May 28, 2012: Knettishall Heath to Thompson

The summer walking season for 2012 began on May 27, a sunny London Sunday, when I headed off to King’s Cross for a rendezvous with Tosh Lee and Marge Rogers. Marge had missed last year’s outing on the Northumberland Coast Path because of knee problems and, for her comeback, she had insisted on a route without steep ups and downs. That is why we were now preparing for an expedition on Norfolk’s Peddars Way.

A minicab picked me up at 1:45 and we headed first for St. Pancras – where, my big pack on my back, I waited out a computer-bedeviled clerk who assisted me in my purchase of some egregiously overpriced July Eurostar tickets. Then, carrying my daypack, I hiked over to King’s Cross – where I bought my train tickets for today and for next Friday as well. Here I had a very-well informed clerk who wanted to let me know, as an American, that I would find a statue of Tom Paine in Thetford, this afternoon’s destination. (He also cleverly observed that Ely was half way to Thetford and half way back from King’s Lynn – and that we could have money-saving returns to Ely as part of our arrangements.)

I now had half an hour or so to wait for the ladies and I began with a purchase of a can of Diet Coke and a Snickers bar for the trail and a Mocha Frappuccino for immediate consumption. The problem with King’s Cross (like so make of our modern stations) is that there is practically no place to sit down. After wandering around for a while I began to notice that others had solved the problem by sitting down on the concrete flooring – Idid so too, using a pillar as a backrest. My view was an interesting one – a hundred harried passengers staring up with rapt attention at the huge notice board, waiting for boarding information. Another station deficiency (in this newly modernized locus) was what to do with my empty Starbuck’s cup – since trash bins are somehow seen as an unnecessary ornament. In this case, after plodding around for a while, I simply passed the front door of Starbucks itself and deftly planted the cup atop a condiment stand.

At 3:00 or so I could see Tosh heading my way, dragging a little suitcase on wheels; Marge, standing next to the ticket barriers, had one too. Soon we were through and had taken our seats aboard a King’s Lynn train – one that departed at 3:15. There were some immediate problems – which could have been anticipated with better trackside signage – a mumbled announcement didn’t help much but I gathered that at Cambridge the train would split and we needed to be either in the front or in the rear of the train. So after passing Emirates Stadium and Brookman’s Park (of London Countryway fame) and sites fresh in our memory from walks on the Chiltern Way we sped north for an hour or so – learning at last that we needed to leave our seats in Cambridge, march forward a few cars, and continue on to Ely.

Here we expected to make a connection to a Norwich train but there was no mention of such an entity on the trackside TV monitor and when I asked a guard about this he told me that (this being a typical engineering works Sunday) there was a replacement bus service instead. We didn’t have long to wait and the bus soon headed up the A11, covering some of the route I remembered driving many years ago when Dorothy and I attended a wedding on the coast. We passed through Lakenheath, whose base school used to be among the league opponents for ASL teams, and made only one other stop before reaching Thetford; it was 5:30 or so but we were almost on time.

One thing that had to be noted, as we stepped off our bus, was how hot it was in the late afternoon sun. Someone at the station pointed us in the right direction (Celtic Trails had also supplied a map) and soon we were trundling through the streets in search of the Bell Inn. We found it only a few yards from the Rights of Man statue and we were soon headed along some airless and hot corridors to our separate rooms (each of us had our own room with private bathroom facilities throughout this trip). In the pub bar I consumed the first of two pints (after the fruit machine-playing Irish chap had at last found someone to serve us.) In fact we finished this lazy afternoon by ordering from the bar menu (I had haddock and chips).

Then we took a nice walk along the streets of this ancient local capital – soon coming to understand that the East Anglians had been replaced by the East Europeans; not only were the inflections of various Slav tongues evident in the conversation of every other passerby but we even uncovered food stores dedicated to the tastes of Poland and Lithuania. (One of our landladies later complained that, for her, Thetford had become a place of danger and menace and that she did not feel safe there at all, that it had become a dumping ground for distressed London boroughs, eager to offload the homeless.) I believe that the ladies now stayed behind for a nightcap when we returned to the Bell but I headed for my bed, read some of my articles, did a puzzle and, my shirt off, spent a very sticky night.

In the morning I met the others, after a timely shower, in the dining room –where we had our breakfast. Then at 9:30 we reassembled with our luggage in the foyer and awaited the arrival of the taxi hired by our trip organizers. A gentleman soon arrived, asking us if we were the party needing a ride to Knettishall Heath. We were. We then had a ten-minute ride to the official start of the Peddars Way – with Tosh quizzing our driver as though he were a tour guide and not a cabbie. After pulling into a forested layby he let us off and, our bags still in his boot, he headed off for our evening’s accommodation in order to deliver these sacred objecs. It was 9:50.

I took the first of dozens of pictures – focusing initially on the point of origin finger post. We were now ready for our march to the sea – some fifty miles to the north at Holme. To get us started there was one unusual element… the first 800 yards of this Norfolk route are actually in Suffolk and this meant that in ten minutes we could claim to have added two names to our list of counties walked. We were accompanied in deep woodland by a large woman with a tethered Alsatian; she told us that he suffered from hip dysplasia and she didn’t want him chasing after any deer – we never saw any such creatures on this trip.

