No, not Pingu. Pingo. I wasn’t going to see any penguins on this walk through the Norfolk wilderness. On the other hand I wasn’t going to see any earth covered ice hills on my walk through Norfolk either. These hydrolaccoliths are only found in Arctic regions; I’ve seen them in the Mackenzie Delta in Canada. So I was intrigued when I found out about the Great Eastern Pingo Trail, an 8 mile circular walk in Norfolk and decided to investigate further. I was planning a trip to Cambridgeshire anyway, so I thought I’d do this walk to have a look at these Norfolk pingos.
In fact, these were ancient pingos and bore no resemblance to anything I’d seen in the Canadian Arctic. Basically they were ponds. They varied in colour, some were clear water, there were a couple of muddy brown ones and a few that looked like they were filled with green gunge. If you didn’t know anything about the geology of the area or anything about pingos, you’d think that you were looking at ponds, some of them green gunge ponds. Actually these ponds were remnants of the last Ice Age when Norfolk was covered in ice that came down from the Arctic and there were around 400 earth covered ice hills in this area. But it’s warmed up a bit since then. Pingos are only temporary formations that have a crater in the top, eventually that crater will get bigger and finally the whole thing will collapse leaving a perfectly round pond behind. And that was what I was looking at on my walk today with my friend, Alan.
The walk started from a car park and was signed in both directions as it was circular. I decided the route through the woods would be the best start. I had read an article about this walk and got a map from there, but I have been known to follow a map and wonder why I can’t see any of the landmarks described and then realised I’m following the map in the opposite direction. As long as I could see the signposts we were fine. You get to the first pingo pond very quickly and it’s really exciting to see. Even if it is just a pond. You wouldn’t think seeing a non-descript pond in a forest would be that interesting. And it wouldn’t be if you didn’t know it was an ancient pingo. Knowing this pond is a collapsed hydrolaccolith is what makes it special. Or maybe that’s just me. The first couple of ponds were full of clear, reasonably clean water. The next one was stagnant, green water that didn’t look very attractive at all. We arrived at another small, clear pingo pond and soon after that reached a very large pond, I’d class it as a small lake really. There were a couple of serious photographers with their tripods set up here, presumably to take photos of the birdlife on the lake, but we had 8 miles to walk, so after a brief stop, we were on our way again.
A bit further on and we arrived at a spot with a little more water and bulrushes! There was another photographer who was settled in taking photos of grass or insects or something and I didn’t want to disturb her so I walked round and managed to get caught in some thorns from an overhanging rosebush stem, but I disentangled myself and got a photo of the bulrushes before once again moving on.
We were walking through an area where there were longhorn cattle grazing. Did I see one? No! There wasn’t one anywhere in sight. They’re big animals, how can they hide? We went through a few areas where it said longhorn cattle were grazing. Didn’t catch sight of even a horn! After that there was quite a boring section of the walk along a road and past houses. But once we got off the road and back onto the path, then it started to get interesting.
In front of me was the perfect pingo pond. It was small and round, it was clearly visible in this field without too much vegetation to obscure the view. This is what I was expecting a pingo pond to look like and I’d found it.
After crossing the field, we got to a bridge which led us back into the wood to follow the trail. The next part of the trail was lovely, a nice woodland path by the side of a stream. A log over the stream provided an ideal photo opportunity, but I resisted the urge to try and stand on it and certainly I wasn’t going to attempt any Dirty Dancing type moves, that would have been a recipe for disaster, I’d have been straight in the water! So I just shuffled onto it and struck up a pose, trying to look relaxed and comfortable in this precarious position, reasonably successfully I like to think. I did shuffle out almost half way across, but then again, the stream wasn’t very wide, so it wasn’t a huge distance. We came across another pingo pond with a fern growing out of an isolated patch of soil in the middle of it. It looked like a kiwi to me. As I reached the next bridge, the stream was a gorgeous colour, a kind of milky grey and bronze coloured stripes. This is where I also saw a tiny frog. There is an endangered frog, the pool frog, living in this area, it was thought to be extinct, but they discovered one and introduced a breeding programme and released them into the swamplands of Norfolk. Whether this was a pool frog or not, I’m not sure, I know the juveniles can be that small, but it was gone far too quickly for me to be able to tell, In fact I only saw it because I almost stepped on it, it was so tiny and well camouflaged.
Our next landmark was Thompson Water and just before that was another pingo pond, this one filled with green gunge. Thompson Water wasn’t a pingo, it was a man-made lake. It was a haven for birdlife so I went into the hide and watched a swan with some cygnets swimming across the water and another swan with cygnets in their nest just underneath the hide. They were busy preening themselves, the one moment the mother stretched her neck and flapped her wings, I didn’t have the camera pointed at her and after that she went back to preening. I waited for about 4 minutes with my camera trained on the swan, but when she didn’t bother looking up again, I realised I’d never make a wildlife cameraman. I didn’t have the patience to sit around for hours waiting for birds to do something interesting that might be worth capturing on film. So we were off again. With all the stops we’d been making, time was getting on and we weren’t even halfway round the circuit yet.
