Great Thurlow to Clare

We walked this leg of the Stour Valley Path by leaving one car at the Clare Castle Country Park (TL771452) - £1.50 for all day parking - and one at the recreation ground in Great Thurlow (TL678502) - free. These locations are further from home than we are happy to take two cars, but the public transport between the two isn't great. There is apparently a 'demand responsive' bus service, but we would have needed to have been more organised than we were, just a week after our son's wedding. The option would have been catching one bus into Haverhill and another one out, but that didn't occur to us. So two cars it was; driving from home to Clare and juggling the cars took us about 2 hours, so it was about 10.15am when we left Great Thurlow. We had a super walk; after a horribly wet April and a cold early May, it stayed dry all day and the sun was out for much of the time.

From the car park at Great Thurlow we walked up the lane, past the ford and the church, then turned right, through the yard of Hall Farm. We almost missed the point at which the path left the track, running parallel to the track through a field of cows, then we had some difficulty staying close to the hedge. We tried staying to the outside of the electric fence, but there was no way past the electric fence at the top end of the field, so we had to retrace our steps back towards Great Thurlow Hall and then walk along the edge of the newly sown grass, by the hedge.

We continued above Great Wratting and Little Wratting, emerging (after crawling under an electric fence in the middle of a paddock) near the sliced meat factory on the A143. We crossed the A143 and continued to Kedington, with an attractive church high above the River Stour. We heard a cuckoo and the knocking of a woodpecker, and we saw a woodpecker flying past.

Continuing south towards Sturmer we encountered mile upon mile of bright yellow oil seed rape. Very pretty, but rather smelly! We crossed a ditch into Essex and took a sharp left hand turn back to the river. Then we climbed quite steeply, with excellent views back to lots of water (not sure how much is always there and how much was flooding as a result of all the recent rain. We negotiated a construction site (not entirely sure what they are building) then stopped for lunch. The panoramic view from our lunchstop is shown above.

We crossed more fields and reached a lane. I'd expected rather boring road walking here, but this was a delightful small lane and we passed pretty cottages with a cat just asking to have its photograph taken, in the attractively named Thistlely Common.

We reached the main road and crossed the river, passed a pretty converted mill and walked into Essex and Baythorne End. We walked up the drive of Baythorne Park (very nice!) and then through attractive woodland. For the first time today we walked alongside the River Stour for a while, to Stoke Mill Weir (opposite Stoke College, an independent school). Here we met a couple of other walkers, the first today I think. We descended to Stoke-by-Clare, a pretty village (photograph below) though sadly lacking in teashops! The signposting for the Stour Valley Path took us away from the road sooner than is shown on the map. We were somewhere to the south of Moor Hall when there were some very loud bangs - we're not sure whether these were gunshots or fireworks, but the sheep in the field we were passing were much upset.

We climbed past yet more oil seed rape to and crossed a minor road, then passed Claret Hall and descended Bradley Hill. The footpath then took us through the gardens of various houses (this felt most bizarre but the owners of the houses were clearly used to it). We reached the river and turned right to follow it back to Clare Castle Country Park (on the site of a Victorian station and, before that, the inner bailey of the Norman castle). We climbed the castle mound. There's not a lot of the castle left, but the views over the ancient wool town, most noticeably the magnificent church, were good. Then we looked around Clare and had a cup of tea at the 'Number One' delicatessen and cafe before driving home.

Following leg