Thetford Forest is the Brecks-kept secret for an action-packed break
A new trail by Visit Suffolk offers '48 hours in the Brecks' - a vast forested area of East Anglia, set to become Britain’s latest adventure playground
AS I swung into the net 36ft up, my waist harness gave me a nasty yank in a delicate place.
I heard a laugh and on the platform above, a female Go-Aper mocked: “Me Tarzan, you Jane!”
We were swinging across high-wires and hurtling down zip-wires in the Brecks — a vast forested area of East Anglia, often overlooked but now set to become Britain’s latest adventure playground.
A new trail introduced by Visit Suffolk offers visitors “48 hours in the Brecks”.
Over two action-packed days, I would drive a Land Rover at a 23-degree tilt before sinking into — then plunging out of — muddy ruts on the Elveden Estate, Britain’s largest lowland farm.
I would try my hand at clay-pigeon shooting and hurtle through early-morning sunshine on a BMX in Thetford Forest, the site of Go Ape.
But adventure needn’t always be hard and fast. At Brandon Country Park we took a mindfulness walk with guru Amanda Flood.
She encouraged us to put away our phones, empty our minds and focus on the magnificent forest.
It includes towering redwoods, which live for thousands of years, and Monterey pines from California.
It was trickier staying calm as we passed a mausoleum said to be haunted by the ghost of eccentric former owner Baron Barreto.
It is said he occasionally puts in an appearance wearing knee breeches and a deerstalker hat, while cradling a human skull lit by a candle.
After dropping by the park’s information centre, we headed out once again, this time for a bushcraft session with Ray Chin.
He taught us five ways to make fire without matches — somehow not setting his long goatee beard ablaze.
That, Ray told us with a grin, is not always the case.
Alongside all the action, we shoe-horned in time to sample the fantastic local food and drink.
At Wyken Hall, which hosts a regular Saturday farmers’ market, we enjoyed delicious lunchtime trout fishcakes and wine straight from the hall’s own vineyard.
We strolled around the food hall, kitchen garden and grounds.
But for those after something stronger, a tasting session was available at the English Gin Co.
GO: Brecks, Suffolk
GETTING THERE: Greater Anglia has London Liverpool Street to Bury St Edmunds returns from £23. Book at .
STAYING THERE: Tuddenham Mill nooks cost from £145 per night, including breakfast. Visit .
MORE INFO: See .
Our overnight base was Tuddenham Mill, voted Best Restaurant in the Suffolk Food & Drink Awards 2016.
Earlier this year it added five cool pods or “nooks” — a cross between a space capsule and a Scandinavian lodge — to its stylish main bedrooms. One of them even has its own hot tub on the decking.
The pods were super-cosy while squeezing in mod-cons such as power showers and flatscreen TVs showing Netflix for free.
The Suffolk estates, farms and forests we visited knit together into a 393-square mile jigsaw that makes up the Brecks.
It lies in the west of the county, just north of Bury St Edmunds and stretches over the border into Norfolk.
With ancient heathland and mile after mile of of trackways and paths, the Brecks has long been Suffolk’s secret playground for lovers of nature and the great outdoors.
Now the secret is out.
