April 22, 2023 by ammcculloch49

Bluebells in north-west Kent: where’s best?

Hello! I think they’re a little late this year but it’s fair to say the cobalt carpet has finally spread its magic in many of the woods covered in the KWNL area. Bluebells are now almost fully out on the North Downs chalk hills walks such as the Cudham stroll (in New Year’s Wood particularly), and Meenfield Woods on the various Shoreham circular and Polhill routes. Further south the Greensand Ridge walks at Underriver, One Tree Hill, Ide Hill (perhaps the best bluebells), Oldbury and Hosey Common are awash with blue. Closest to south-east London, Beckenham Place Park, High Elms and Petts Wood-Hawkwood Estate (in the lower, damper parts) has several swathes too. The Downe walk mk1 doesn’t have a lot of bluebell action en route but a quick diversion down to Downe Bank (the west side of the Cudham valley) from point 3 or at the start of the walk should see you in the magical blue realm. Following the Downe Mk2 walk will be kind of blue too, particularly at Downe Bank and Blackbush and Twenty Acre Shaw woods. I’m sure there are loads on the Hever walk too but I’ve never been on that stroll at this time of year so can’t vouch for them. The Chiddingstone route doesn’t have many bluebells I can confirm, not that this detracts from the superb stroll. (Pictured below: from 2022 and 2021 bluebells at New Year Wood on Cudham walk; Meenfield wood, Shoreham circular/Polhill routes; Ide Hill route)

New Year’s Wood, Knockholt/Cudham: early bluebells
New Years Wood bluebells
New Year’s Wood bluebells 2022
Bluebells on the Ide Hill walk in Scord Wood
Bluebells, Emmetts/Scords wood, 2017
Meenfield Wood, April 2022
Meenfield Wood, April 2022

Anyway, here are some bluebell factoids gleaned from an excellent article with far more detail called Bloomageddon: seven clever ways bluebells win the woodland turf war at The Conversation website.

They are uniquely adapted to suited the multispecies ancient woodlands of the UK
Low temperatures trigger their growth (but might delay their blooming if in April). Bluebell seeds germinate when the temperature drops below 10°C.
Bluebells predominantly convert sunlight into fructose allowing them to photosynthesise at low temperatures.
They are supreme competitors with other plants, allowing them to carpet woodland floors. But they get help in the form of mycorrhiza, a symbiotic fungi.
Almost half the world’s bluebells are found in the UK, they’re relatively rare in the rest of the world.

But please be careful never to tread on any; it takes bluebells years to recover from damage. Digging them up – surely no one visiting this site would consider such a thing – is illegal, and please don’t let dogs trample them either – keep them on the lead.

April 15, 2023 by ammcculloch49

Woody wildflowers on display before the big blue

With a dry and potentially quite sunny week before us at long last it’s a great time for checking out emerging wildflowers on the walks. I must underline that I’m no expert and rely on apps to confirm by sightings in many cases. But below are a few species you’ll see in most of the woods encountered in woods and fringes on the KWNL routes in April.

Peacock butterfly pictured later in the year on marjoram

Within a couple of weeks bluebells will be taking over in the woods – the first are already in bloom – but until then there’s plenty to enjoy: cuckoo flower, celandine, wood anemone, primrose and cowslip in particular. There are early orchids too; at Polhill, Strawberry Bank (on the Cudham walk), High Elms country park in the glades within the woods and Downe Bank (a detour on the Downe walk). I particularly enjoy the first sightings of butterflies: I’ve seen brimstone (usually the first to emerge), small tortoiseshell and peacocks so far this year. At Fackenden last week, all three species were fluttering in Magpie’s Bottom. In the woods behind adjacent to Magpie Bottom (the OS map calls it Great Wood), the celandine carpeting the ground under the beech trees was spectacular. Things change fast at this time of year though and pretty soon, all will be blue.

March 15, 2023 by ammcculloch49

In the depths of springter

Of all the seasons-within-seasons, the end of winter, or springter, is one of the least enjoyable for walking I find. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy getting out into the countryside; it just means that when I do, I look around and think “meh” quite a bit. There’s still a lot to look out for in early March: old man’s beard (clematis vitalba), hazel and alder catkins, blossoming blackthorn, the vigorous growth of bluebell shoots, redwings and fieldfares flocking to migrate east, small birds breaking into song, the passage of gulls at high level etc, but the predominant colours are grey and brown, the air is still harsh and raw, mud clings to your boots and you slip on steep paths.

