Length: 16.6 km (10.3 mi)
Ascent/Descent: 166/170m
Net Walking Time: ca. 3 ¾ hours
Toughness: 2 out of 10
Take the 09.08 Ipswich train from Liverpool Street (Stratford
09.15, Shenfield 09.33), change at Marks Tey (10.05/10.16), arrives
Bures 10.28.
Return trains from Sudbury: xx.41. Buy a
Sudbury (Suffolk) return.
Posted twice already this year (including on a Wednesday), the Constable
250 festivities give a reason for putting it on again: if you limit your lunch
break to the customary 60 minutes, you will have no problem getting to Gainsborough’s
House (which is passed on the route) in good time to visit its Gainsborough,
Turner & Constable exhibition (last entry at 15.30).
This walk has few hills and some pleasant scenery. Sudbury lies at the
heart of the Stour Valley, designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Much of the walk is along the Stour Valley footpath, which is well waymarked.
In summer some paths can be overgrown - much depends on when the Council's
Countryside Department last arranged for the paths to be cleared. If your walk
happens to be just before a scheduled clearance, best you have a walking pole
at the ready to beat back the undergrowth. On the final approach into the
historic town of Sudbury, you cross the Sudbury Common Lands, a traditional
pastoral landscape which has the longest recorded history of continuous grazing
in East Anglia, where the painter Thomas Gainsborough is said to have played as
a child, to tea in a converted mill house on the banks of the river.
Lunch: Several options (with booking
recommended), check the webpage or pdf for details.
Tea: A hotel for tea, or two pubs, check the webpage or pdf for details.
For walk directions, maps, height profiles, photos
and gpx/kml files click here.
#2026-07-12T09:08 t=1.8
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