Round Norfolk Walk Day 3 - Bungay to Harleston

Distance: 16.3 miles
Ascent: 250m
Weather: overcast, wind and rain in afternoon
Bunnies,  squirrels, roe deer, buzzard, hares,  green woodpecker.

After posting yesterday's blog, we went out for dinner and called in at the Green Dragon pub for a pint first, as they have their own brewery. The beer was good and there was also morris dancing in the courtyard,  which was very jolly. We walked back to the hotel via Bigod's Castle, a ruin in the middle of the town that was quite atmospheric in the gloom (after a few drinks..)

We were at breakfast at seven thirty, and there were patches of blue sky and it wasn't as wet out as expected.  Yet.

We left town, dodging the traffic (the streets here are really narrow, so they've  introduced a one way system, with the unfortunate side effect that drivers seem to think they're at a street race) and then rejoined the Angle's Way at Ditchingham.

Going through a small wood, we went through a gate and up hill. Quite a steep bit of up hill. The path follows the edge of the hillside around Bath Hills, which is steeply wooded around Outney Common, making a big loop around the north of Bungay. There were deer, pheasants and squirrels along the way, which was a pretty tunnel of trees with plenty of nettles and undergrowth, thankfully recently strimmed.

About half way around the loop, the path joined a narrow lane with some farms and houses, before passing a gravel works, after which the road widened and we encountered more traffic. The gravel truck drivers were friendly and courteous,  the other drivers not so much.

We'd read that a diversion to the path had been put in place last year because of a damaged bridge at Stow Fen, and it still is. It looks like may be in place some time yet. So back to Bungay we went. Most of the detour is along roads (there was an interesting old brick house at Temple Bar which had very tudor chimneys and a thatched roof) which skirt around the village and past a garden centre, so we called in for a cream tea. It started raining and continued raining for the rest of the day.

Leaving the road we went up hill, around the fields towards Uplandhill Farm, seeing a fox making off with his lunch (possibly a rabbit) but mostly it was heads down against the wind and rain, thankful for the occasional shelter provided by trees. We saw a yellow bird that we can't identify, and the peculiar smell was identified as coming from the mushroom farm.

Flixton Park has the ruins of a tudor mansion just visible across a field, but the main thing noticeable are the great big sand and gravel pits. One was full of water and some ducks were enjoying the weather.

We stopped at a bench near the church for a damp lunch, the trees providing better shelter than we'd appreciated at the time, it really was very wet and windy as we left the woods and crossed Limbourne Common. We had a close view of a buzzard, met some cows and saw a higgledy-piggledy house.