Newmarket to Great Thurlow

I sometimes have to work on Saturdays and when I do, I aim to take time off in lieu on the following Monday. It rarely works out! This was exactly what happened on 14th-16th April. We had found a B&B in Great Thurlow and planned a two-day walk from Newmarket to Clare, but I had far too much to do to take the Monday off, and in any case public transport was difficult and the weather forecast wasn't great. We settled for a one day walk from Newmarket to Great Thurlow, with one car parked at each end of the route to enable us both to get to Newmarket in the first case (not possible by public transport before midday on a Sunday) and to get back from Great Thurlow at the end (not possible by public transport at all on a Sunday). The weather was mostly dry, occasionally sunny and distinctly cold for April. Most of the time I was walking in T-shirt, fleece, waterproof and gloves - just to keep the wind out.

Our other difficulty was that the guide to the path, advertised on little yellow signs on the route itself and on the website of the Dedham Vale and Stour Valley Project , hadn't arrived. [It arrived a week later, just as I was writing up this walk and by 2019 it had become available for download]. So one way and another, it was not the most auspicious of starts. Having said all of that, we had a lovely walk: trees were just bursting into bud, grass was a vibrant green (so much for the drought) and bluebells and other wildflowers were in flower. The route is welll signposted and we already had a map (OS Explorer 210) and we found a good (and free on a Sunday) carpark in Newmarket, even if it does mean that we have to report the start of our walk as being behind De Niro's Nightclub. At the other end, we found an excellent (and always free) car park at the playing field in Great Thurlow (TL679501).

From Newmarket, we followed the A1304 for a couple of kilometres to the south west, passing the 'Sir Daniel Cooper Bart Memorial Fountain' and then Newmarket Racecourse, with the Millennium Grandstand in the distance and exercise tracks and gallops closer to the road. There were many horses out being trained, mostly too far away to photograph, or the wrong side of the long hedges which line each side of the road. The horse really is king in Newmarket - they even have 'horse crossings' instead of pedestrian crossings. It was interesting enough, and there's a pavement and verge alongside the road, but I don't much like walking alongside roads at the best of times, and this one was quite busy. If we'd had more confidence, we'd have walked along the edge of the racecourse instead, which other people seemed to be doing.

It was a relief to leave the road behind us and to turn onto Devil's Dyke, an ancient earthwork. I don't think anyone really knows who built Devil's Dyke, or why it was built, but it was reminiscent of our walk along Offa's Dyke - someone was clearly trying to keep someone else out! It is probably significant that Devil's Dyke runs at right angles to the route of the Icknield Way, an ancient trading route (which we've also followed) but the details are unclear. The walk along Devil's Dyke was delightful - much of it was wooded, but we also crossed chalk grassland, home to rare chalkland species such as the pasque flower (which, with uncharacteristic good timing, were in flower when we were there).

We passed the Newmarket Links Golf Course, and on a couple of occasions, golfers were actually teeing off (if that's the right word) from Devil's Dyke itself. The National Hunt Training Ground passes around the edge of the golf course. Temporarily leaving horses and golfers behind, we followed Devil's Dyke across the Newmarket to Cambridge railway line and two minor roads, both with car parks by the dyke, obviously used by the dog walkers we had passed.

We left Devil's Dyke at the point where the Icknield Way Path crosses it - we were last here in September 2011 - and we followed a section that the Stour Valley Path shares with the Icknield Way Path, through the village of Stetchworth, across paddocks, around Marmer's Wood and then onto a path between hedges, obviously intended to screen the path from more paddocks to our right-hand side. The path was attractive enough, especially with the spring colours in the hedges, but it went on and on in similar manner for a couple of miles so got a bit boring. The Icknield Way Path had parted company with us soon after Marmer's Wood. There were bluebells just coming into flower in Basefield Wood and Ten Wood, where we stopped for lunch.

We passed Great Widgham Wood and suddenly there was Kirtling Brook - we'd expected a little stream, so were most surpised to find a full and fast flowing river. It turns out that this is part of the Ely Ouse to Essex Water Transfer Scheme. Water is abstracted from the River Ouse at Denver Sluice (close to where we live) then passes along the cut-off channel and a 14 kilometre pipeline to Kirtling Green, from whence it is pumped, at the rate of 400 Megalitres per day, into Kirtling Brook (and thence, via the River Stour, to the Abberton Reservoir in Essex). They're nicking our Norfolk water! Seriously, it is all most clever and as the South East of England gets more and more drought-prone it is inevitable that water will need to be moved around the country. They want to take still more water this way, but thankfully they are building another pipeline from Kirtling Green so that they don't have to artifically increase the volume of water in the picturesque River Stour any further.

The path veered away from Kirtling Brook and we met the River Stour for the first time at a little Ford by Waterfield Barn, just to the north of Great Bradley. We crossed the river and turned left to follow it, soon passing its confluence with Kirtling Brook and so seeing the river's sudden growth in size.

We were now in Suffolk, and the path meandered its way, on paths and minor roads, close to the river and to the villages of Great and Little Bradley and then Little and Great Thurlow, each with manor houses or halls and adjacent churches. We left the Stour Valley Path in Great Thurlow, and in walking the short distance to the car park we passed a delightful 'ford' which would have been considerably too deep to drive through. We were back at the car by about 2.30pm after a very pleasant walk.

Following leg