A cursory glance at this website may suggest that the north-west Kent walks are permanently sunny. Or snowy. Or bright and breezy. My choice of photographs suggest the routes exist in a world rich in colour, and one must only stride out purposefully with map in hand and trainers on foot to have a great time. Alas, it is not so. Walkers are squelching through giant puddles, inching their way around horrific mud patches and sliding back down liquid hillsides. They are arriving back at home dishevelled, slightly disorientated and in need of a good soak. As I write in mid-February, during one of the cloudiest and wettest winters I can recall, the truth is that unless your need is great, it might be better to abandon the notion of walking in the countryside for the time being. One friend terminated his walk at Westerham after a few hundred yards last week, while another KWNL reader informs me that Polhill and Meenfield woods (west of Shoreham) are impassable. Polhill is simply too steep to bear most humans’ weight in these slippery conditions, while Meenfield woods’ tracks are seas of horrific mud made worse by bulldozers and diggers being used for forestry work there (thinning some of the trees).

Has anywhere survived the mud?

If you must walk, I suggest: Knole Park in Sevenoaks, where there are solid, firm stone and tarmac paths; Lullingstone, where the chalk downs spirit away a lot of the surface water into aquifers (but avoid the busy, ridiculously muddy path alongside the Darent river); and perhaps High Elms, but don’t blame me if that proves a morass too. Avoid the Greensand Way walks, such as One Tree Hill, Hosey Common, Ide Hill and Underriver. Even the trusty old Downe walk, which once was dependable in all conditions, is in an appalling state now, partly because the ‘new’, hemmed-in paths around the children’s farm compress the footfall.