Suffolk (Slow Travel)

Book excerpt: This new, expanded and thoroughly updated third edition of Suffolk (Slow Travel), part of Bradt’s award-winning series of Slow travel guides to UK regions, remains the only full-blown standalone guide to this gentle but beguiling county. Expert local author Laurence Mitchell helps visitors discover what makes Suffolk tick, combining personal insights, enjoyable anecdotes and up-to-date information on the best places to visit, stay and eat. Covering both popular sights and places beyond the usual tourist trail, he caters for walkers, cyclists, families, foodies, culture vultures and wildlife lovers alike. Helped by its proximity to London and Cambridge, Suffolk is a popular holiday destination. Events such as the Latitude festival and the Aldeburgh Music Festival at Britten’s Snape Maltings keep the county’s profile buoyant. Despite being comparatively low-lying, Suffolk boasts varied landscapes, from undulating farmland and sandy heaths to extensive forests, important nature reserves (including Minsmere, for three years the base of BBC Springwatch) and soft, dreamy coastal landscapes comprising river estuaries, remote marshes, reed-beds, shingle beaches (notably Shingle Street, with its myth of World War II invasions) and dunes. Suffolk’s coastal towns and villages – Southwold with its old-fashioned pier and colourful beach huts, but also Aldeburgh, Orford, Walberswick and Dunwich – are steeped in art heritage, with links to artists including Maggi Hambling, John Piper, Philip Wilson Steer and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Venturing inland, you can make for Constable Country and the Stour valley, Bury St Edmunds, Framlingham, Bungay, Beccles or Halesworth. Alternatively, you can visit some of Suffolk’s wealth of medieval churches, learn of Rendlesham’s UFOs or revere Suffolk’s Anglo-Saxon heritage, notably the medieval ceremonial burial site at Sutton Hoo (whose discovery stars in the 2021 film The Dig) and the reconstructed Anglo-Saxon village at West Stow. This guide makes a virtue of being selective, pointing readers to the cream of the area. It is organised into locales to encourage ‘stay put’ tourism and thorough exploration. It suggests options for car-free travel: walking, cycling, river boats, buses and trains. Written in an entertaining yet authoritative style, Bradt’s Suffolk (Slow Travel) is the ideal companion with which to discover this county.