Hales Church is beautiful in it's way, but it's a strange sinister beauty, where Heckingham felt full of light, both inside and out - with the sheep peacefully grazing in the field at the back and surrounded by soft green hedgerows. When we stepped out of Hales and walked round to the back we were faced with a bleak landscape of ploughed field and smoke rising from a fire next to a modern barn. It wasn't an ugly view, in fact it raised an oh wow in me, it was very rural norfolk, and rural norfolk can be a bit jolie laide. 
And then we walked through a small patch of wood with a large oak all rotten in middle that revealed an empty honeycomb in a fair size cleft between the good and the bad wood. And ten steps on we found a couple of condom wrappers, close by another oak still very much alive and wide in girth and tall, which had a kind of pagan offering quality about them. Perhaps it was only me thinking that. 
Further on we came to a gate with a painted sign saying "Closed. Price List in Shed" no frills, no prettiness here please. Over the gate the track led off into more bleak East Anglia.