Nashoba, Base Green, Suffolk

      

Thursday was seen as possibly the last opportunity to get out and about from our camp here in Suffolk before serious family commitments and further travel plans stymied all of that. We packed up our lunch and set off soon after breakfast, toward the Thetford Forest, in the general direction of our initial plan. We kept off the main highway, tracing our way through the smaller charming Suffolk villages of Tostock, Thurston, Great Barton and West Stow, where we decided to check out King’s Forest which is part of the Thetford Forest, although not physically connected to it. 

The Forest was named to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary, and includes acres of trees, sweeping heathland and the wide open East Anglian skies. Here walkers, cyclists, horse riders and dog walkers have a network of trails to follow, the latter who have clearly frequented the area; uncollected dog faeces are everywhere, and for those who have made the effort to bag their beloved’s fouling, there are far too many who have cast the tied-off bags into the vegetation along the way. We were not impressed although when we rose above our frustrations regarding this typically English custom, did enjoy our forty minute walk. The birds were wonderful although we were spared any sighting of mammals, either of the two or four legged variety. We were discouraged from one section of the forest where it was evident that timber harvesting in progress, however this was of no great consequence to us.

Back behind the wheel, we continued on to the West Stow Country Park, 125 acres of countryside containing a remodelled quarry, the Anglo Saxon Village, trails, heath and woodland walks, along with an excellent children’s adventure playground and café.

In fact the ground covered by this park has had many different lives. Not least the 19^th century sewerage works built to serve Bury St Edmunds. Underground pipes carried the sewerage from the town to the site where it was distributed across the land to the pumping station. When the sewerage farm came off line in the 1950s, sand and gravel was excavated from part of the site and the resulting quarry was then used as a municipal rubbish tip. It was during these operations that the evidence of an Anglo-Saxon settlement was uncovered.

On arrival we set off around the park to explore the natural wonders of the place, firstly down to the River Lark, that which flows through Bury St Edmunds and eventually runs into the River Great Ouse, then around the lake, which turned out to be one of several. The lakes are actually former gravel pits, which were allowed to flood once the minerals had been extracted in the late 1970s. The twelve acre lake we walked around, has become a well-established and environment supporting a wide variety of wildlife; Canada geese, ducks, swans, the glorious and abundant Common Blue Damselflies, eels, tench, pike, bream and  carp, this latter sometimes growing to five feet long.

We walked up through the forest of silver birches, Scots pines and oaks, so many of the latter young and thriving, and learned much about our surroundings on interpretative panels. We learned that traditionally parts of birch have been used to heal many illnesses, such as urinary infections, arthritis and rheumatism, as well as being widely known for its detoxifying diuretic, cleansing and purifying properties.  Birch sap and the bark were used for tanning leather; the sap is still used today for its medicinal and cosmetic qualities. I could not help but think I should be taking birch sap capsules every day to maintain my good health.

Part of the park is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), protected under the 1981 Wildlife & Countryside Act. The seventy acres of West Stow Heath is a small remnant of the cast open sandy area known as Breckland, which once covered 400 square miles of Norfolk and Suffolk. It supports a unique range of plants and animals which have evolved to withstand the harsh conditions of the region; however I have touched on this before when we were in the Thetford area last year.
 

Better known and visited by tourists is the Anglo-Saxon Village which I visited with Margie and her since deceased husband, Dave, about ten years ago.

The village area was excavated, explored and studied before Dr Stanley West set to work in the summers from 1965 to 1972 and with his team discovered sixty nine sunken featured buildings and several “post built” structures. All the buldings were of wood and had left few traces when they rotted away. Luckily for the excavators, two houses had been burned in Anglo-Saxon times, so that timber was preserved and could be identified from the charcoal remains. The archeological site had been protected under a great mound of blown sand deposited here by the wind during the medieval period. The nature of the soil preserved many pieces of evidence not normally found, including thousands of animal bones, bronze objects and even seeds.

In 1973 reconstruction of the Anglo-Saxon village began and fifteen years later, the first visitor centre was opened. Eleven years later the current centre opened, this offering an excellent museum and an introductory DVD theatre, along with the obligatory shop and café, where they hope to reap the greatest profits.

The reconstruction has been more about experimental archaeology, its aim to explore the techniques of building and woodworking techniques thought to have been used by the Anglo-Saxons.  Some folk had imagined that the Anglo-Saxons lived in a hole in the ground with a simple roof over it, but that did not match the evidence from West Stow. A number of different types of buildings have been experimentally reconstructed to test how they performed. As a result, the village is a bit of a mishmash of likely and unlikely buildings; the commentaries are honest enough to acknowledge the likely errors.

The village includes a hall, a workshop, a weaving house, a living house the “oldest house”, a farmer’s house and the misdirected “sunken” house, all of which are open to the visiting public. And all of it is most interesting.

