Walks

28 walks later ...

The next couple of weeks will be stuffed full of "lasts" for me. Here's the first then: the last walk for me to complete in my book of Suffolk Walks.

Distance: 11.7 miles
Ascent: 253 metres
Duration: 3 hours 47 minutes

Walk 25: The Shotley Peninsula

The Shotley Peninsula is the southernmost piece of coast in Suffolk, sandwiched between the vast estuaries of the Orwell and the Stour. It has a rich supply of footpaths, providing plenty of scope to roam between the two rivers.

The centrepiece is the village of Shotley itself, built on a hill just before the land runs out. From here the port at Harwich is visible across the Stour to the south. Looking east though, the ferries and ships of Harwich suddenly seem as nothing when you catch sight of the Port of Felixstowe.

The vast cranes of Felixstowe's container port dominate the horizon here. It's hard to convey the size of the dock. It's harder still to imagine that the county's small roads and railway somehow consume all the goods being offloaded.

Bringing my eyes back from the horizon to the peninsula I found another surprising thing: a naval cemetery. There are so many disused air fields in Suffolk that it's easy to forget that the wide estuaries must have seen a good amount of naval action during the wars too.

This may be my last walk in Suffolk but I've only heard a fraction of the county's stories.