On recent walks to Hosey, Fackenden Down, Bough Beech and Downe, I found plenty to like but not much to inspire. This was partly because, apart from at Fackenden where there was an eyecatching sunset, the sky was unyielding and grey. Drama is needed in the sky at times like these, and springter often provides it as great air masses come into conflict, showering us with rain, hail, snow and sleet and producing fascinating aerial vistas. But at Hosey, all was monotone, at Bough Beech a thin Sunday drizzle dampened down any sense of vitality and at Downe, the morning brightness was consumed by a blanket of altostratus – the precursor to an approaching front – which had stealthily taken over the day as I was en route. But everyday is different if you look closely enough and the sun, a white ball behind the veil, did its best to make the stroll memorable.

View over Chartwell, Hosey walk
Bough Beech nature reserve
View over Bough Beech reservoir from the Bore Place chair
Downe walk under altostratus cloud
View from Fackenden Down, March 2023

That terrific birder Dave accompanied me at Bough Beech, educating me as we went on the courtships of goldcrests, the behaviour of gadwall – a much underappreciated duck, he said – West Ham’s unsatisfactory season, the calls of marsh tit and treecreeper (I’d forgotten, again), and the distribution of local chaffinch populations. Although we made it to 39 species we saw no snipe, barn owl, brambling, kestrel or even buzzard as we hoped. The bird of prey fraternity was represented only by a solo red kite who lazily loitered above the low weald landscape for nearly half the walk, sometimes close, sometimes distant – an almost spectral presence so unfettered was it by the subdued, squelchy land below.

Thinking back to that red kite (which by the way would have been an extraordinarily rare sight in this part of the world until about 10 years ago) my springter moans and groans appear misplaced; these grey walks were brilliant.

Photographs by AMcCulloch

May 8, 2022 by ammcculloch49

Moody blues on the way out

The bluebells have faded a little earlier than usual this year. It seemed to me on the Ide Hill walk today that the south-facing slopes may be drier than normal for spring, which has affected bluebells’ longevity while those in more sheltered parts of the woods were still full of colour. There’s certainly been a marked lack of rain this year – last month just 18mm fell in north-west Kent, about one-third of the usual April total.

In Meenfield woods, on the Shoreham and Polhill walks, the bluebells, while fading, were still hanging on last weekend – perhaps those woods have retained a little more moisture. I’m no expert. Anyway, instead of bluebells, look out now for wild garlic (or ransoms) growing in profusion in woods on Kent Walks near London. Their brilliant white/cream flowers (pictured above at Rook’s Hill on the One Tree Hill walk) are a sight for sore eyes where there are damp woods and subterranean water close to the surface. The Ide Hill walk is quite unusual for KWNL in having plenty of gorse (near the walk’s start) which is looking brilliant in the spring sunshine, too.

As for birds, things still seem a little quiet with few swallows, martins and swifts making it to the region so far, but I was delighted to see my first whitethroat of the year in one of the many superb country lane hedgerows between Shoreham and Well Hill, a great bird to watch for when on a country cycle. (Pictured in slideshow: whitethroat, Darent Valley view, faded bluebells, Ide Hill view, Scord’s wood, wild garlic in Scord’s wood, azalea in Emmett’s and faded bluebells of Meenfield Wood).

April 12, 2022 by ammcculloch49

Cudham route firmed up – literally

The Cudham chalk paths route is a superb saunter through meadows, valleys and woods; its lack of grandiose views doesn’t detract at all. There’ll be plenty of bluebell vistas though from this weekend onwards, but the other day wood anemone and celandine were still the stars, waiting to be eclipsed by the vast swathes of dark green shoots just waiting to burst into glorious dark blue flower. Gamboling lambs, buzzards and the growl of the occasional Spitfire overhead, heading back to Biggin Hill, provided additional entertainment. On entering the wonderful New Year’s Wood, on the second half of the stroll, I was delighted to see the normally muddy path (actually a bridlepath) had been surfaced with mulch and stone – I don’t know the name of that kind of surface – adding to the pleasure of this lovely walk. Great!

May 21, 2021 by ammcculloch49

Joining up the Shoreham walks for an epic

Windy, cold, grey, damp. Yep, this May is a shocker. We needed the rain yada yada (or yabba yabba, take your pick). I won’t go on leisure cycles in this kind of weather, but walking is still a possibility if the wind drops. I know, it’s hard to believe I’m talking like this – it’s May in south east England! My walking activities do mean I have some accurate memories of weather and there were a couple of days not dissimilar to this last May. But only a couple. Anyway, for once I had time last weekend to devise an epic by joining up group of routes. Some old friends were joining me from west London; so we wanted to stretch our legs and truly earn that pint at the end. So we took on the Shoreham eastern valleys walk joined it up with a section of the Fackenden Down route then slipped into Shoreham circular mk2 before segueing smoothly into half of Shoreham mk1, taking in the Meenfield wood bluebells.

