PARK in the main street of Peasenhall, near the Post Office. Although picturesque, Peasenhall looks like a place that time has forgotten. It once had a busy factory making Smyth seed drills. Not much else seems to have happened here since the gory and unsolved murder of Rose Harsant in 1902 at the cottages opposite the alpine-style village hall. Start the walk down the road signposted to Walpole. Veer left, then cross a little bridge over the Yox stream, which, like others you will cross, reaches the sea at Minsmere Sluice. Use the pavement alongside the road and bear left when you reach the Sibton White Horse inn. Sibton parish is separated from Peasenhall for historic reasons connected with Sibton Abbey.

About 25 yards beyond the pub a footpath leads left over a small bridge to a grassy path. Reach another bridge, then turn left and immediately right, with the stream now on your right. In six minutes reach a minor road and go right for 100 yards, then left on another footpath. Ignore the first path to your left; then, reaching a T-junction, go left and right so you are beside the stream again.

Keep straight ahead, past some young trees, where I saw dog rose and elderflower when I visited in June. Soon, wooden signs indicate a bridleway crossing the path. Go left and follow the bridleway gently uphill, past Lodge Farm, to a road. I disturbed a hare here; it ran up the lane and vanished into a field.

Turn right along the road for 150 yards and, at a dip, take a path to the left, through woodland. All I could hear was birdsong and when I emerged from the wood beside a hedge a yellowhammer zipped across the path.

Soon cross to the other side of the hedge and continue in the same direction to the A1120; stop and look carefully before stepping across to another path directly opposite. Ascend gently past wheat and hay, reaching another lane beside a bungalow. Go straight ahead on the lane marked to Cransford. Pass by the first footpath to the left; then, after passing the house called “Woodlands”, turn left onto a footpath track.

At a second left-and-right wind, your path goes ahead across a field, rather than using the private driveway past Gales Farm (N.B. you are just off the edge of Map 231 here). All the paths I used have been cleared recently but this one was a little difficult, as the vegetation had been battered across the path by heavy rain.

Persevere toward a wooden bridge and the route is clear again past derelict hop fields to a stile at the road to Rendham. Go straight ahead, past a road junction, and find a footpath left opposite the farm in front of you.

Go down the grass track, then swing right near an old metal bridge. Follow the side of two woods. There were plenty of deer footprints here and a buzzard sat on top of a dead tree.

When you reach a tumbledown shed, use the footbridge beyond it. Now you can see the first house in Sibton and the ruin of Sibton Abbey away to the right. Reach the A1120, turn left and use the path beside the stream to regain the start.