Distance: 9 Miles
Elevation Range: 10 to 50 feet
Difficulty: Easy
Weather Check: BBC Weather Aldeburgh, Suffolk.
Map: Click here and once loaded select “Leisure” map
Route Card: Thorpness To Goose Hill Via Sizewell Nuclear Power Station
Starting in Thorpness along the coast and looping back through the southern extension of Minsmere, an AONB in woods and marshes. Thorpeness was originally a small fishing hamlet in the late 19th century, with folklore stories of it being a route for smugglers into East Anglia.
In 1910, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie, a Scottish barrister who had made his money designing railways around the world, bought the entire area from north of Aldeburgh to past Sizewell, up the coast and inland to Aldringham and Leiston. Most of this was farmland but Ogilvie developed Thorpeness into a private fantasy holiday village, to which he invited his friends’ and colleagues’ families during the summer months. A country club with tennis courts and a swimming pool, a golf course and clubhouse and many holiday homes in Jacobean and Tudor styles.
A notable feature of the village is a set of 1920s almshouses designed by W.G. Wilson and known as the “House in the Clouds”. To hide the eyesore of having a water tower in the village, the tank was clad in wood to make it look like a small house on top of a 5-storey tower, with a separate water-pumping windmill next to it. Transformed into a games room with views over the land from Aldeburgh to Sizewell when the village connected to mains water.
The walk continues past Sizewell Nuclear Power stations. Sizewell A, with two magnox reactors, is now in the process of being decommissioned, while Sizewell B has a single pressurised water reactor and is the UK’s newest nuclear power station. After Sizewell the walk turns west through Goose Hill at the beginning of Minsmere as Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
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Hi Just found this site while looking for Arger Fen and was initially very excited that there were organised walks around Suffolk. Until I noticed that most of them are during the week when I am working. I am now very disappointed that I would only manage 2 or 3 of them.
Jo Osler-Lane Somerton
Hi Jo, these are walks that I have done. Try your local club, search “walking clubs near [your location]“