Quarantine Diaries: Felixstowe

Happening to be in Ipswich and having some time to kill, we decided to see if we could find somewhere quiet and near a river or the sea to walk. Looking at the map, it was a toss up between Harwich and Felixstowe, so we ended up going to Felixstowe.

We got there and manged to find free parking easily. It’s a clean, well-cared for beach front with good toilets and lots of clean green space along the length of the beach to picnic on.  Once we were there, we did find plenty of families there, if nowhere near as busy as places like Southend on Sea seem to have been recently.

We walked along the promenade for a bit and watched the ships coming into the sea port at a distance. We didn’t really want to add to the busyness or get in people’s way, so we decided to head over to the port area and see if it was quieter there.

It was about five minutes’ drive away and down a quiet, easy to miss, path past the port office. At it’s end we again found free parking and a small number of people sitting watching the enormous ships getting loaded with containers and others closer to the water fishing.

I wondered why this flower was familiar, then realised it was a poppy, but in a less common bright yellow colour.

There was a nice long walk parallel to the beach, in some parts paved, in others more rugged, or uneven and rocky that we followed. This part of the beach was very much quieter and secluded.

On one side of the path was the beach, on the other side a grassy space stretched out, which turned out to be the Landguard NatureReserve. I was tempted to explore, but we ended up carrying on along the path.

We stopped for a while and sat on these steps with the sun on our faces and with the breeze cooling us. We chatted, he tried cheesy chat up lines and watched the fisherman not catch very much.

It was a sweet afternoon: refreshing, restful, restorative alhamdulillah. Hope to visit again some time after quarantine ends insh’Allah.

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