Distance: 21 miles
Ascent: 150m
Weather: warm and sunny
Number of people who saw a stoat: 1 :(
Number of people who saw a shrew: 2!
Also: Pheasants, yellowhammer, buzzard, lapwing, kestrels, hare, squirrels, bunnies
Discarded slippers: 1
We set off at 8:20 after an early breakfast and watching the election results (we'd done our postal votes last week.)
It was a warm humid morning, the route turning away from the busy main road almost straight away and up a quiet lane with farms dotted about, barley and wheat fields with pheasants. The lane petered out into a track entering tall pine woods, with plenty of squirrels, cuckoos and chiff chaffs calling. The land to the left side was military firing range (including potato fields) and to the right was more deciduous, with green undergrowth and ferns, honeysuckle, tall colourful foxgloves, pink and white campion, briar rose, forget me nots, thrift and of course plenty of nettles.
The Peddars Way goes north following the course of an old roman road, although it's supposedly even older than that. Peddar comes from ye olde English word for pedestrian, so the name simply means footpath.
The grassy path through Blackrabbit Warren was lined with old trees, through wide fields. It was very peaceful, with birds singing and butterflies flitting about. Explosions and machine gun fire could be heard in the distance.
The path ended at a road, which we had to walk alongside for a while, on the verge and around field edges behind a hedge. We went into village of Little Cressingham, where we sat by the crossroads for tea and biscuits. Leaving the village we saw very different designs of windmills, old and modern, side by side.
We walked a while along hedge lined lanes, with the bird song of sparrows, chaffinches and goldfinches. A buzzard was being harassed by a couple of crows overhead and they made it drop the rabbit carcass it'd been carrying. Thankfully it missed us.
Lunch was had in North Pickenham on a bench by a statue of an Norman soldier... a chap in a helmet stood in a plant pot.
The afternoon's walk was uninspiring; walking on roads, occasionally on verges next to roads, or in fields behind a hedge next to but still pretty much right by the road. A stoat was spotted but I was looking at the map.
South Acre and Castle Acre are very pretty, set in valleys with ruins of old priories and castles, now guarded by rabbits.
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