On the map it looked to be 8.5 to 9 miles but we reckoned it was about 11.5 miles with our inability to walk straight and a diversion to see the Percy Pilcher memorial. Back in the village the choice was between the Crown, the King’s Head or the Mount Vineyard for the aprés. We settled on the vineyard for its proximity to the station, though both the pubs were passed with regret. In the manner of a walk in the Highlands or west Wales we encountered a number of different weather conditions – beginning with a colourful combination of shades of grey at different levels punctuated by shards of blue sky and varying degrees of sun.

What with the multitude of greens and yellow tones in the woods and fields the effect was dazzling at times. But as we left Magpie Bottom a period of nimbo stratus with heavy rain fell upon us and we emerged at the top of Fackenden Down with that great view shrouded in mist and ragged low cloud. But by the time we’d left the hillside after sheltering we were in bright sunshine and what felt like a 10C rise in temperature. Finally, at the vineyard, we caught the edge of a thunderstorm somewhere around London bringing further rain. In the sunny bits buzzards soared, yellowhammers posed on the tops of hedgerows – with blackcaps, robins and whitethroats chirping away within – and Spitfires from Biggin Hill growled overhead. All part of the Kent wonderland.

May 13, 2021 by ammcculloch49

Reverse the route

Doing the walks in reverse is almost as good as trying a new walk. Of course, you have to be familiar with the route the ‘right way round’ first because having to read instructions from the bottom up isn’t easy and would suck the joy from the experience. The Fackenden Down stroll (pictured above in May last year – spot the difference in conditions!), soon to be coming into its own what with orchids and various other wildflowers such as sainfoin, changes character considerably when walked clockwise; although you’ll have to look over your shoulder for that distant view of London from Romney Street the wonderful vista taking in the head of the Darent Valley and North Downs escarpment awaits you once you hit the down itself. I’ve taken to doing Hever the ‘wrong way round’ too. But some of the others it wouldn’t occur to me to try, which is a bit odd. Nonetheless, it’s a great way of breathing new life into familiar routes and the cause of some aimless fun banter in my family as to which way round walks should be done.

Hawthorn is now coming into flower, as pictured on the Downe walk

Bit of a parish notice here, but one worth mentioning: when parking for walks in the countryside, make sure there’s nothing of any value visible in the car. Recently there have been reports of car break-ins around Shoreham and I know Toy’s Hill car park has been the site of a few smashed car windows.

My KWNL bird list has come on a bit lately – a wheatear spotted at Emmett Gardens and a pair of whitethroats on the Polhill/Pluto walk among the highlights plus a brambling and tree creepers on the Ide Hill walk. But still no kingfisher or house/sand martin. It’s a distinctly non-birder’s list… just birds I come across while walking, usually without binoculars – real twitchers see these species before breakfast most days.

• Check out Dave’s bird page for more on spring birds to look out for

April 17, 2021 by ammcculloch49

Bluebells on Kent walks: where is the cobalt carpet?

OK, for those going out this weekend expecting swathes of bluebells, you may be disappointed. They are late this year – particularly at One Tree Hill and Ide Hill, but not far off full bloom in Meenfield Wood. Probably a few too many cold nights of late has set them back. Next weekend will definitely be better. But there are other flowers to enjoy. Cuckooflower clumps are great at this time of year and, like red campion, wood anenomes and celandine, get better the more you notice them. Primroses form eyecatching patches too, and soon cowslips will adorn the grassy slopes of the North Downs (with orchids and marjoram/oregano to follow). These all brightened up my walk from One Tree Hill to Ightham Mote then back up the hidden valley with the little stream yesterday (pictured below). Below are some recommendations of good places to see bluebells.

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If you’re staying local, Beckenham Place Park has some good patches (or will have), although get ready to exercise emergency social distancing manoeuvres as oblivious joggers jag around, their ears full of choons. Oxleas Woods off Shooters Hill is another good local spot and I daresay Sydenham Hill Woods too. After that I think we’re talking Petts Wood and the adjoining Hawkwood and Little Heath Wood and Selsdon Wood south-west of Croydon. Of course, there are brilliant bluebells at Downe, Meenfield Wood, Ide Hill, One Tree Hill, Hosey Common and in woods east of Shoreham on this website’s walks, and the cobalt carpet reigns supreme in woods near Westerham and around Hever and Edenbridge.

