Day 2: Ashill to Oxborough 10 miles

What a difference a day makes! After a tremendous breakfast at The White Hart, including beef tomatoes grilled with oregano and seasoning, we set off back into the village to buy sandwiches, crisps and chocolate at the shop. The most direct route goes via a footpath just opposite, but we’re a little wary after yesterday.

As soon as we enter the path, we know today is going to be different. It’s a well-kept path through neat, tidy crops. There are fluffy, white clouds scudding across an azure sky and a refreshing breeze in our faces. As the path continues gently downhill as a track, there are carpets of wild flowers along its edge: mallow, cow parsley, poppies, thistle flowers, field bindweed and buttercups among many others. I breathe in lungfuls of fresh air and start to finally relax.

We cross over one track onto the next and see our customary morning hare lolloping off away from us. We follow this track, complete with a bridge that is not only there but in good repair, and eventually join the road towards South Pickenham.

This road crosses Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path, a 158 mile route combining the two long distance footpaths and running from Knettishall Heath Country Park in Suffolk to Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire (site of an overnight stop on the HoCWalk). At this junction, there is also an intriguing brown sign pointing to St Mary’s Church, historic murals. This is St Mary’s at Houghton-on-the-Hill, which contains extraordinary 11th century Saxon wall paintings, depicting everything from Jesus and the disciples with a very miserable looking Peter to Satan disposing of a sinner into a pit in the Harrowing of Hell. Regrettably, we haven’t got time to visit, but maybe we should come back sometime.

Continuing the ecclesiastical theme, we cross the river Wissey, on its way to the Great Ouse, then walk past the flint church in South Pickering, complete with a round then octagonal tower, typical of East Anglia.

The road soon leads onto an excellent track through the South Pickenham Estate, owned by Tan Sri Arumugam, a Malaysian billionaire businessman. Here we decide it’s time to take a break under a shady tree. I eat some chocolate, drink some water then settle down on my rucksack. I wake up 40 minutes later, a bit stiff but completely refreshed.

The track continues, making a bee-line for Oxborough, in sharp contrast to our circuitous route yesterday. As we slip over the rise of a hill, we come across an Anderson shelter. It’s difficult to understand what it might be doing in the middle of thousands of acres of farmland, but it may have been related to the long defunct wartime airfield in North Pickenham. There is evidently also a Stanton Air Raid shelter in woodland nearby.

We can hear the approaching A1065 but, when we get there, it’s easy to cross and pick up a similar track on the other side. We are now on the Cockley Cley Estate, as the signs remind us. This is owned by Sir Samuel Roberts and is famous for its game shoots and Italianate hall. In 1939, the then Lady Roberts took in ten Jewish girls who had arrived on the Kindertransport, bringing the German cook and matron from their refugee hostel in Hackney, so there could be a kosher kitchen. With the fall of France in May 1940, no ‘enemy alien’ over the age of 16 was allowed to live near the east coast and the cook, the matron and any girls over 15 were returned to London. Rich swears he took Cathy to a party on the estate, but I suspect it was not in the house itself.

The undulating land now has a distinctly Breckland feel with sandy soil and Scots pines lining the track edge. We soon decide to stop for lunch under a shady conifer. Richard has nearly run out of water and, despite each of us drinking over four litres yesterday, we are both a bit dehydrated.

We now have a long stretch of road walking to take us into Gooderstone. It may not be interesting, but it eats up the distance. The continuum is broken by a group of oyster catchers fly up from a field of potatoes. Presumably they are from the nearby reservoir. When we arrive in the village, we hear an ice-cream van playing the Match of the Day theme, but it never stops near enough for us to partake. We decide instead to stop for an orange juice and tonic at The Swan Inn. Rich has been looking forward to this all day.

From there, it is a relatively short walk to Oxborough, crossing the river Gadder, on a route we know quite well. We arrive in the village at our rest for the night, the Bedingfeld Arms, famous for its bizarre Christ-like statue of John Lennon which even featured in a Guardian article on bad celebrity statues. The pub itself, however, is lovely.

Total distance: 29 miles