To Aldeburgh

Having provisioned myself with cheese at Nutters, and pasty at Temptations, I set out in the grey morning, just after 9.

The route follows the coast for a lot of the route today, starting just back of the actual front along to the river, then along the riverside to a footbridge. Here rain started, and carried on as I headed back along the river to the corner at Walberswick. By then it dried out enough to shed the waterproof, and just be in T-shirt and shorts again.

You could just follow the beach all the way, but I took the path back of the waterway, past the abandoned mill

and along the edge of Dunwich forest, before looping past the Ship inn (not yet open) and across Dunwich heath to the coast, and by now the sun was out in almost cloudless sky. Then it was a long slog into the wind and sun on often sandy path, past Minsmere, and the reactors at Sizewell. By the time I got to Sizewell village, my feet were hot enough to want to change into sandals to walk along the beach, seeking the firmest stretches of sand.

By now the sun had dried the beach enough that it was being blown in the wind; uncomfortable enough that I was glad to get up the cliff at Thorpeness, and on the fairly packed shingle path before getting to the really paved track to Aldeburgh.

The Britten Memorial was proving popular with the kids to scramble on and beat like a steel drum.

As the nice place I ate at last year had been replaced by a pizza place, I ate at 152 - their menu of the day offering sticky toffee pudding being the clincher. Starter was chicken liver parfait with bramley apple jelly, then for main course a vegetable risotto, just for fuel. And then an early crash!