Blog

This is a little bit of a holding page at the moment, but this is where we’ll put links to the podcasts that we’re doing for all of our training walks. The index to our plan to walk the 100 is at https://www.julianwhite.uk/ldwa-100/.

Before I start, a quick few words of explanation. The production standard on these isn’t great, we don’t know what we’re doing with audio and the content isn’t exactly Terry Wogan quality. We also don’t think our first efforts are really that exciting either, but the only way we can make them a bit better is to start doing them. So this is our best effort  🙂

There will also likely be a delay between the blog of a walk being posted (that’s much easier) and the podcast. This is primarily as we have to find time to record it and then for our professional sound engineer (Nathan) to publish them.

Oh, and we don’t have a podcast name yet either. Suggestions welcome, although it’ll be something like from 0 to 100, but perhaps with an edgier tone to it. There’s a limit to how edgy we can make these things though…

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INTRO: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kSmJWQnbBUf2HxpDO-K0kYzgZeZJi5xC/view?usp=sharing

An introduction to what we’re doing.

WALK ONE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tBrprrhtnak_nXk00eYwTj65Vbr9iRKO/view?usp=sharing

The podcast that goes along with training walk one.

The main page for this walk is here, this blog post is just the section from Rockland St. Mary to Norwich Railway Station.

This photo is really just for Leon. DIGGER!

So, we’d now reached Rockland St. Mary and that’s Rockland Staithe, meaning that we’d completed 28 miles of the walk and it was 19:30.

From this time of the evening, the lighting started to work well for photos.

The beer garden of the Surlingham Ferry.

This was the final stretch of walk along the river and we were a little nervous that it might be just slightly overgrown in places and we could do with being stung by nettles. It actually proved to be fine, but by now, general fatigue was starting to creep in as we went past the 30-mile mark.

It was true that we were tired, but these were some beautiful views.

This is the RSPB reserve at Surlingham.

Saint Mary’s in Surlingham and by this stage, this was as near as I was prepared to go as I didn’t want to add on any extra distance to walk around it taking photos. Interesting round tower church, I’ll go back there at some point.

This looks narrower in the photo than I remember it.

Some of the photos as it started to get dark, I’m still very pleased by my new (well, relatively new) phone camera.

This is Billy Bluelight, the nickname of William Cullum (1859-1949) who here is decked out in his protective equipment. I’ll write more about him another time, as he’s an important local figure, but the salient point here is that he was known for his running. He’d run up and down the riverside path and offer a race to those on boats, claiming he could get there faster. He usually did manage to get there faster and would be rewarded by pennies and beer. And perhaps, this is a new summer job for Nathan. He could sit at the pub and offer to run up and down the path in reward for a pint at Reedham.

The statue is at Water’s Edge in Bramerton.

I don’t think Nathan will mind me saying that by this point, he was struggling a little, but his achievements in getting this far were still remarkable for someone who hasn’t done long-distance walking. I didn’t help by telling him there were no more fields, then there was this one that I’d forgotten about. I also made a slight navigational error, although fortunately we worked it out quickly and so only went around 20 metres wrong.

As can be seen, it was starting to get just very slightly dark. This photo was taken along Whitlingham Lane, which I’ve walked down many times and it just seems to go on and on…..

By this time, we were well and truly looking forwards to getting back home, this is Riverside in Norwich.

The Queen of Iceni pub in Norwich, operated by JD Wetherspoon, where the partitioning for their re-opening is already mostly in place.

And, this was the end, Norwich Railway Station, which we reached at 22:55, so we had beaten our target of 23:00 which we’d set a few hours before. Nathan was only moderately annoyed to see that there were no taxis at the railway station, which meant he had to walk home, adding another mile onto his route. I was pleased to only have a walk of half a mile back home.

