we walked each of those also gave us a consistent direction of walking...along the Great Ouse from source to the Wash, round The Wash on the Peter Scott Walk, then along the Nene from the Wash to its source.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the walk was getting to it. We were heading in two cars to the car park at the Sir Peter Scott Lighthouse (TF493255) when we came to a standstill on the A10 because of an accident. Fortunately Richard was just a couple of cars behind me (and the two intermediate cars turned round) and he remembered that there is an alternative route through Watlington, (Wiggenhall St Mary) Magdelen, Tilney St Lawrence and Terrington St John. If you aren't local, I should point out that these are just a small selection of the Wiggenhalls. Tilneys and Terringtons in the area, but we don't know them well. Especially on such a lovely spring morning it was a pretty route and it didn't delay us too much. We drove back in one car to King's Lynn, initially on a very obvious route (the A47), though we were quite surprised when the Maps app brought us off the A47 at the Clenchwarton turning (that's the wrong side of the river) - the app knew what it was doing though, there is another bridge just north of the A47 and we emerged at the South Gate roundabout. We parked at the Austin Street West car park (£2.80 for the day though it would have been more if we'd arrived after 10am). We walked through the streets of historic King's Lynn, stopping on Tuesday Market Place to photograph the King's Head Hotel, which Richard's Mum remembers staying in when she was a young woman, about 80 years ago. A short walk down Ferry Lane brought us to the landing stage for the West Lynn ferry. It was just shortly after high tide. We'd missed the 9.20 crossing so we had to wait for the 9.40 one and during this 10 minutes two separate couples walked down to the landing stage, photographed it, then went away, then two cyclists appeared, following a a route they obviously didn't know, and somewhat surprised that they needed to catch a ferry. I did suggest that they could swim...fortunately, despite the fact that the ferryman was not the friendliest of the species, he didn't bat an eyelid at the bikes; we paid our £1.20 each for the single crossing, and we were off.

There is a delightful description of the Peter Scott Walk here, written by the current/former owner of the Sir Peter Scott Lighthouse (at the time of writing, the lighthouse is for sale), with the added advantage that he walked the path in the same direction as us. His estimate of the length is about the same as ours, whilst some people quote a length of 13.5 miles. We're not sure of the reason for this, but whilst on the walk, we noticed that the information boards describing The Wash Site of SSSI showed the Peter Scott Walk as continuing on down the Nene, following our first short leg of the Nene Way. Perhaps that's the explanation. In addition to the usual descriptions by the Long Distance Walkers' Association, other walkers, and those that I refuse to link to because they take you to a paywall, the Peter Scott Walk featured as the Telegraph's Walk of the Month in 2007. The walk is shown on Ordnance Survey Explorer sheets 250 (or 236) and 249. Although there are public footpath signs, I didn't notice any specific "Peter Scott Walk" signs. Since there is some overlap with other paths e.g. the Clenchwarton Parish Walk, and for some reason the path to the Ongar Hill car park at TF583247, as well as the main route, is marked as "Peter Scott Walk" on the map, so you need to be a bit careful. Essentially you need to follow the bank closest to the coast - in some cases there are older sea banks further from the sea; don't be fooled by the description of one of these as the "new" sea bank. 

The sea bank has mostly been built as a series of straight lines, with quite distinct changes of direction on occasions. We followed the bank of the Great Ouse up towards The Wash (a surprisingly long way), then around The Wash, eventually reaching the mouth of the Nene. As we rounded one of the sea bank "corners" a curious mound came into view on the marsh; it was fairly obviously not a natural feature, but what was it? Then a shimmering series of green and white layers appeared on the horizon. At first we thought we were looking at land the other side of The Wash, but eventually we realised that we were looking at an island. A little gentle research revealed that these are the inner and outer "trial banks" built during the 1970s as part of a trial to assess the feasibility of building a barrage across part of The Wash for freshwater storage from the Rivers Great Ouse, Nene, Welland and Witham. The trial came to nothing, leaving the distinctive hills as a point of interest on an otherwise flat landscape. Other features on the landscape included two wind turbines close to the Great Ouse, an isolated barn and occasional houses in the distance. There were also distant views to the Sutton Bridge Power Station, and to the twin lighthouses close to the bank of the River Nene, with the East (Sir Peter Scott) Lighthouse our final destination, and towards the end we passed some tractors planting potatoes.

Despite the fact that the route is much written about, and we were following it on an almost-perfect-for-walking Easter Saturday (it was dry, sunny and the warmest Easter on record, but the breeze meant that it was not too warm on the walk), we met remarkably few other people when on the walk. Indeed, we only spoke to two lots of dog walkers, a woman close to West Lynn and a couple close to the Nene, neither of whom appeared to be walking the whole route. We saw another couple who were also dog-walking, from the Ongar Hill car par, but our paths didn't coincide, and a group of walkers appeared in front of us whilst we were eating lunch (no idea where from) and then walked at a relatively consistent distance in front of us, so we didn't meet up with them either. When we got close to the lighthouse end, it felt quite busy, but all things are relative - we went to Sandringham on our way home, to buy apple juice for a retirement do at work - as you do! - and that was REALLY busy. 

Of course, it is the isolation that makes the Peter Scott Walk so special. It could be regarded as boring, since the whole route is on the sea bank, with sometimes river but usually marsh on the coastward side (our right) - with the sea some distance away - and agricultural land on the landward side (our left).It felt as if we were miles from anywhere, with just the birds and wild animals for company. We saw a couple of muntjac deer and passed some black bullocks grazing on the marsh. But most of the time it was just us and occasional birds. A really good walk for thinking. It was also a good walk for ensuring that the new walking boots I'd bought two days earlier (following the discovery of a hole in the old boots on our short holiday on the Wealdway ten days ago) were fit for purpose, whilst it didn't matter that the new walking poles I'd ordered had not arrived.