Bluebells, Scords wood, Ide Hill walk, April 2017

They are uniquely adapted to suited the multispecies ancient woodlands of the UK
Low temperatures trigger their growth (but might delay their blooming if in April). Bluebell seeds germinate when the temperature drops below 10°C.
Bluebells predominantly convert sunlight into fructose allowing them to photosynthesise at low temperatures.
They are supreme competitors with other plants, allowing them to carpet woodland floors. But they get help in the form of mycorrhiza, a symbiotic fungi.
Almost half the world’s bluebells are found in the UK, they’re relatively rare in the rest of the world.

But please be careful never to tread on any; it takes bluebells years to recover from foot damage. Digging them up – surely no one visiting this site would consider such a thing – is illegal, and please don’t let dogs trample them either – keep them on the lead.

Meenfield Wood bluebells, near Shoreham, Kent

April 10, 2021 by ammcculloch49

Into the cold woods

It’s nearly bluebell time, probably a week to 10 days before that magical woodland period. The cold dry windy weather has certainly slowed down things. A quick afternoon walk on the Ide Hill route today revealed just a few primroses, with even the azaleas of Emmett’s Garden (pay if you want to wander the gardens off the public footpath) looking pretty discouraged. The view off over the Weald appeared grey and blurred – not the usual colourful Garden of England tapestry. I’ve been asked by a couple of people to mention that in view of recent reports of ‘bluebell thieves’ in Norfolk, it’s illegal to dig up wildflowers. As well as causing lasting damage to the environment, the transported flowers are unlikely to thrive in gardens because they are adapted to a different, long-established habitat and conditions. Trampling the flowers is pretty damaging too… I’d certainly hope people will stay to the main paths and keep dogs on the lead when going through areas where there area loads of wildflowers. Anyway, things were still pretty bleak out there from the flower point of view on today’s walk … we had to look quite hard to find violets, dead-nettle, alkinet and wood anenomes even. But birdlife has really picked up; our walk revealed treecreepers and nuthatches, and a possible brambling – all firsts for me this year – plus an enormous buzzard swooping low over pheasants. Scord’s Wood was as superb as ever – a verdant ancient woodland with loads of moss and lichen, coppiced trees with flitting birds and mysterious rustles.

March 26, 2021 by ammcculloch49

From bedraggled to bedazzled – hello spring

Milder weather again now, little rain and presumably less mud. But bear in mind temperatures are set to veer wildly next week from mild to cold day by day. I haven’t been out on any of the walks for a few weeks now – possibly my longest period of absence for five years. I’m looking forward to seeing the first spring wildflowers, the daffodils at Ightham (pictured below), and in about three weeks the seas of wild garlic and bluebells in woodland on all the walks. First of all there’s blackthorn blossom to enjoy, primroses, wood anenome and violets, among others.

It’s amazing how rapidly the landscape transforms itself from its rather bedraggled and dreary state (it seems like that to me this year anyway) in early March to the rich promise of early April. It somehow surprises me every year. And from 12 April it will be possible to visit pub gardens after the walks – this seems like crazy talk. I hope there are still some pubs to go back to. There are one or two that may struggle to open up at all. It’s a grim old business, a global pandemic. My spring walks this year will be punctuated by regular halts to listen to birdsong and try to pick out various species. It wasn’t so long ago that I added wren to my aural recognition list… laughable that it took so long considering just how distinct and loud the call of that diminutive bird is. For some reason the walk I’m most looking forward to getting to this spring is the Chiddingstone loop especially if the Castle Inn’s garden is open.

In the meantime I’ve stumbled across some BBC4 walks in Yorkshire that I’ve quite enjoyed – a couple of which I remember doing as a teenager on family holidays. The presenter, Shanaz Gulzar, is affable and doesn’t go on too much and if she starts to get pretentious, she soon thinks better of it. It’s all quite low key and accompanied by superb drone photography. Have a look on the iPlayer.

One of Shanaz’s walks crosses the Strid, a stretch of the River Wharfe that used to strike fear into a great uncle of mine, a local, who used to tell us stories of terrible events in those parts involving drownings and floods. He was extremely old at that point and had suffered the fate of being captured very early in – wait for it – the first world war. In fact as a very young man, perhaps still a teenager, he might have been living in Ypres as a civilian when the Kaiser’s army invaded. He was apparently given some very grisly work details and it was said he never quite recovered from his experiences. Nevertheless, here he was in the mid-1970s telling us kids about the Strid and the perils of trying to cross it. Good old Clifford. Slightly scary but a tremendous character.