Helion's Bumpstead Walk

This walk believe it not you are walking in three counties and only walking 3.5 miles, I will explain what I mean a bit later. The part of village name Helions derives from Tihel Breton who held the manor in 1806 and the Bumstead part of the name is shared with

Steeple Bumstead and is believed to mean ' a place where reeds grow'.

Details of Walk

• Date of Walk: 19/07/2009

• Distance: 3.79 Miles

• Level of Difficulty: A Easy Walk

• Car Park: The Three Horseshoes CB9 7AL

• Refreshments: The Three Horseshoes

• No Photos Taken on the Walk

The walk starts at The Three Horseshoes dating back to the 17th century but we parked in the village hall car park and walked down Church Hill passing the St Andrews church which stands proudly over the village and parts of it date back to 13th century, sadly the tower collapsed in 1812 and was replaced by a red brick one.

On reaching the crossroads we went straight across into Sages End Lane and heading up out of the village passing Rolls Farm till we reached a sharp left hand bend with Sage's End Farm on the corner. This is where turned right and followed a good grass track upwards and at the top it changed to a concrete track and shortly we came across a bench and here we had good views of Helion Bumpstead church. After taking in the views we carried on to Bartlow Road at Drapers Green where we turned right and nearly straight away turned left into Drapers Lane. This lane leads you to Draper's Farm which we had to walk through to get to a wide green lane heading up hill away from the farm and then changing into a single path up to a old wooden bridge.

At this point of the walk you are standing in Essex with the field over the ditch on the left is in Cambridgeshire, and ahead across the bridge lies Suffolk, so if you had three legs you would be able to stand in three counties at the same time. So from here we crossed the bridge in to Suffolk and turned right along the headland path and after about 200 yards we crossed a shallow ditch bringing us into the next field. We kept on going until we turned right over a earth bridge back into Essex and then we headed back down on a good path to rejoin the the wide lane we came up on. When we reached the main road we turned left and headed back in to village passing some really nice buildings comprising of old and new.