Walking the Suffolk Coastal Path - Lowestoft -- Kessingland (Walk 19)

Thursday 22nd August - 4.5 miles. Route taken: Beach, A12.. (Time taken 2.35 hours)

Having realised the Walking Men sculptures were only on the beach at Lowestoft until the end of this month (something my husband and I wanted to see), it seemed like an ideal time to cover the above walk for my Voyage award. Our walk started from East Pavilion Point, a Victorian-style glass pavilion.

From here we had a look at the harbour entrance, which is very narrow, but can be approached whatever the tide. The Shannon Class Lifeboat is moored just inside the first harbour.

We made our way along the promenade. There was much squawking coming from the beach  where a flock of gulls had gathered with their young.

Two bird hotels have been built out to sea for nesting kittiwakes. They have been nesting in Lowestoft sine the 1960's. Their numbers had been in decline due to lack of nesting sites and over fishing. Since the hotels have been erected numbers are on the increase once again.

The South pier was opened in 1846. The pavilion was used during both World Wars and suffered significant damage during World War II and was later demolished. A new pavilion was opened by the Duke of Edingburgh in 1956. Since then it has been closed on various occasions due to safety issues. It is open at the moment.

There are two Triton statues in Lowestoft. These were erected to celebrate the completion of the first phase of the development of the seafront. Triton was a mythical sea god and normally holds a conch shell but these ones hold a cornucopia.

After a coffee we continued on our journey, heading towards the Walking Men. Along the way we passed some Victorian beach huts with Victorian houses in the background. I much preferred those to the newly built ones that we saw near the beginning of our walk.

Looking down the beach we saw the giant sculptures of the 'Walking Men.' They were sculptured by British sculpture Laurence Edwards and were on display as part of the First Light Festival. To me they appear to have come from an earlier era and were striding along the beach perhaps after a hard days work. They were certainly drawing a lot of attention.

We soon left the pristine beaches of Lowestoft behind as we headed further south to be greeted by spiky tufts of marram grass that are a familiar sight on our beaches. There were a few more beach huts on this section before we headed towards Pakefield on the edge of Lowestoft.

The man-made path ended at this point and it meant a walk across sandy-grassy land. The marram grass and sandy dunes seemed to stretch far into the distance. An old reck of a boat had succumbed to nature. I wondered what stories it would be able to tell.

Pakefield church loomed over us, standing near to the cliff edge. It won't be many more years before it is lost to the sea due to coastal erosion. The original church dates back to the 11th century and was mentioned in the Domes day book. It has a strange history. Two lords of adjacent manors wanted to build a church in Pakefield and as neither of them could come to an agreement on who should build it, they both built one, side by side to each other. Although they are now joined together as one church you can still see how the two were joined.

It was at this stage we had to change direction and head inland towards the A12 to continue our walk to Kessingland. It wasn't a particular enjoyable walk with the hum of traffic forever present. Gulls could be heard squawking overhead occasionally when there was a lull in the traffic. There was a large retail park at the first round-a-bout we came to when hitting the A12. We stopped at the supermarket to buy some lunch for later.

We continued on this route until turning off for Kessingland. We walked into Kessingland where we found a park to have lunch. Having at this stage walked 41/2 miles we made our way to the nearest bus stop and rode back to Lowestoft.

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