I hold my hands up that, despite being Suffolk born-and-bred but moving across the border to Norfolk – I know little of the delights the deepest parts of the county offer.

Apart from the odd trips to Bury St Edmunds and Lavenham, and Southwold, Saxmundham and Aldeburgh, whole swathes of the county remain a mystery. A delightful mystery, I’m sure, but unexplored.

Constable Country looks stunning but would it live up to expectations after a long drive? West Suffolk has never sounded that appealing when the Norfolk Broads are on my doorstep?

Why go to Suffolk for a beauty fix when the stunning Norfolk coastline is a short drive away?

I adore Norfolk and could pick a different Norfolk location for every weekend for the rest of my life and still not run out. 

I’ve always felt a little smug, convinced Norfolk’s landscapes were so much superior to Suffolk’s.

So, when the chance came to walk from Bury St Edmunds to Clare across what was promised to be 18.5 miles of stunning undulating landscape, it felt like a challenge.

Actually, it was a challenge – the Bury to Clare Challenge, a running or walking event organised by Positive Steps, to raise money for St Nicholas Hospice Care.

Crossing the Norfolk-Suffolk border on the morning after Ipswich Town had been promoted to the Premier League felt like a portent that I was to be proved very wrong; very wrong indeed.

And after just over five hours walking through fields, footpaths and lanes, don’t tell the neighbours, but Suffolk folk, I think, in some respects, you might have the edge when it comes to breath-taking beauty that stops you in your tracks.

OK, the weather smiled on us all day. Setting off at 9am from a sunny Bury, bathed in beautiful light under blue skies meandering through radiant yellow oil seed rape fields, unadulterated green fields stretching for miles, to the lovely Clare, we saw it at its best.

I can even forgive the expanses of Suffolk-Essex claggy clay mud that almost claimed our walking shoes.

Comparison to Norfolk is tricky. Suffolk feels softer somehow. There were fewer church- dominated hamlets and villages than punctuate Norfolk landscapes. 

It was divine. As was the event itself.

Perhaps the sun brings out the best in people, but it was a joy to participate in an event that was as inclusive and welcoming as its setting.

In a field of more than 350 runners and walkers, all ages, backgrounds, shapes and sizes rubbed along in such a spirit of bonhomie and collaboration, making sure everyone kept to the correct route, and made it to the end.

One of the benefits of walking – as Nordic Walkers, we like to clock up a steady 3.7-3.8 mph on a long distance but the terrain slows us down - is that you get to meet other walkers and chat along the way.

We met a lovely man who made sure we climbed over a stile safely had been a runner and a “fit old man,” as he put it, until a hip replacement stopped him. He took up Nordic Walking and it changed his life.

As we negotiated another sile, he met another man who had had a hip replaced and off they strode together. 

A shout out to the Sudbury joggers – a group of women running and walking, supporting and encouraging each other to keep going – as we clanked along with our walking poles.

As we came to the finish line at Clare, a couple in front of us held hands to finish.

They were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. What a fabulous way to mark it – a couple that walks together…. 

The event was food for the soul; to be out in the countryside with people keeping fit for all reasons, coming together to raise money for a good cause and challenge themselves to cross the finishing line and earn a medal based on artwork titled night and day by Surinder Wardboys which is displayed in the hospice chapel.

Another fabulous event by Positive Steps. It gets so many people who might never see themselves as an event participant (like me) involved and keeping themselves fit.

There’s no better medicine.

What will happen to those chipmunk cheeks?

My guilty pleasure is a weekly dose of the Real Housewives franchise.

Not that any of the women involved is real or a housewife, and its relationship with ‘reality’ is as real as Star Trek,

Returning this week was Season 14 of the New Jersey series, not long after their Beverley Hills sisters’ latest run ended.

The common thread, apart from the excesses, vulgarity and staged screaming rows, was how the women’s faces change every season, and not in a good way.

Barely any woman has features that look vaguely natural.

Their tweaks, stretching and pumping now borders on the grotesque, with mouths distorted, skin pulled so tight and chipmunk cheek fillers pushing their eyes into feline shapes.

Fast forward 20 years and I fear these poor women will look like melted candles.  What are they doing to themselves?

Below the chin, they are look emaciated from the effects of weight loss drugs, Ozempic, Wegovy or whatever, and surgery, giving the impression of odd-looking dolls with faces stuck on over-large heads on tiny bodies.

It’s got to the stage where seeking an ideal beauty has turned into self-mutilation, and it certainly ain’t pretty.