74 | Cycling World
The gentle beauty
of Suffolk
Lindsay Want discovers how a curious county with no
motorway, that’s barely 100 miles north of London,
is a picture-perfect place to pedal, whether you want
to whizz around, forge through forests or gently
enjoy cycling in the slow lane.
A
light at Needham Market station and it soon
dawns on you that the only thing about Suffolk
that s high rise are the hollyhocks. edal off,
and gentle valleys begin to roll. The skies stretch
out as wide as wide can be to greet you across the gentle
folds and fields of the landscape and before you know it,
a luxurious 17th century farmstead is the place you can
call home for the night. A lazy supper and a moment or
two amongst the bright garden borders later, it’s time
for sweet Suffolk dreams of tomorrow s hearty breakfast
brim-full of home produce and the open road or should
that be lane , which promises castles, cliffs and a hugely
historic coastline, complete with a house in the clouds. All
fairy tale stuff. You re practically guaranteed to sleep like
a beauty!
eaving the five-s tar comfort of Bays arm B B at
Forward Green is a tough call, but forwards means
gentle on the legs along quiet country lanes here in mid-
Suffolk and green is definitely the colour of the day. At
ebenham, half-timbered cottages lean on each other
along the roadside, looking lazily across the little river or
wide grassy verges. Red brick ‘nogging’ between ancient
beams, carved corner posts and ettied upper oors all
suggest a wealth of things. So too, the mighty int church
tower peeping above The Woolpack pub. There s a real
pattern to Suffolk s medieval wool towns, but the route
map says, ‘let’s save that for another day’.
Onwards then, and upwards to the at arable lands
around Stradbroke and a great network of B-roads which
would surely go down a swarm with some club cycling