Cavenham Heath is an English Nature National Nature Reserve near Tuddenham, about 7 miles northwest of Bury St Edmunds. We had tried to visit it once before from Icklingham on the A1101, but found the road impassable. But then I found the website (from where you can download the excellent trails leaflet) and discovered you have to approach it from the other direction. So yesterday we went to explore.To get there we went west along the A14 to the Barrow/Tuddenham junction, turned right to Tuddenham St Mary, turned left at the T-junction in the village and then right at The Green - it's not obvious, as there are no signs to the reserve that we could see. We parked at the first car park, although you can drive along the Icknield Way Path to Temple Bridge, where the Wetland Trail starts.
We set off to do a combination of the Heathland (3.8 km) and Wetland (1.3 km) Trails. The heathland path goes through birch woodland and mature heathland with some mature areas of heather.
Little Miss had great fun being our spotter, finding lots of butterflies, grasshoppers, rabbits and spiders' webs.The Wetland Trail runs alongside the River Lark to an area of fen. Near the start of the trail we saw these people dangling lines from the bridge over the river (closed to vehicles, these days).
We wondered what they were doing, so when we got back we went to have a look. It turned out they were fishing for freshwater crayfish.
As you can imagine, the heath is very dry at the moment. Just like my front lawn, but looking rather better, I think.
In all it took us about 2 hours, by which time it was getting pretty hot. We were glad we had brought along a flask of icy cold water!
2 comments:
hello,we're the people that were catching the crayfish that day! (they were delicious,by the way)it's been interesting reading your blog.
Wow! Great to hear from you. It's a small virtual world!
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