9 July 2016 - Lakeside Fishing & Camping, Onehouse, near Stowmarket, Suffolk

Yesterday was spent in a relatively sedentary manner, a welcome change given our busy travelling schedule over the past weeks and months. We watched as more fellow campers gathered on the grassy space between us and the lake; motorhomes, caravans and tents.

We popped out during the course of the afternoon to call upon Chris’s sister, Margie, ostensibly to cadge a vacuum cleaner, but lingering to enjoy tea and cream cakes, all permissiable given that we were to dine late.

The highlight of the day was to be enjoyed much later, after we picked up Margie from in Stowmarket. She directed us via the “pretty” route to Thurston, a village lying east of Bury St Edmunds and just north of the A14. On arrival at the Fox & Hound, we found the entire Thurston population and a quarter of that from Bury St Edmunds already gathered and enjoying themselves in jocular fashion. I admit exaggeration, but it certainly seemed so when I considered the group of aging deaf-eggs to dine in this environment. Birthday “Boy” John soon arrived with Mary, a neighbour, his son, Andrew and Andrew’s girlfriend whom most of us were yet to meet. I suspect Melissa was rather overwhelmed by us all but we thought her just lovely and tried not to frighten her off, however that is all very well for me to say from the distance of years and cultural difference. It was well after ten when we left, all having eaten far too much and some having drunk more than they should. It had been an excellent celebration dinner, and I suggested that we would all have to gather similarly for John’s eightieth in another ten years. There was a little eye rolling in response, however I am forever the optimist, or fantasist. 

Chris and I woke to rain showers this morning, late with no particular plans for the day. After breakfast he affixed the camouflage ventilation plate over the dent in the side of the van, and I ran the vacuum cleaner over the upholstery and into nooks and crannies easily avoided with dust pan and brush.  Then we spent an hour ringing about inquiring about storage charges and availability for the car and caravan for the six months or more through the winter. We have decided that we will return next year to continue our travel because it is already quite evident that we are running out of time to do what we planned.

With ideas and contacts all documented, we decided to set off for the day. I quickly packed our lunch up and we set off for Thetford and the forest of the same name, places which had remained tantalisingly close but still only names on the map.

Thetford is a market town with a population of just over 24,000, located in Norfolk, but only just across the county border from Suffolk. The Little Ouse River and River Thet converge in the town, the former river the border between Norfolk and Suffolk. After the last World War, Thetford became an overspill town taking people from London.

Today our first port of call was the Castle Mound, the tallest medieval earthworks in the United Kingdom. The massive earthworks clearly visible on arrival is the work of two different groups of people separated by about 1,500 years. Both the Iron Age people of 500 BC and the Normans in the 1070s recognised the strategic importance of the site and built these earth defences. The huge 80 foot mound we climbed, still wet and slippery from the deluge of rain that met us on arrival, was once topped with a timber castle. It was built inside the old Iron Age fort soon after the Norman Conquest, when Thetford was the sixth largest town in England. 

Descending the Castle Mound

After reaching the top, after a steep climb on hands and feet, I looked back down and wondered how on earth I would manage the decent without simply sliding back down on my bottom. Then I thought there might be a more formal path down the other side. After a circuit through the nettles, I found the one other route down was marginally less steep and then only because it zigzagged across a similar sluice-style descent. We took this, picking our way down, lowering ourselves little by little, and marvelling at the effort required in building the mound in the first place, and the effort required to lay siege to such a structure.

Returning to the car, having avoided the mud but jeans wet half way up our legs, we headed off into the forest, looking forward to walks and nature, exploration and education. We discussed the origins of the forest; that its other name “Thetford Chase” suggested a kingly hunting ground from years gone by, while the plantation nature of the forest suggested structural economic planning perhaps to alleviate unemployment during the Great Depression.

We followed the signs to High Lodge Forest Centre, the obvious place one would have thought to be the Information Centre, the kick off place to find out about the forest, the history and the natural attractions. We should have done some research before we left; we found ourselves entering a long road in, with signs forbidding parking along the way, a barrier arm where we were obliged to take a ticket, and then acres of car park already full and people everywhere, despite the fact the weather was not particularly good. The Visitor Centre here opened in 1992 and has a café, cycle hire, adventure play areas, a “Go-Ape” high wire adventure course, and very little information. The Information Centre, a tiny kiosk, is just big enough to accommodate a couple of young people, who offer directions to the toilets, parking payment machines, annual entry to the park and walk or cycling pamphlets for  £1 each.

