Discover: Stoke-by-Nayland
The medieval village of Stoke-by-Nayland is just up a tiny single track lane, the setting could hardly be prettier. These Holiday Cottages are ideal for guests who enjoy wonderful walks and being close to nature.
For more extensive information on the surrounding area of Stoke-by-Nayland, please visit my ‘What to Do’ webages where I have an insider’s guide to Suffolk – you are able to select your location and find out what is going on locally to you, in order of mileage.
Follow the link for Stoke By Nayland to discover what this delightful part of Suffolk has to offer.
Alternatively, please visit my ‘Where To Stay’ webpage to find out what is happening near to Cobbs Cottage:
1. If not already selected, select Cobbs Cottage via the drop down menu
2. View all the category posts in order of distance to Cobbs Cottage
3. Use the ‘next’ and ‘previous’ buttons at the bottom of the webpage to navigate through the posts
Food and Drink
The tiny meandering lanes lead to the prettiest local villages, which have the best gastro pubs in the area.
The Angel in Stoke-by-Nayland – An old inn with a very good ‘order at the bar’ restaurant for easy evenings and a great finishing point for one of my favorite walks – maps of this are supplied in the cottages. The puddings are outrageously good. Sunday lunch runs from 11 a.m till 10p.m. No bookings are required and its open on Sunday
The Crown in Stoke-by Nayland – This old pub was taken over by the original owners of The Angel opposite. So now we have 2 great pubs trying to out do each other with excellent food and wines. The crown was voted the best Pub with wine cellar in the good food guide 2008.
Now these 2 Stoke-by Nayland pub’s are perfect for Sunday’s because there is a lovely walk along the St Edmunds Way at this point and you can get Sunday lunch from 11a.m. till 11 p.m – a time scale of which we can all appreciate.
About Suffolk
In Charles Dickens’s days, boys living in Scotland and here in East Anglia would be allowed to leave boarding school a day early because it took so long to get back home to those places.
Even though we are just 60 miles from London, this area was always very inaccessible and remained so until very recent times.
Now the local mainline train journey to London is a mere 45 minutes and a car journey takes about an hour and a half.
But still Suffolk has retained an unusually strong independent rural atmosphere and one of the great joys of the area are the beautiful little hamlets that even locals get lost getting to though the meandering ‘spiders web’ of tiny lanes and byroads. Many of these villages are wonderfully preserved in their medieval origins, our local village of Lavenham being a fantastic example.
The area is very rich in History from the Saxon treasure of Sutton Hoo and the rebel Queen Boadicea who defeated the Romans, right up to the many expeditions of Settlers leaving for America – in fact the First Governor of Massachusetts came from this tiny hamlet of Edwardstone when I am based at The Old Grove Farm.~
The Suffolk Landscape
The landscape and the Architectural beauty of the area has long inspired Artists to work and move here. The greatest English landscape painter John Constable painted all his famous masterpieces along the Stour which is just 5 miles from The Grove Cottages. His work undoubtedly created this landscape as the quintessential English Landscape, which is one reason why visitors to the area feel so at home.
Flatford Mill where many of Constables most well known works of art such as ‘The Haywain’ were painted is now a National Trust area devoted to this artist and preserving his memory and the area he made so famous.
The Great Portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough lived in Sudbury which is the closest town to us and it is a real pleasure to visit his home which is now a very interesting museum and exciting showplace for local artists and events, it also has a wonderful print making workshop where courses on all kinds of printmaking are constantly held and very much sought after.
The great artist Sir Alfred Munnings, famous for his portraits of Rural Suffolk Life lived and had his studio close to the river Stour at Dedham and these are now an interesting museum devoted to him and his works of art.
The Suffolk Coast
Below is a recent article about the Suffolk Coast
Joanna Symons, Telegraph Travel Newspaper January 2nd 2010.
‘Popular though the Lake District and West Country are as tourist destinations, they can be rather damp. If you want to reduce the risk of a rainy holiday, statistics show that you should head east.
Suffolk for instance, had only about a third as much rainfall as the Lake District last summer. It also happens to have one of the loveliest stretches of coastline in Britain.
The Met office regional statistics per annum.
The Lake District Suffolk
Rain fall 2300 – 3900mm 600 – 660 mm
