Snape Maltings & Aldeburgh – a Grand Day Out
By Carl Scott
I’ve written about Aldeburgh before but not sure if I’ve ever put pen to paper (finger to keyboard) for you about Snape Maltings, so after a lovely day out this week with my daughter, I thought it was high time I did!
For the uninitiated, Snape Maltings has nothing to do with a certain Professor from Hogwarts. Snape is tiny little village near the Suffolk coast, that happens in years gone by to have had a series of huge maltings buildings from which it had a thriving industry. Malt to be precise. But since I’ve been going there over the last 20 years or so, it has completely transformed itself into an equally thriving centre for Music, Art, Shopping, Food, Nature and Living as there are some amazing apartments in there now too!
Snape Maltings is the home of Aldeburgh Music, known across the world, hosting an array of concerts featuring international artists, predominantly in the fields of Classical and Jazz.
Shopping is one of the big things that it is known for. There is a humungous old maltings crammed full of high quality (pretty pricey) homewares, gifts and garden things. The building itself is a joy to shop in; much better than a department store. I’ve bought quite a lot of the soft furnishings and kitchenware for Woodfarm from Snape Maltings. There’s a great little coffee shop upstairs serving cakes and lunches etc.
There’s an antiques centre as well, with some real quirky finds, quite a number of which again, have made it back to Woodfarm. I did pay for them I might add!
Snape Maltings even has its own pub, The Plough & Sail, which serves the obligatory local Adnams, as well as superb range of other beers and wines and had a fabulous menu. Today I had Thai Green Mussels, which were amazing!
And all this right on the river. The Rive Alde to be precise, where Aldeburgh get s its name from, as well as one of our cottages, Alde Barn. Looking across the river you can see acres and acres of rushes and there’s a fabulous walk right through the middle of the whole lot into the village where there are two more pubs!
Snape Maltings is then just 4 miles to the beautiful Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh, famed for its Fish & Chips, as well as some excellent boutique shops, restaurants and of course the world famous Scallop sculpture by Maggie Hambling.
It’s a breathtaking work of art in my humble opinion.
The High Street is full of fabulous clothes and gift shops, as well as being abundant with coffee shops, delis, restaurants etc, so well worth a visit. And it runs parallel with the beach, which sits just behind it, so you can combine everything.
There are a couple of great smokehouses on the beach too, selling very fresh fish. One has a sign on it saying “If its any fresher, its still swimming”!
So Snape Maltings and Aldeburgh is another of our Grand Days Out and it’ll be a fabulous, and possibly wallet-bashing one, but well worth it! If you’d like to plan this into your next break, check our Availability and get yourself booked in. As I write this in the beginning of March, this year is very heavily booked already so why not book a Woodfarm Summer break whilst you still can!
Here’s one of my favourite pics from this day out. Me and my daughter Lauren, by Maggie Hambling’s Scallop. I don’t mean the Scallop took the picture, I mean we’re standing next to it!