I was keen to learn the history of the forest but this was to remain a secret until I turned my computer on this evening. We set out on the Nature Walk, a ten minute walk through the pines to a bird hide from which we observed several butterflies, the birds and mammals all having left given the screams of delight from all those enjoying the park’s adventure entertainment.

Site entry fees range from £2.20 for the first hour, then in increments until all day at £11.50. We paid the required £4.40, then proceeded to the exit and inserted our paid ticket into the machine. The barrier remained down. Chris pushed the help button and a voice suggested we should turn around and drive back to the park to the “Information Centre” to sort out our validated card. Back to try and find a park in that lot!? "No", said Chris, so there was much discussion and exchange of codes on the communication system until the girl had the arm lifted from her remote location. I am not sure whether she actually found that we had paid or whether she had just had enough of grumpy old men; I guess it did not really matter, she was rid of us and we were free to leave this ghastly crowded amusement park.

Grimes Graves

We decided to head for Santon Downham, a little village not too far away, once the centre for the forestry management and maintenance, and once a spot Chris used to call into with Margie’s husband when he was the Mr Softie van man way back in the fifties. As we drove there and beyond, we found a number of gated entries into the forest, with just enough room for a couple of cars to park out of the way of any possible machinery, and access to quiet natural walks far more appealing than those at High Lodge.

Thetford Forest is the United Kingdom’s largest manmade lowland forest of 18,730 hectares. It was created after the First World War to provide a strategic reserve of timber, since the country had lost so many oaks and other slow growing trees as a consequence of the war’s demands. It is managed by the Forestry Commission.

Weeting "Castle"

The creation of the forest destroyed much of the typical Breckland environment of gorse and sandy ridges, the poor soil offering little fertility for farming. It is an area where man established rabbit warrens around 1250 AD, meat and skins becoming a valuable commodity during the Middle Ages.

We headed up to Grimes Graves, almost directly north of Santon Downham, but accessed by travelling around through Brandon, once a centre for flint gathering and supply.

Grimes Graves were thus named by the Saxons to explain the inexplicable, holes in the ground apparently made by the God Grim. Subsequent archaeological exploration over the past one hundred and fifty years has discovered that these were flint mines dating back to Stonehenge times, five thousand years ago, and today we had the opportunity to climb down into one of them, descending a 30 foot ladder, to see the seams of jet black flint and then peer into tunnels heading off into the never never. 

The grassy area in a bare patch of the forest is administered by English Heritage, a bonus for the day, and includes some 400 pits, two covered over with concrete lids and the rest, apart from the one tourists can descend into, just depressions giving a honeycomb effect to any bird flying over. We wandered about through the wildflowers growing along the top of the shallow craters and agreed that this was decidedly more appealing than the time spent at High Lodge.

Weeting church through the popies

We were heading away when I spotted the sign for Weeting Castle, and requested a detour. This was but a short distance from our route, although Chris was not particularly interested. He said he had seen the pile of ruins on those same ice-cream truck runs with his brother-in-law and that there was really nothing to see. I insisted and so we explored the scant remains of not a castle, but a rare surviving example of a late 12^th century manor house. This was built in about 1180 by Hugh de Plais, a tenant of William de Warrenne, the Earl of Surrey, one of Chris’s ancestors. This piqued his interest after all.

The rectangular moat surrounding the manor, added in the 13^th century is mostly still there, although after the hall was abandoned, it became an ornamental feature within the grounds of the now demolished nearby Weeting Hall.

After admiring the nearby church with a round Norman tower and a clutch of abandoned pig sties through the boundary fence, we resumed our trip home, back through Bury St Edmunds and so to our lakeside camp which has become even more crowded. 

Here we were informed that our burglar alarm had gone off several times through the day, and continued to sound for several minutes each time. This is quite a concern given there appears to have been no cause, unless the forecasted winds ruffled the curtains and set the alarm off. I suspect we are not the most favourite neighbours of our fellow campers.