It has been ascertained that the period of occupation of the West Stow site lasted for over two hundred years from 420 to 650 AD. Around this time, over a period of perhaps twenty five years, the village moved about a mile to the east perhaps around the new church. West Stow today is centred on this new site. The original site was gradually deserted.

But excavation has found that the site had been occupied for way before the Ango-Saxions arrived. The hill was occupied by an Iron Age settlement, consisting of a number of circular huts, storage or rubbish pits and ditched enclosures for stock and small field plots. This settlement, which lasted from the 3^rd Century BC to 60 AD, probably represents the growth of a successful farmstead rather than a community.

When I came here with Margie and her husband all those years ago, it was a “live” day and the crowds were typical of such exhibitions, milling about for the hot dogs and icecreams rather than an indepth education, so I did not have the opportunity to understand the site then as I did now, I was now very glad we had both the time and the space to do so, although we did have to share the museum with a class of primary school children from Cambridge.

By the time we emerged it was too late to undertake any further significant touring, so we made our way home through another loop of Suffolk villages and along lanes from where we were able to see that Suffolk has more than its fair share of piggeries here in East Anglia.

The next day was to have been one of organisation and preparation, but was mostly spent hanging about waiting for things to happen and people turn up. By the time dinnertime arrived, we were still a distance from home and the prospect of cooking did not appeal; instead we had dinner at a pub in Stowmarket and embraced the positives of the day. We had the key to Margie’s new house and The Decorator, this many faceted husband of mine, was mostly aware of the walls and ceiling for his attention, most of the paint was now in our car and we had collected most of the tools from John’s workshop-garage in Bury St Edmunds with which to undertake the work. Now he just lacked work clothes to wear under a pair of John’s overalls, some work shoes, the wallpaper, the wallpapering equipment and some of the paint. He was keen to start work the next day but could foresee holdups even as we tried to be positive over our Friday Fish’n Chips special. 

When we did arrive home, the camp had already filled with May’s second Bank Holiday Weekend campers; at least three tenting parties and the rest, campervans and motorhomes.

The next morning Chris headed off with lunch packed in the eski, a pair of slippers to act as work shoes and a headful of shop names and opening times to acquire the missing items. He hoped his sister and niece would turn up with those left as their responsibility.

Against all these odds, The Decorator started work on Saturday and amazed his sister with his progress, even though he arrived home lamenting  the sluggish reality of the project. Apparently the paint Margie had purchased was not really appropriate for the job, nor was it enough. That and other frustrations were soon forgotten with a bottle of red and a substantial dinner I had slaved over the stove all afternoon to prepare. Actually that is not true; Margie had turned up halfway through the afternoon to offer company, so much of it was spent supping cups of tea. 

The next day was a rest day, a day for a family get-together up on the coast. John’s partner has a static caravan up near Lowestoft and we, siblings and in-law, had been invited up to share a pub lunch, an opportunity that could not possibly be ignored. Margie refused to be subjected to our third travel mate, our faithful Tomtom, so we travelled up in her car, passengers enjoying the landscape whizzing by and her companionable chatter.

We drove up on the A12, most of the road travelled a couple of years ago, but no less a delight on Sunday. Lush pastureland supporting the odd flock of sheep or herd of cattle, inland tidal lakes a haven for water birds and of course the charming Suffolk cottages, halls and pubs all along the way.

A delightful day was passed en famille, lunching at a pub in Carlton Colville then wandering about the caravan park, a very different scene from what one would find in New Zealand, or even Australia. Here the caravan owners are unable to use their little dwellings during the winter months, so they make the most of the weekends from spring through to autumn. John and Mary brave the hour and a bit trip up most weekends unless they have other commitments. 

We did poke our noses a little up the pathway that follows the coastline to Lowestoft, but turned back fearing we would be caught in the threatening storm.

We did not leave until near on six thirty, by which time the heavy rainstorm had arrived and moved on,  clearing the road of day trippers. Further east the country did not get away as lightly as we had. At Stansted airport, lightning strikes grounded flights when they damaged aircraft fuelling systems, stranding hundreds of passengers. There were apparently 62,000 lightning strikes, a few of which we witnessed on the north Suffolk coast. Flash flooding across the West Midlands caused one drowning and general chaos; it is amazing how much havoc just one hour of heavy rain can do.

This morning The Decorator headed off, first to meet up with his sister for a quick trip into Bury St Edmunds for more supplies, although I do wonder how “quick” the trip was. No doubt I will learn how his day went when he arrives home this evening. In the meantime  the weekend camping crowd have moved on and are braving the Bank Holiday traffic as they head home, and another batch have arrived to take their place, these folk with their children and dogs, making the most of what looks like a sunny mid-term week long break.