Rach Buck – taken on the Mark Cator walk in Gt Yarmouth
Each year we organise a programme of guided walks that highlight a particular part of our patch and celebrate connections with creative people from the past or present day – or provide an opportunity to be creative ‘en route’. The walks are led by artists, writers, historians, ecologist, volunteers and local people with a passion for place.
The extraordinary creative richness of this area is reflected in the fact that since 2011 over seventy five unique walks have taken place – each one focused on different creative connections.
2021 Walks
Wild About Bungay with Terry and Chris Reeve
This walk, based on the book Wild About Bungay, commemorates Jasmine Lingwood, a keen nature lover, who re-established the Bungay branch of Suffolk Wildlife Trust in 2004. The book features approx. 250 colour photos of all aspects of Bungay wildlife, by local contributors, featured on the Wild About Bungay website.
Sunday 19 September, 2 – 4.30pm
£5.50 for W&BA members and £6.50 for non-members
For more information and to book for Wild About Bungay
Savouring the Sandlings
On 9 July Ivor and Jean Murrell led a group of eleven on the Savour the Sandlings walk.
We took a circular route of 11 kilometres from Westleton village across Westleton Common and Heath then through footpaths around Dunwich forest stopping at the Potton Hall café for refreshments.
Along the route Ivor stopped at various points to show sites of special interest.
On Westleton Common the cobble stones worn to a smooth round by the movement of ice age glaciers.
Besides this site were Silver studded blue butterflies, bee orchids and beautiful clumps of heather in full flower.
Everyone was interested to hear about the massive military activity in 1943 on Westleton Heath when the British army were given training in the then modern-day trench warfare. The scene of thousands of soldiers, flame-throwing tanks and explosions were recorded by the well known East Anglian war artist, Edward Bawden.
Stopping periodically, Ivor recited his published poems about the landscape, its special characteristics and the unique birds that live here like the Nightjar and Dartford warbler, also the more common Crow.
Corvus corone corone
I see you Crow.
I watch your studied nonchalance.
Your oil drip eye gives nothing back
green gleam on midnight feathers
steals surrounding light.
I know you Crow.
The trickster who can count
gifted master of the false feint
when paired and stealing food
from the unsuspecting.
I hear you Crow.
Not for you the Rook’s ‘Caw’
but a raucous shout for meat
with your ‘Pawk Pawk’
and your butcher’s beak.
I fear you Crow.
I feel your dark slow strut
feather ancient memory of the hunt,
the unknown made gravid
by the eater of the dead.
Ivor Murrell
After a long working life, with experience as a maintenance engineer, a sugar industry trouble shooter, a maltster, some involvement in ladies fashion and finally as Director General of the Maltsters Association of Great Britain, Since retiring Ivor Murrell has found more time for his writing, has achieved a BA Hons Humanities degree with the Open University and has been Chairman of The Arts Society East Suffolk.
‘What a very successful walk! Ivor was so knowledgeable and his interest and delight in his local landscape made it even more enjoyable.’