Ipswich
Ipswich is the county town of Suffolk.
Get in
Ipswich is served by many bus companies, primarily Ipswich Buses (for local town buses) and by First (for buses throughout East Anglia. It is also served by the One railway company. Trains from London (Liverpool Street) take just over an hour to arrive, and are fairly frequent, only reducing to one train per hour in the late evening or on Sundays. By road, use either the A12 from the M25 (junction 29 exit), or the A14 from the Midlands. Both roads are dual carriageways, but can suffer from the large amounts of HGV traffic going to Felixstowe or Harwich.
Get around
See
Christchurch Mansion and Park,
Do
- Ipswich is home to Ipswich Town Football Club, a team currently residing in the second league of UK football ("The Championship") and its ground, Portman Road, is close to the centre of Ipswich. The ground has been extended to seat 30,000 people, and if you visit Ipswich and are yourself, or with someone, keen on football, it's worth a visit - a friendly ground, with large amounts of family spectators.
- Two cinemas (Cineworld [formerly UGC] and Corn Exchange arts cinema [Note: the Odeon closed in August 2005]) and the Regent Theatre.
Buy
Tower Ramparts shopping centre, the Buttermarket shopping centre and the high street. Mainly the same chains as in any UK town, but a few private shops as well.
Eat
The Vanilla Pod is Ipswich's premier restaurant, a fine dining restaurant with a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. Food is perfect and the service is excellent, shows why it is number one!
Loch Fyne at Mortimers on the Quay http://www.lochfyne.com/pages/content.asp?PageID=727&RestID=77 - seafood based.
Also, Il Punto's on the dockside is, despite its name, a good French restaurant on a boat permanently moored on the Quay - http://www.ilpunto.co.uk/
St Nicholas Street in Ipswich has many restaurants, with The Galley recommended, although most of the restaurants on the street are worth a visit. You can eat Greek, Italian, French, Thai, Chinese and Indian food in Ipswich.
For food during the day, Carrot Cake on the High Street is worth finding and eating in. Good, home-made food and fresh juices, run by a workaholic Canadian who for some reason has settled in Ipswich. It also does fantastic breakfasts that start at an unreasonably early time in the morning.
Drink
The Great White Horse Hotel in the pedestrianised area of Ipswich, is a good place for a drink in the day, with lots of sofas to recline in, without having a TV blaring at you from the corner of the room.
The Greyhound, about ten minute's walk from the town centre, is a pub serving a good range of food and again is TV-free.
The Fat Cat, on the Spring Road about 15 minutes walk from the centre, is worth a visit. Formerly Suffolk Pub of the Year, again it's TV-free, but more importantly has a range of around 20 beers on draught at any one time - a beer drinker's paradise. Closer to the centre is the Milestone, which offers a wide range of beers and live music of the traditional R & B type - i.e. played by middle-aged men who have real jobs in the day. The Railway used to be the best live music pub in Ipswich, but it recently changed hands and the new owner has only just started to get bands back in.
In terms of clubbing, Liquid is a haven for the barely-legal drinker - avoid if you're over 25. Fire and Ice is the best club I have been to in Ipswich - playing old school as well as more recent dance music. Pals is full of the office worker crowd, lots of handbag dancing and really poor music.
Avoid Zest if you feel like staying out of hospital.
Sleep
The Salthouse Harbour hotel on the Ipswich docks has been highly recommended as an alternative to the many Novotel / Holiday Inns available in the town. The Lattice Lodge on the Woodbridge Road is a great B & B, very comfortable accommodation, also features wireless broadband.
Get out
Although Ipswich itself is not a particularly attractive town, the area of East Anglia it sits in is beautiful - "Constable Country". In fact, the setting of Constable's most famous painting, "The Haywain", is only a few miles down the A12 road (heading towards London) in nearby East Bergholt - the external site http://www.thelilypad.co.uk/haywain.html shows how the site looks today. There is a National Trust centre in East Bergholt that is worth a visit, if only for the good home-made cakes on sale. Dedham nearby is worth driving onto.
About the same distance - i.e. less than ten miles - out of Ipswich is the attractive market town of Woodbridge (located on the A12, heading out towards Lowestoft). Woodbridge was once a major port, in Tudor times, and the town is still popular today amongst sailors, with a high population of retired City types who have settled in this part of the world to "mess around on boats". You can also reach Woodbridge via train from Ipswich, although the service is far from frequent. Woodbridge has many antique shops, tea shops and old pubs, and is mainly pedestrianised. Worth a visit, especially if you are, or are travelling with, someone elderly. On the outskirts is a mill (clearly signposted from the A12), the only survivor of the 10 or more which used to feed the soldiers barracked in the area during the Napoleonic wars. Places to eat: "Spice" on the main street "the Thoroughfare" or the Captains Table. To drink: the Kings Head on the town square.
Just outside of Woodbridge is Sutton Hoo, an Anglo Saxon burial ground of royal princes, buried alongside priceless treasures in ship graves. The National Trust exhibitor centre can be found here: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-suttonhoo/
On the way to Woodbridge, the villages of Waldringfield and Newbourne, both off the A12, have pubs offering good food and, in the case of Waldringfield, an attractive view over the River Deben.
Five miles outside of Woodbridge is Rendlesham Forest, site of possibly the only authenticated UFO landing in the UK (!) but also good for cycling round, with bikes available to hire in the Easter / Summer school holiday periods.
Levington - between Ipswich and Felixstowe - sits on a river estuary, and features preserved wetlands which house many migratory birds. The pub there ("The Ship") does wonderful food - liver and bacon especially recommended - no bookings taken. Have a quick walk before or after visiting the pub down to the river - footpath just opposite the pub, which is the only place to park in the village.
Further out of Ipswich, Orford Castle (12 miles outside Woodbridge, on the B1084) is worth a visit in good weather - the castle is over 800 years old, in good condition for a building of that age, and Orford itself is an attractive village, with good fish and chips available from pubs and restaurants at the far end of the village.