Cavendish and the Stour Valley

The village green at Cavendish, with its pink thatched cottages in the shadow of a medieval church, is one of those scenes that sum up the appeal of this corner of West Suffolk. Just around the corner, in a 16th-century rectory by the duck pond, is the former home of a remarkable 20th-century figure. Sue Ryder, Baroness Ryder of Warsaw (1923-2000) was born into a large landowning family from Yorkshire and spent much of her childhood in Suffolk at their summer estate at Great Thurlow Hall. Her mother Mabel was a tireless campaigner for the rights of the poor and used to take young Sue around the slums of Leeds to teach her about poverty.

Sue Ryder Foundation

As a young woman, Sue Ryder joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry and later served in Poland during World War II with the top-secret Special Operations Executive, set up by Winston Churchill to organise resistance behind enemy lines. Her experience profoundly affected her and after the war she began visiting Polish prisoners and survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. In 1952 she established the Sue Ryder Foundation. A year later, using £1,000 of her own savings, she opened the first Sue Ryder home for victims of war in her mother's former house in Cavendish.

In 1959 she married Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, VC, a World War II pilot whose experience of the devastation caused by the atomic bomb at Nagasaki led him to establish his own group of homes for disabled ex-servicemen. They lived together in two simple rooms above the Cavendish home. Sue Ryder was famous for her frugal lifestyle - she never drew a salary and dressed in clothes acquired from her own charity shops. By the time she died in October 2000, the Sue Ryder Foundation had a worldwide network of more than 60 homes for severely ill and disabled people.

This walk follows the Stour Valley Path from Cavendish to Clare, briefly entering Clare Castle Country Park and returning through Essex along the south bank of the river.

Start at Cavendish village green. Walk past the war memorial and turn left to pass the Five Bells pub and the school, then cross the stile by the cemetery to join the Stour Valley Path. Follow this across a meadow and through a hedge, then turn left along a field-edge path that crosses a plank bridge and swings round to the right between fields and hedgerows to meet a road.

Turn left on to the road and walk uphill for about 0.25 mile (400m). After passing a solitary house, turn left on to a path along the edge of a field with sweeping views. The path descends, then bends right and crosses two wooden bridges to emerge by a huge field. Turn right beside a hedge, then left between fields, following the Stour Valley Path waymarks to Houghton Hall. Keep straight ahead and stay on this path as it turns left and then right to drop to Hermitage Farm.

Keep to the Stour Valley Path as it bends left, entering a belt of trees before reaching a lane and passing a playing field on its way to the Clare to Cavendish road.

Cross the road carefully, walk across the bridge and turn left on a narrow path beside a small graveyard, signposted 'Clare Castle Country Park'. Enter the park and keep left, walking beside a stream to reach an old railway bridge. Cross the bridge and immediately take a climbing path to your left to reach a housing estate. Turn right and cross the old bridge over the railway to The Mill House and then cross the footbridge by the old mill.

Walk diagonally left across a field, taking another footbridge over the River Stour to enter the county of Essex. Keep straight ahead across the field. Reaching a road, go left for 200yds (183m) before turning left on a wide bridleway leading back down to the river. At a junction of paths by the river, turn right across the field. The track swings left behind a hedge, eventually passing a poplar grove before entering a muddy section of woodland as it meets the river once again.

When you reach a lane, turn left walking past the half-timbered Bower Hall. Keep on the public bridleway for about 1 mile (1.6km) as it crosses farmland towards Pentlow Hall.

Turn left on to a road and cross the bridge to return to Suffolk. On the far side of the bridge, cross a stile on the left-hand side to walk beside the river. Climb the bank on the right, just after the end of a row of poplars, cross another stile and walk through the gardens to reach the main road in Cavendish.