The trail led out onto another road and the long distance Peddar Way path which was another section of the walk that wasn’t that exciting. The only surprise was a sudden smell of sulphur and I’ve been to enough thermal areas to recognise that and spotted a hot spring in the stream. It was difficult to see and fenced off making access impossible, so after taking a very poor photograph, I moved on. We couldn’t stray off the path because it was fenced off with an ominous warning Military Firing Range – Keep Out sign. I didn’t hear any military firing going off that day, but still thought it prudent to obey the warnings.
The route didn’t get particularly interesting again until we were off the road and back into the wooded area. This is also the only place on the hike where we took a wrong turn. The route was very well signposted and I’d never once wondered which direction I should go up to now. The signpost pointed into this field, so I took the most obvious path through the dense fern foliage. I was tripping over the fern stems, pushing the leaves back to battle along the trail, it was like trying to hack my way through the Vietnam jungle. Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. We reached a slight clearing and turned to follow the footpath watching out for signs. The next sign I saw said “Wildlife Trail”. What? We were supposed to be on the Pingo Trail! So where had I gone wrong? The car was at the start/end of the Pingo Trail, no use following the Wildlife Trail, I had no idea where we would end up if we went along that path. So we turned round and headed back watching for another signpost and within 5 minutes came to a huge signpost pointing out the Pingo Trail in both directions and the Wildlife Trail in both directions. How could I have missed that signpost? It was enormous, impossible not to see. And even if I’d not noticed it, surely both of us couldn’t have gone blind at the exact same moment and neither of us seen it. So we can’t have walked past it in the first place. And now I had another problem. The Pingo Trail was a circular route. The signpost was pointing both ways. So which direction had I come from? Which way did we go? My sense of direction is hopeless, whichever way I think I should go, my best bet is to go in the opposite direction. And that turned out to be the case in this instance. Alan had a bit better idea than me, but went along with what I thought and so we did go the wrong way first, worked out that we’d cut out a corner and missed the signpost and so now we should be going in the other direction.
Off I went, through more dense undergrowth. The ferns were a nuisance, but weren’t particularly hazardous unless you trip over the thick stems that tangle on the ground, but on this section of the path, there were lots of nettles. My arms were bare, but thankfully I had got trousers on, it wasn’t warm enough for shorts and I was very grateful for that, otherwise I would have put shorts on and got stung to pieces. The nettles managed to get me even through my trousers, so this is definitely not a hike to do in shorts, no matter how hot it is! The path was very overgrown in places, but it isn’t a popular path. Yes, it was a weekday and the schools hadn’t broken up yet, but it was a sunny day in July. However, the Pingo Trail isn’t a hike you would just stumble across. You’d have to know about it or be told about it. It wouldn’t automatically be your first choice on a short break in Norfolk. But it is well worth doing and the fact you hardly see another soul on your walk is definitely part of its appeal.
So the last part of the hike took us through more woodland and some boardwalk because I was now into green gunge territory, officially known as Cranberry Rough. It wasn’t just the pingos that were bright green, there was a huge swamp area made up of it and all the plants and trees were growing out of this. It was quite a contrast to the other watery marshland I’d seen elsewhere on the trail and I did like it because it was so different. I found the swamp fascinating, ideal habitat for this endangered frog, it was just the type of environment Kermit from the Muppets would have loved! On leaving this bright green marshy territory it was once again into the Vietnamese jungle, pushing through the dense ferns and dodging the nettles.
And there, on the trail, my North by Northwest moment, a crop field I could dive into for a photo. There had even been an aircraft overhead earlier, I was both disappointed and relieved not to have to run through the crop field hiding from the plane whose pilot was intent on killing me! I’m sure things like that don’t happen in Norfolk!
After that, I really was ready for the end of the walk. This 8 mile walk which should have taken three hours, had taken more than four and I was ready to get back to the car now. Surely it couldn’t be much further and then I spotted the road in the distance and knew that the end was in sight. So we pressed on and that was it. I’d made it. It was a thoroughly enjoyable walk, one I probably would do again. Seeing the ponds that had once been pingos during the last Ice Age was fascinating, especially as I have seen real pingos in the Arctic. And maybe next time the longhorn cattle will put in an appearance for me.
I hiked the Pingo Trail in July 2017.
The Great Eastern Pingo Trail starts in the car park off the A1075 about 3 miles south of Watton, Norfolk.
For more adventure ideas in England, check out these posts.
Yorkshire: Gaping Gill Winch Meet
Wiltshire: Longleat Festival of Light