So, did we enjoy it? Speaking for myself, the last ten miles weren’t the easiest, although I was in no pain and had absolutely no feet problems. For someone who gets blisters, this was very important and gives me lots of confidence for the 100. And writing this a couple of days on, and after checking with Nathan, we absolutely did enjoy it and want to do similar distances again. There’s a strange thing about these walks, there are times when they are a nightmare and you ask yourself why you’re not at the pub (well, obviously that’s an easy one to answer at the moment, but my point is more general), but when they’re over and you look back, there’s a certain fondness to the whole arrangement.

The highlights for me of the day were going on Reedham ferry for the first time, being delighted when sheep moved out of the way early on (thereby not attacking us), as well as having a beer in Loddon/Chedgrave (I get them muddled up). The walk was 37.87 miles (although Nathan and I did around a mile each outside of this to get to and from home) and it took 13 hours, 46 minutes and 32 seconds. That’s an average of 21.49 minutes per mile and a burn of 3,537 calories. The highest elevation during the walk was 50 feet (who says there are no hills in Norfolk?) which was towards Norwich and the lowest elevation was apparently -43 feet a few miles from Norwich. I have no idea how accurate those statistics are.

Unlike Nathan, I don’t pause Runkeeper when we break, so his time splits are more useful as my timings include breaks. However, we started off doing around 18 minutes per mile, slowed down by vegetation a bit and then we returned to those sort of times. Our fastest mile was thirteen miles in, when we achieved a mile in 16 minutes and 53 seconds.

Particular credit to Nathan for this, as he was having to power through, but our last three miles were done in an average of 17 minutes and 30 seconds (indeed our second-fastest mile of the day was the 37th mile at 17 minutes and 15 seconds) so we made one hell of a pace towards the end. Of course, we could have speeded this all up by not having as many breaks, but they’re part of the fun of a walk like this and we were never that focused on the time, as long as we were back by midnight. The least exciting part was the problems we had with a rash from the vegetation that we had ploughed through, which wasn’t ideal.

So, all told, this was a suitably exciting adventure. I think we’ll do this again……

The main page for this walk is here, this blog post is just the section from Chedgrave/Loddon to Rockland St. Mary.

To put this walk into context, Chedgrave is 15 miles into the Wherryman’s Way (if walking from Great Yarmouth) and we were expecting the walk to be 37 miles in total. As an aside, due to diversions, it was 38 miles, with Chedgrave being geographically halfway between Norwich and Great Yarmouth as the crow flies. But, due to the way the river bends and the path diverts, we still had some way to go, but we did feel that we were halfway. Even without realising I’ve split this walk into five separate posts, and I’m starting the fourth post here, well before the halfway mark.

I mention all that as I think at this stage we realised just how much more walking we had to do and the above photo was taken at 15:30. Any plan of arriving back by 22:00 was now not going to happen. In the above photo is a section of the mast from ‘Hathor’, a wherry which was built in 1905 and is still owned today by the Wherry Yacht Charter Charitable Trust.

And an information board about the Wherryman’s Way.

I always think of a certain car driver when I see that road sign.

The sweeping views of the Norfolk countryside begin again, that’s the River Chet on the right.

And a little further along the River Chet.

This is Hardley Cross (I’ve written about this before) and it marks the former boundary between Norwich and Great Yarmouth and it’s where the River Chet meets the River Yare.

Now walking along the River Yare again, the wide skies of Norfolk showed themselves.

Hardley Mill, which I’ve written about before.

The delights of Cantley sugar factory, which is of some note as it is visible for miles before you reach it and for miles after. It’s like the Eiffel Tower of Norfolk…..

The weather stayed dry after the torrential rain in Loddon, but it sometimes looked a little ominous. There was a stretch of walking that proved just a little annoying, which is the walk into Hardley Staithe. It’s not very far, but the GPX route forgets that it’s there, so it added on just over half a mile and we were now conscious that not only had our 22:00 arrival into Norwich gone awry, but that 23:00 was not looking hopeful. But, we persisted.

This is the Beauchamp Arms near to Claxton and was at the 25-mile mark for our walk. I’m not entirely sure what’s happening to it as there seems to be a large maintenance project going on and it’s clearly not going to re-open in its previous form for some considerable time. It’s a large building and has one of the best locations in the area, so perhaps they’re planning to take it a little upmarket.

