Little Thetford

Description

(D/A) Walk out to the road and turn left. By arrangement with the local farmer, residents can turn right after a few yards and follow a field edge to meet a public footpath by a drain. Turn left and follow the footpath out to the road. Turn right; again by arrangement with the local landowner, residents can walk their dogs along the field edges outside the ditches to either side of the road, subject to farming operations.

(1) Cross the busy A10 with care and cross a footbridge indicated by a public footpath sign to the left of the road sign. Follow a grassy headland between fields with a ditch on your right, bending slightly right after 250 yards. A similar distance beyond this bend, pass a pumphouse on the right (opposite a similar path heading off to the left, which is our return route). Continue beyond the pumphouse, shortly passing the rear of the first houses of Stretham. The path ends at the drive of Berry Green Farm; turn right. The route as described now visits the centre of Stretham village; for a minor shortcut, you can bypass the village by turning left opposite Berry Green and following a footpath that passes a cemetery and rejoins the described route at step (2), where you turn left.

For the village centre, continue along Wood Lane to a T-junction. Turn left past the school entrance, then turn right into Top Street. Pass Hazel Court on the right. At the end of the road, turn left along High Street and walk down to the church, pub, shop and cross. Follow Chapel Street (to the left of the Red Lion) to its junction with Pump Lane, and turn left (left of the red-brick chapel). Beyond the chapel, a tarmac path leads to Read’s Street. Turn left, then turn right almost immediately, down another surfaced path between house numbers 23a and 23b, which leads shortly to Brook Lane. Turn left, then after 100 yards turn right into Plantation Gate.

(2) At the end of the houses on the left, pass the end of the cemetery path on your left and continue along the farm drive ahead, passing the end of Kisby Walk and new housing on your right. The concrete track continues across open fields to Plantation Farm, where you pass two houses on the left to a barrier, then bear half-right across the farmyard. Join a track beyond the hard-standing area that curves to the left (ignoring a grassy track off to the right) and then heads out between fields and passes left of a small copse. Follow the track round a shallow left-hand bend then, within sight of an isolated barn, leave the obvious track onto a lesser track on the right which heads across to a row of trees (the track straight on past the barn is more direct but is not a right-of-way).

(3) On reaching the line of trees, turn left, with the railway away to your right. When the track bends left, follow it away from the railway (now with trees on your right) to rejoin the track you were following earlier. Turn right towards the houses of Little Thetford. When you reach the road, turn left and walk up through the village. Pass the Baptist Chapel on your right and a thatched cottage on the left at the junction with Green Hill. Continue between the Round House on the right and St George’s Church on the left. Shortly after passing a telephone booth, turn left at a Public Byway sign and join a residential road (Watson’s Lane).

(4) At the end of the tarmac, continue ahead along a grassy track between trees until you reach a bungalow. Turn left and then right at a junction onto Burying Way. Beyond the last building, this continues as an unsurfaced drove between hedges, then runs along the left-hand side of two fields with a drain on the left. Beyond a lone tree, the track crosses open fields to a stile and barrier where you cross a drain and continue ahead, ignoring another track off to the right. The track bends left, following the drain on your left until you meet another, where you turn right. This track leads more or less directly to the pumphouse you passed near the beginning of your walk.

(5) Turn right to the A10. Cross the main road carefully and retrace your earlier steps back to White Cross Farm, using the off-road alternatives described earlier if you wish.(D/A)