EAT Day 2

We woke in our little Coppice just outside the town of Diss, being closer to water we’d amassed a considerable amount of condensation on the inside of the tarp. I slept excellently thank you. It was 4 degrees overnight and I was toasty warm in my cocoon. We use British army bivi bags and we have new Enlightened Equipment Enigma quilts (no zip sleeping bag) which are working out a treat so far.

I woke to the birds at 05:11 which is exactly when their alarm goes off. Eric was pleased to see me and was ready to go. By 6 we were up and out, Eric’s breakfast had been prepared and Snakes and I began the pack up routine.

By 6:40 we were making tracks over the river and straight through the frosty sleepy fields to the town of Diss, also sleepy. You know what wasn’t asleep though? Greggs. We were tempted in by iced buns and coffee which we consumed with ease. After a good 15 minutes a woman who’d been (I thought) admiring Eric from afar, informed us that Greggs don’t allow dogs. I told her I thought someone would ask us to leave if she were a problem , to which she responded she’s not a problem and she’s lovely and “today’s her lucky day”. Nice lady.

Snakes and I are about to have new windows and a new door installed in our house, therefore every ‘urban’ section of this walk Snakes is on window watch and repeatedly keeps telling me to “look at that door”, “those windows are nice“ and “see they’ve gone for flush casements and they’re so much nicer aren’t they?”. Gives us something to talk about.

We carried on through Diss window watching; through the park and the onto a beautiful section of nature reserve access land.

The trail then seemingly pops out in the New Forest , sandy lanes cut through another tiny patch of open access land, gorse and golden meadows all about it was a tiny nugget outside of Diss I’d never seen before.

Through roads and fields and churchyards and little jam and duck egg stalls then back to the Waveney where the water was stagnant and almost entirely covered in reeds.

We stopped by the river for second breakfast at 10am. Our goal today in which there are very few amenities to distract us, is to have more breaks and longer breaks so as not to be at our desired mileage and camp too early. As per the new mission we took a long leisurely break by the river and drank coffee , Snakes sketched and Eric slept.

The walk from here was absolutely perfect. We cut straight through Redgrave and Lopham fen nature reserve and across multiple beautiful fens, through silver birch woodland and overlooking 7ft tall marshy reed ponds- we really could have been in several different places much further flung than Norfolk/Suffolk.

The day was heating up and Eric was in constant need of water- there was no shortage of this, though the Waveney is stagnant and gank in most places. We’ve chosen not to bring a filter (and I think the water we’ve seen would need this and chemical treatment) I figured there were enough spots along the way to top up (namely pub taps, churches, garden hoses and houses if need be) that we need not bother with the time consuming task of filtering.

One such occasion was after a few desolate and scorchio hot kilometres we came to Hopton, we knew the pub was closed but all we needed was a their tap, their picnic bench and a nice fence to hang our damp tarp, it provided all of this while we sat and ate lunch and the boobie buns bought earlier this morning. Lovely.

From here we motored almost in a straight line through fields and tracks aiming for a big lump of woodland in the far distance which would be the end of the Angles and the beginning of the Peddars way.

We stopped for an afternoon pause by the only part of river which didn’t look like crap and smelt the change in woodland from broadleaf to pine, yum.

We hobbled off, Snakes exclaiming her feet were like glass- so I’m now calling her glassfeet. I’m carrying Eric’s entire bag on my back because I felt like she looked sad. This gave her a very visible spring in her step and I felt she was being smug so kept threatening to put her bags back on.

Beautiful single track by the river lead us to the junction to join the Peddars way.

On a sunny day like today you could be anywhere in the world. For a trail this flat to be so beautifully varied over 40 miles is quite something. 10/10 for the first half of the Angles way.

We peeled off route into a holiday park hopeful for, at a minimum: water and at a maximum: beer. We emerged 1.5 hrs later with our water filled, our tummies filled and our bladders fit to burst. The reception/bar/cafe/ shop at Thorpe Woodlands was quite something. Eric was purchased a full (dog themed) roast dinner and met (and was quite taken with) Brian the poodle. She had a long nap and was set to go when we were, hopeful her bags would not be given back to her.

They weren’t. We chugged on, a beautiful 2 miles up the trail on boardwalk then sandy path to the sun setting over our left shoulders. We dipped into thick thermally insulated pine forest and found a flat spot to pitch, just before dark.

20.5 miles on the day