I led most of the walk since I had the GPX route, but here Nathan takes charge.

And these are three photos of the walk into Rockland St. Mary, which is at the 28-mile mark. Certainly, tiredness had crept in by this stage of the adventure, although we were conscious that there were now only ten miles left. Given that Nathan had never walked more than 22 miles before, he’d now gone over a marathon distance and we had the advantage that a finish by 23:00 was now more likely than not. Our bravery was evident and we had just one long stretch to go to reach the beautiful city of Norwich.

The main page for this walk is here, this blog post is just the section from Reedham Ferry to Chedgrave/Loddon.

In my last blog post, I mentioned that it was just a short walk along the river towards Reedham Ferry. This transpired to be untrue, as the river section is closed and it required a diversion up via the village’s railway station. We tutted silently at this additional length (although to be fair, it wasn’t much), but it was a handy opportunity to take a quick look at the railway station.

Reedham railway station was built in 1844 on what was the county’s first railway line, the Yarmouth and Norwich Railway. Today, the line serves both the Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth branches.

More on this railway station in another post, but we meandered off the path to have a quick look at it.

Looking back to Reedham on the road which leads to the ferry.

In the background of this photo is Cantley sugar factory, more on which later.

This looks an old sign….

And we waited at the appropriate spot for our ferry journey across the river, this is the only river crossing for cars and pedestrians anywhere between Norwich and Great Yarmouth. I’ve never made this crossing before and I think it was a little bit of a highlight for us, although perhaps that just means we need to get out more….

There wasn’t a long wait for the chain ferry to return from the other side to pick us up.

The fare is 50p per pedestrian to cross the river and it can also carry up to three cars.

Nathan looking excited on the ferry.

The view from the ferry, with the current chain ferry dating to 1984, but there’s been a ferry crossing here since the seventeenth century.

Departing the ferry journey and we very much enjoyed our 60-second cruise. We chose not to upgrade to first class.

The spot by Reedham ferry is a nuisance in many ways, as there’s no way of crossing the next section of river to the next stretch of path, which means a long diversion round to Loddon and Chedgrave. So, contemplating this state of affairs, we had a rest and I had the remainder of my meal deal.

This is St. Gregory’s Church in Heckingham, more on which in another post, but it’s a twelfth-century redundant church (I mean it’s redundant now, it wasn’t redundant when they built it) which is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Although we didn’t much mind that a couple of dogs came over to play, I do wonder whether perhaps owners should be more careful as for all they knew Nathan might have dognapped their pet. I hear this is a big thing in Suffolk…..

Holy Trinity Church in Loddon, which again I’ll come back to in a future post.

We had always intended for Loddon to be where we restocked, but since our water levels were high not much more was needed. As it was now quite warm, I decided that an ice cream would be my decadent treat (I say decadent, it was £1). We looked at the Magnums but thought they were too decadent at nearly £2 each, Nathan went with a Feast for £1. No expense spared….

One issue was that the shop took longer than we had anticipated as two elderly ladies were ahead of us in the aisle and were looking at nearly every item in great detail. A queue was forming behind and I really wanted Nathan to go and say something, but he was too polite. So we did the very British thing of staring at the back of their heads with a grumpy look, as this made us feel better.

A few weeks ago, I popped into the Premier store and obtained some banana bread beer from Eagle, which I rather liked. Unfortunately, they’d run out today, so Nathan opted for a Newcastle Brown Ale and I went for an Adnams Broadside (I say I went for, Nathan chose for me as I was outside finishing my ice cream and getting the best value from my £1 possible). That was the best choice of a bad lot, but they went down surprisingly well. It was just a little hard to entirely enjoy them to their fullest extent though as something akin to a tornado and Biblical flood hit the village during this moment.

On that note, we then left the metropolis of Loddon and Chedgrave, often referred to as the Las Vegas of Broadland, moving on to the next part of the walk.