Tobys Walks

Not too far from Southwold, Tobys Walks is a picnic area with a difference. The wide open grasslands of most similar British spots is missing here — what you have instead is dirt and gorse, and plenty of it.
That may sound like the last place you want to have a picnic, but trust me, it’s fantastic. If you have youngish children, they (and you!) can run riot around the place, and there are plenty of natural hollowed out sections in the gorse that make perfect hiding places. I spent many, many a day over there with my Dad and my brothers when I was young and can’t wait to take my son there too when he’s older.
Especially worth a trip to at night, park up in the car park and shine your headlights over the top of the walks, then go down for a game of night time hide ‘n’ seek, spookiness abounds.
The reason it is so spooky is because of how the place got its name. Legend has it that Toby Gill was a black drummer in the army, specifically in Sir Robert Rich’s 4^th Dragoon Regiment, in the late 18^th Century. They were stationed in East Anglia to try and combat the local smugglers. Toby, or Tobias to give him his full name, was apparently a pleasant man, but had a tendency to be a bit of a fighter when he got drunk. Indeed, he’d been barred from a lot of the local pubs. One night in June, 1750, Anne Blakemore, a woman from nearby Walberswick was supposedly murdered, and a drunk Toby was found next to her body. He was imprisoned in Ipswich gaol and tried at Bury, where he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. He was then subjected to gibbetting (the dead body is left to hang on a gallows with nails or chains for weeks after the execution). The ghost of Toby is said to roam the walks as the crossroads where he was hanged is right next to them (where the Walberswick Road meets the A12 now).
Apparently, you can often see him driving a coach drawn by four black horses.
Further analysis of the historical records paints a rather different picture, but whenever I went there when I was young my head was filled with the ghost story my Grandad had told me, and that’s the best mind to be in to visit the Walks.