Suffolk Sauntering

During my recent visit back to England I found I had some spare time in the hectic visiting schedule, four days in fact, in between catching up with my family in Dover and visiting my brother in Lancashire. Emma would be heading back to Phnom Penh, and my friends would all be at work. So what to do myself ?

After a two year absence from my mother country i'd been fantasising about England. Living in dusty, tropical Phnom Penh i'd often find myself listening to the "Enigma Variations" by Elgar and day-dreaming of ancient oak trees, rolling green fields and balmy summer evenings. I hadn't any time to prepare (which is very unlike me), and I didn't have any equipment to speak of, but the idea occurred to me to go for a walk in the countryside.

Hastily researched over the course of at least two hours using my families bookshelf I settled on a walk in Suffolk. My key influences were; Roger Deakin - one of my favourite authors of the moment who lived in Suffolk and wrote very passionately about the nature thereabouts, the "Good Beer Guide 2009" which lists a great many wonderful country pubs and breweries in Suffolk, and a book on my sisters bookshelf on Constable. If the countryside here had inspired such a great painter, surely it would also fulfill my yearning for green fields and open skies. During my youth, i'd hiked, climbed and cycled all over the British Isles but for some reason had never visited Suffolk. I suppose it's flatness hadn't appealed to the climber in me as a young man, so that was one more reason to go. Finally, my complete lack of equipment would surely not be a problem in the flat lands of the fens - I might be uncomfortable, but at least I wouldn't become a mountain-rescue statistic lectured in the local paper about my lack of preparation and equipment.

So, I had my destination. Now for equipment, a small daypack, light walking shoes, waterproof, torch, water bottle, 1 season sleeping bag (borrowed), 1 man bivvy tent (purchased hastily in London before dropping Emma at Heathrow), map of Suffolk (1:50,000), notebook. The whole would fit nicely in my small day pack, allow me to be totally independent and not give me a back-ache by the end of the day. I resolved to bivouac out as much as possible, partly to save money, but mainly to try to engage as much with nature as I could. In short, I would be really walking, not like the overloaded scout hikes of my youth carrying everything including the kitchen sink. Of course there was a price to pay in comfort but more on that later.

I would take along a copy of "Walking" by Henry David Thoreau, a short pamphlet in which Thoreau proposes that we have all forgotten how to truly walk, or "saunter" as he puts it. Thoreau offers up two derivations of the word "saunter" in the first pages of the book. The first, which he prefers, relates to the Crusades. I, however, was struck by the second definition and it influenced my planning of the walk.

"...having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in the house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea..."

So, I would go sauntering in Suffolk, carrying nothing but the essentials in my small pack, with no place to stay and no planned route. I decided to start my walk in Diss, at the beginning of the "Angles Way" long distance footpath, and follow the River Waveney to the sea. After that I would see...

Stay tuned for the first episode of the walk, which takes me from Diss to Homersfield, and although it seems out of keeping with the philosophy behind my adventure, i've also produced a google map for the nerds out there (and me).


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