Our delightful forest path soon reached the Little Ouse and we used a footbridge to cross it. Lovely wildflowers boomed at our feet. After the river crossing we had more open territory on our left and it was obvious, when we lost the covering of the pines, that it was again a very hot day. So I made a replacement in my choice of headgear – abandoning my tan baseball cap for a a khaki version with a long drape flowing behind – a gift many years ago from the Lees and an ideal one to wear on a trip when the sun was almost always on the back of our necks. (I was also wearing on the trail for the first time a new pair of boots, purchased a few months earlier at the Cotswold store in Covent Garden and well broken in on the pavements of Maida Vale.)

Our next objective was the River Thet, for which we had our own ford – another footbridge – reached as we marched through some marshy territory assisted by a well-engineered series of wooden walkways. On the river itself two swans were floating gracefully before us. On our left was the Shadwell estate and forestry plantations continued to dominate the scene on our right as we crossed two highways, the first (a long way from Hastings) bearing the historic designation A1066. I had added my own mileage figures to the OS maps in the official national trail guide volume by Bruce Robinson and so I could see that had already covered over four miles by the time we reached the busy A11.

After dashing across this we faced a new obstacle, a crossing of the Norwich rail line; this was protected by gates at either side and, indeed, we saw one train pass through before darting across the tracks ourselves. There followed a long stretch on a wide track in the hot sun; I was discovering that you could never tell if green spaces on the map really presaged the needed shade that trees could have provided on a hot day – for if the track through a plantation was wide enough there was no cover and, by contrast, seemingly open stretches on the map often meant a protective green tunnel, provided here by flowering hawthorns.

At 1:00 or so we reached the outskirts of civilization, a small village that calls itself East Wrethem on the west side of the A1075 and Stonebridge on the east side. I had discovered that the Dog & Partridge served food all day and so we planned on lunch here – the only time in the trip when a noonday pub would be so available. We had not counted on the delivery of a month’s worth of supplies just as we arrived and we were lucky that they kept half of the pub open for us, the only customers – still the lady publican was preoccupied with putting stuff away throughout our stay and Tosh found this off-putting.

A large black Labrador was sprawled in a red leather chair while his blonde counterpart was asleep on his back next to the counter. I had a cheeseburger and chips and drank a pint of lager – Tosh drank her new favorite thirst quencher, soda water on ice with a pinch of Angostura bitters. In all, this was a pleasant break from our labors at the six and a half mile mark and we spent almost an hour in the pub.

We still had some four miles to go so it was time to unkink our limbs and head out into the bright sunlight. A fork in the road invited us to slide to the left and follow a metaled road. There was an obvious military presence on our left as we climbed a series of gentle hills – we were learning early on that any notion that Norfolk was nothing but flatland was erroneous. I told the others to keep an eye on our right for a body of water and this turned out to be a corner of Thompson Water. This was an important landmark for us because I knew we would be looking for a turnoff soon thereafter.

The Peddars Way passes through very few towns and accommodation must often be sought off-route; we were now to begin the first of three straight days in which we would find our nighttime village a mile or so to the northeast of the trail. There was a fingerpost at the critical corner and I was cheered to see that it advertised the spot where we expected to have our evening meal, the Chequers Inn. This was some mile and a quarter away but we would not quite reach this distance. I had purchased the three relevant Explorer maps in the OS series so that I could be sure of the routes to our villages and as we used a lonely track to approach the village of Thompson I sat down to have a look at the first of these in order to make sure we were on the right track. It appeared that we could continue on our track as far as Redbrick Barn (now converted into flats) before turning left to head north to the next corner. It was 4:40 and we had arrived at the Thatched House.

This was a lovely cottage, four hundred years old, and presided over by Mrs. Mills – who began the usual nighttime ritual of showing us all three rooms, some upstairs and some down, so that we could decide who went where. (This was a decision that was easy to make in most instances since usually one one room had a bathtub and Margie favors these.) We asked about the Chequers and it was suggested that we try to get there at 6:30, when food service began. We asked about packed lunches and Mrs. M. expressed surprise – this would be the pattern for all of the landladies on this trip: are we now expected to request these before our arrival?

My room, facing the back garden, did not actually have en suite accommodation but there was a private bath off a nearby vestibule and here I took a welcome shower. Then, as my habit would soon establish itself, I lay on my back on my bed and had a brief nap. Then I joined the ladies in the back garden, where Tosh was reading her newspaper and Marge was writing her postcards. (Mr. Mills was watching Eggheads on the sitting room telly or Tosh would have been getting her news this way.)

As we headed off for our evening meal Mrs. Mills, in noting our admiration for her front garden and its multi-story dovecot, told us that all but two of the residents had been killed by local sparrow hawks – to her great distress. We had only a few blocks to walk as cooler temperatures at last prevailed. The Chequers Inn was also thatched and it proved to be a very popular place for one that seemed so remotely situated. We had some drinks (I was just drinking Diet Cokes now) before taking a table in the dining room  – where I ordered the lasagna. A Peddars Way couple, staying at the inn, arrived while we were waiting; she was carrying two walking poles and looked worn out after a day in the sun.

It was quite warm in the dining room and twice I stepped outside for some air, taking some more photos and accepting the greetings of a little white cat. A little old local lady quizzed me about the size of the crowd, encouraged that perhaps the kitchen would need a little help tonight in the washing up category. We now purchased some additional liquid for the trail at the bar – though the selection of drinks with screwtops was not great – hence my Appletizer. There was still plenty of light as we made our way back to the Thatched House – where I had an early night after a very successful first day on the trail.

To continue with the next stage of our walk you need:

Day 2: Thompson to Sporle