West Stow Country Park Walk

This walk was in the country park where a mock up Anglo Saxon village has been constructed on a archaeological site that dates back to mid-5th century and the early 7th century, the park also has a lake, heathland, woodland,river,and bird hives.

Details of Walk

• Date of Walk: 24/08/2013

• Distance: 4.39 Miles

• Car Park: West Stow Country Park IP28 6HG

• Refreshments: At The Centre

• Photos Taken on Walk

The walk starts from the car park and takes you round the side of the centre and down to the lake, I do not know when or who with but I have been here before. As we were walking round the lake I could hear a plane,out came the camera quickly the plane was one that is used for reconnaissance and for early warning probably took off from Mildenhall. The lake is a flooded former gravel pit and it is good that when they have finished extracting gravel they are turned into something off beauty. The lake hosts a variety of birds including ducks and canada geese to name a few also nesting on the two Islands you have great crested grebes.

After doing one circuit of the lake we took the path that lead us along the banks of the river Lark and swimming along beside us was a pair of swans. After awhile the walk started to take us away from the river up to the old pumping house, the building is all that now remains of the West Stow Sewage Farm, it was built in 1887 and became operational ten years later, housing two boilers and an engine to pump sewage around the lagoons. The works were replaced by a new facility at Fornham Park in 1962. Here we diverted of the walk to go down to the hive overlooking Lackford Wildfowl Nature Reserve and from the hive we could see lots of birds over on the reserve with a collection of different species, do not ask me what they were as we are not that hot on bird watching but I am sure Adrian could tell us if he had been there.

Then it was back to the pump house to continue on the Lark Valley path winding through pine woods and yes we are not good with woods and we went wrong but we were not the only ones but we retraced our steps back and continued on the right path. We ended back along the river and followed it for awhile till we yet again left it to head up a wide Forestry commission track leading  into West Stow village where we then took a road down to Forest Lodge. There was a picnic sign pointing that way and we thought that would be a good place to have our lunch, but know picnic tables so we took to sitting down on some grass. After a short break we continued and the rest of the way we were walking in a forest or open areas where the trees had been felled eventually we ended up on a road which was right opposite the car park. Well that was that walk completed we had thought about going in the Saxon village but we said we would leave that for another time when we would have more time. That did not stop us from having a refreshing cup of tea and a cake on the veranda of the restaurant.