We visited a beautiful area of Suffolk today especially the medieval village of Lavenham (see above). Our first  stop though was in Stowmarket for a coffee - a pleasant town with river but with an encroaching shopping centre. From there we headed on to Lavenham.

We soon started passing through some small villages with really exceptional thatched cottages and lovely painted frontages, stopping briefly in a village called Bildeston surrounded by old painted cottages. Arriving in Lavenham you are immediately struck by the number of wonderful wooden framed houses all painted in different colours. I have never seen wood stained white, yellow, black and red before all 400-500 years old. The Guildhall is pure white and dates back to the 1400’s. The town grew up on the wool trade and by some magic it has remained perfectly intact. There is not one Starbucks in sight! The place has a timeless atmosphere and despite its reputation very few tourists. The fact that it was raining heavily part of the time helped this, but the town itself seems impervious and parking is free as it always used to be. There are no gift shops or other trappings of tourism. A really great English town .

Next onto Bury St. Edmunds, a town I new little about but which I discover has a long history originally growing up around  a monastry founded in 600 - the Abbey was of course “dissolved” by Henry VIII, but the old gatehouse and original walls are still intact and there is a beautiful cathedral next door. The town itself looks nice but we were illegally parked (this time not in one of the hundreds of empty disabled spaces) so we had to cut short a real appreciation of Bury St. Edmunds.

On to Newmarket for lunch. As soon as you approach Newmarket you realise this is the home of British horse racing. You run first past a long gallup and pass by what appears to be some serious stables before

Horse Racing Museum

Horse Racing Museum

arriving in the town itself. We got a nice parking place opposite the Horse Racing museum and went for a walk. Just before the rain started up again we found the Wagon and Horse - a pub which was showing live the racing channel and appeared to be full of racing related guys including a couple of jockeys. We had a drink first before looking through the menu for a light snack - deciding that the best bet was a simple sandwich. Then a couple of guys sat down next to us with doorstop sandwiches with inch thick bread and loads of chips. Since we had only 3 hours ago had full English breakfast ( me - a traditional kipper) we chickened out and decided to head for Huntingdon.

 

Suffolk looks an interesting area to investigate further and we never even saw the coast.