DISCOVER The Boudicca Way
The Boudicca Way makes for the perfect spring expedition: 36 miles of easy walking through the former kingdom of our toughest freedom fighter.
ONE SPRING AFTERNOON in 1907, two young boys were playing by the River Alde in the Suffolk village of Rendham. Arthur Godbold and Arthur Baxter spotted what they thought was a football in the water. But when they fished it out, they discovered it was a man’s head.
The eyes were hollow. The back of the skull was smashed. The slash across the neck was jagged.
Formal identification took decades, but finally he was named as the Roman Emperor Nero. The bronze head the boys had found was hacked from a statue in 61 AD by the army of Boudicca.
Boudicca – also Boudica, Boadicea, Buddug, Bunduca, Bondeca and other variations –was the queen of the Iceni tribe. Her name means ‘victorious woman’ and she commanded a legendary revolt against the Roman invaders, during which her forces slaughtered eighty thousand people and burned Colchester, London and St Albans to the ground.
The Boudicca Way winds through her ancient kingdom. At the dawn of the first millennium, Britain was a patchwork of Celtic tribes and the land of the Iceni spanned what is now Norfolk, plus bits of neighbouring Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The trail in her name treads south from the city of Norwich to the market town of Diss, and it’s perfect for a spring expedition: a leg-friendly 36 miles of wide contours peppered with tranquil villages – and savage history.
Before striking south, there are the cobbled lanes of Norfolk’s capital to explore. Founded by Saxons as a village called Northwic on the banks of the River Wensum, its skyline was lifted by a Norman castle and cathedral and a 15th-century spire that climbs to 315 feet. In medieval times, the East Anglian city was second only to London, and JB Priestley once wrote of it: ‘What a grand, higgledy ‐piggledy, sensible old place Norwich is!’ It’s also a sensible place to stock up on snacks for the rural miles ahead.
Within an hour you’ll be over the River Yare and walking across a field with an electricity substation to your right and lines of pylons marching the power away. It’s a fine example of extraordinary hist
