Peddars Way

The trail begins on heath and in trees, which is not what anyone expects of Norfolk and is not what the rest of the walk is like. From the Suffolk Wildlife Trust car park at Knettishall Heath the way crosses the Little Ouse by footbridge, leaves Suffolk within the first kilometre, and spends the next few kilometres in the Brecks proper: conifer belts, sandy tracks and open heath at Brettenham. This is the only shade on the whole route and it is all in the first hour and a half. There is a long boardwalk over marshy ground beside the Thet, with a marked diversion signed for when the water comes up, and one walker's account says the ground under it would otherwise be knee deep. Then the trail passes under the Norwich railway line at the Shadwell underpass, and at about km 6.6 it crosses the A11 on the level. After that the Roman line takes over and the trees thin towards Stonebridge and the A1075. Ten kilometres in, the trail has already used up every feature it has; from here to the coast it is a straight road across farmland.

Logistics: The A11 is crossed on the level at about km 6.6: two carriageways of fast traffic, a central reservation to stand on, no bridge and no underpass. OpenStreetMap has the Peddars Way track and the A11 sharing a single node with no bridge or tunnel tagged anywhere near it, and two walkers describe waiting for gaps between lorries. It comes in the first couple of hours of day one, when nobody is expecting it. If you are walking with children or a dog, plan for it rather than meet it. The one mapped food point in the first 30 km sits at the same crossing, a roadside snack bar 158 m off the line; nothing about its hours or whether it is still trading has been checked, so do not build a day around it.

Navigation: Easy, with one thing to watch. The way is waymarked with the National Trail acorn on discs and on wooden fingerposts at junctions, and it is well signed here. The turns are in the woods and around the river crossings rather than on open ground, so keep the map handy between the Little Ouse and the Thet. The A11 and the A1075 are crossings rather than navigation problems, but the A11 is on the line and cannot be designed around.

Thirty-three kilometres in which the Peddars Way stops being one thing, and the longest section of the walk by half again. Out of Stonebridge the trail runs on farm track with the Stanford Training Area fenced and signed along its western side, wire and warning boards on one hand and firing often audible across the ranges. Thompson Water sits just off the line with a hide, and Thompson Common, 1.6 km east, holds around 400 pingo pools left by the last Ice Age. Past Little Cressingham comes the first of the trail's two long tarmac runs, five kilometres of quiet lane, and those runs are what make this walk feel longer than a flat profile suggests. Below Houghton on the Hill the trail drops into the Wissey valley and becomes, for about two kilometres, a genuine English field path with two flights of steps and a footbridge. It is the only stretch on the whole route that walks like a footpath, and after rain it is the only stretch that goes properly boggy. North Pickenham, the A47 roundabout on the Swaffham bypass, a long straight hard track and the A1065 follow, and the section ends dropping to the footbridge over the Nar below the priory and up into Castle Acre, which is the natural halfway stop and the only village between Thetford and Ringstead with a shop, a chip shop, a cafe and a pub.

Logistics: This is the section to plan food and water around, and it is 33 km long. Nothing on the line sells anything for the first twenty kilometres of it: the next mapped food after the A11 snack bar back at km 6.6 is a cafe at about km 30.7 near North Pickenham, then the filling station and fast food at the A47 at km 34.4, then Castle Acre at km 42.2. The two kitchens that sit inside the empty part are both off the line, the Chequers Inn at Thompson about 1.6 km off at km 16.5 and the Olde Windmill Inn at Great Cressingham about 2.2 km off at km 26.1, and neither shows in the computed food gap because that only counts food within 800 m of the route. Fill up before you start it. Nothing between Stonebridge and Castle Acre is a mapped tap, and there is no shade on this section to ration what you carry.

Navigation: The section where the straight line stops helping. Between Little Cressingham and Castle Acre the route turns often as it links lanes, tracks and field paths, and the Wissey valley crossing between Houghton on the Hill and North Pickenham is the one place on this trail that genuinely wants the map out. The turning down to the hide at Thompson Water is easy to walk straight past when the summer foliage is up. Waymarking is to the same standard as the rest, acorn discs and fingerposts.

Twenty-three kilometres of Roman road with almost nothing on it, and the stretch that decides whether you get on with this trail. It leaves Castle Acre on five kilometres of straight metalled lane, quiet but hard, and after Heath Lane the surface coarsens to flint and chalk rubble on an unsurfaced lane over the highest ground on the whole route, 92 m, with a Neolithic long barrow on the common beside the track. Beyond the A148 at Harpley Dams it becomes a grass green lane between hedges, dead straight, for something like eleven kilometres, and you can often see an hour of walking laid out in front of you. Villages exist, Great and Little Massingham, Harpley, Anmer and Fring, but they sit between half a kilometre and nearly two kilometres off the line and the trail enters none of them. What you get instead is big cropped fields on ploughed-out heath, marl pits dug by 18th and 19th century improvers, and sky. Most of this is unclassified county road rather than footpath, so 4x4s and trail bikes use it legally and the tracks carry the ruts to prove it; in a dry spell the same ruts break down into loose sand, which a cyclist riding this stretch described as energy-sapping, with the grass at the track edge firmer than the middle.

Logistics: Water rather than food is the thing to settle before you start this stretch. There is no mapped tap on the line between Castle Acre and Sedgeford, 23 km, and no shade anywhere to ration it in. The last shop is Castle Acre post office at km 42.4 and the next is the general store at Ringstead at km 70.6. The only kitchen anywhere near the middle of it is the Dabbling Duck at Great Massingham, 1.5 km off the line at km 50.3, which is far enough off that the computed food gap does not count it.

Navigation: The simplest navigation on the trail. The Roman line is unmistakable and for long stretches the next waymark is visible before you reach it. The A148 at Harpley Dams needs care rather than navigation. The only place worth a glance at the map is the run of three lane crossings in quick succession north-east of the Massinghams, where the trail's own surface changes from unsurfaced lane to grass track and the junctions come close together.

The only part of the Peddars Way that is not the Roman road, the only part with any shape to it, and the payoff for three days of straight lines. North of Sedgeford the Roman line runs on as a grass track between hedges, then gives out, and the trail spends the better part of two kilometres on village tarmac through Ringstead among carrstone cottages, the most built-up walking anywhere on the route. Beyond the village the ground lifts gently onto chalk, the soil pales and turns flinty, and from the rise the sea shows itself for the first time. Then field paths drop to a lane, the A149 coast road is crossed, and the last kilometre runs out to the dunes at Holme next the Sea, where the Peddars Way ends and the Norfolk Coast Path begins. It carries more turns than the rest of the trail put together, and after sixty kilometres of hedge and field that is the point of it.

Logistics: The last services on the trail are here and they are worth timing. Ringstead has the general store at about km 70.6 and the Gin Trap Inn at km 70.4. At Holme, NWT Holme Dunes has a visitor centre, cafe and toilets, open daily 10am to 5pm from March to the last Sunday in October and 10am to 4pm through the winter, with the cafe closing half an hour before the centre. Holme itself has no railway and no beds we found in the village, so the night at the end is usually Old Hunstanton or Hunstanton, a couple of kilometres west along the coast.

Navigation: This is the one section where keeping straight does not work, because the trail is off the Roman line for most of it and threads Ringstead on village lanes. It carries more turns than the rest of the trail put together. Waymarking is the National Trail's two standard types, wooden fingerposts at junctions and acorn discs, and walkers describe this stretch as clearly signed. The mistakes people make here are missed turnings in the village rather than anything on open ground.