Weekend Tours

Fens & Breckland

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For a change we decided to have a ride round East Anglia. Keith wanted to rediscover a place in which he enjoyed a momentous event in his life - a Nissan hut in a place called Friday Bridge, out on the Fens, and I happen to love Norfolk because my parents live there. We started our ride at my parent's home in a small Norfolk village, but to make the ride more accessible I have altered the start to Diss railway station, which is served by an excellent service from London Liverpool St.

From Diss we took a fairly circuitous route through the typical South Norfolk villages of Winfarthing, Banham and Kenninghall, where the countryside has enough of a swell to it to keep it interesting. Beyond Kenninghall the scenery changes as the ride enters the Breckland, an area of often poor, sandy soil where forests are a feature of the landscape. An old Roman road took us the few miles to the village of Gasthorpe, where we crossed into Suffolk and rode through the Knettishall Country Park to Rushford before skirting Thetford by following a series of narrow lanes through Euston and Barnham to Elveden.

A brief run along the busy A11 brought us to Elveden crossroads, where we turned off for Brandon, a small market town on the edge of the Fens. From Lakenheath, with its huge airbase, we headed out onto the exposed Fens. By now the wind was blowing very fiercely and we had great difficulty in maintaining more than about 5 or 6 mph. In the distance we could see the tall sign for Shippea Hill station, next to which stood the pub in which we planned to have lunch. Unfortunately, it took us an hour to reach it and when we did we found that the pub had closed down!

We battled on to Littleport, where we finally found some lunch, and then towards Welney, only to find road signs warning that the road ahead was closed due to flooding, and the diversion was getting on for 20 miles long! After a quick conference we decided to brave the water and pushed on. Luckily when we got there we found that the water wasn't too deep in the very centre of the road and we got through without much difficulty. We finally arrived at the little Fenland village of Friday Bridge, but of Keith's Nissan hut there was no sign. The day ended with a fast run, the wind on our backs at last, through Outwell to Downham Market, where we spent the night at the Crown.

By the following morning the wind had vanished and the sun shone warmly. We headed away from the Fens along tiny lanes through Oxburgh, with its beautiful moated Tudor hall and semi-ruined church, and Cockley Cley, with its reconstruction of an Iron Age village of the Iceni tribe, to Watton. From there we headed along the edge of the Stanford Battle Training Area – familiar to many from its use for location filming for the comedy series Dad's Army – to the village of Thompson, with its renowned thatched pub, the Chequers, but it was packed out and there was a long queue for food, so we had a drink and pressed on. Another succession of delightful country lanes took us to Old Buckenham, and finally through the villages of Gissing and Burston (famed for its Strike School, where the children went on strike for 25 years after their teachers were dismissed). And so we arrived back in Diss.

Updated: 30 May 2004