winter walks kent

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Exotic trees and crazy mud

Emmetts Garden (on the Ide Hill walk) is showing off its rare tree species at the moment, with orbs hanging off branches and baskets draped with national flags. Inside each basket is the name of the tree and its origin. Surprisingly good fun going from one to the other trying to work out what it is. I’d never heard of a castor oil tree (China) before but the Japanese cedar was my favourite.

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Meanwhile, mud is a sticking point on the walks, as you’d expect in February. One Tree Hill and around is awful, Hever too. But Ide Hill is not too bad – even the bit where you meet the Toys Hill red route is passable. Elsewhere, Lullingstone/Eynsford is generally OK, Shoreham circular too. Downe and Knole Park are bankers for lack of mud in huge quantities, but Petts Wood has plenty of squelchy areas. All are fine with decent boots – it’s just that you should be mentally prepared for a bit of slippin’ and slidin’, and going to the pub afterwards means taking boots off or bringing spare shoes.

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Snow flurries, mud and cloudscapes on the Greensand Ridge

The mud is horrific but worth slopping through for the wonderful scenes on the One Tree Hill/Ightam Mote walk – a steep wooded escarpment with beech trees growing out of it at extraordinary angles, huge Weald views over to the Ashdown Forest and the beautifully situated Mote house itself, in its secret little cleft in the hill line. With dramatic skies, clear air, flurries of snow, the ridge routes around One Tree Hill and Wilmot Hill left us in awe yesterday.

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Let it snow and let peregrines unexpectedly appear

Some of this winter’s coldest weather has breezed in from the north east. It’s brought snow flurries, few of which have penetrated as far west as London but have deposited a few centimetres on the Greensand Ridge south of Sevenoaks, and along the North Downs towards Maidstone.

I was rather taken by the scene yesterday morning at 9am while cycling from my home in Lower Sydenham to the railway station. As I crossed Perry Hill in bright sunshine, flakes of snow suddenly intensified into a bit of a mini-blizzard, seemingly out of a blue sky. I looked around and saw it was being blown in from a dark cloud to the north. Just at that moment I heard the ‘cawing’ of a crow and saw to my astonishment a peregrine falcon clutching a small bird in its talons wheel away to the south, beating its wings rapidly, as two irate crows followed in lukewarm pursuit. An unusual thing to see in Sydenham, while it snowed – from a blue sky.

Anyway, proof that snow still happens south of London is provided by Ightam Mote’s Twitter feed. (Walk to Ightam Mote from One Tree Hill.)

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Fancy a mud-free January walk? Then, Knole Park, Kent, is the one

Well, almost; the forest (pictured below) in the far east of the park has a bit. But yes, Knole today was a joy. Glorious sunshine, brisk breeze – a special wintry atmosphere and little gooey saturated soil. Many of the walks on this site are now besieged by mud – One Tree Hill could be the worst. There has been a lot of rain in the past two weeks so good wellies essential for now – apart from Knole. My Knole walk is here.

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Hoo peninsula walk at Cliffe, north Kent

A lovely piece by Carol Donaldson in the Guardian at the Christmas weekend drew my attention to this area just east of Gravesend. It’s only an hour’s drive from, say, Brockley (potentially less if you can get to the A2 more quickly than I did today) and 40 minutes by train from Lewisham (direct to Higham on the Gillingham route). You can walk direct (about 2.5 miles from Higham station) to the marshes RSPB reserve at Cliffe Pools or get the 133 bus. The walk I did starts at Cliffe village on the little chalk ridge above the marshes, right by 13th-century St Helen’s Church and heads west, reaching the sea wall before returning through lagoons to Cliffe. The churchyard could be where Pip came across Magwitch in Great Expectations (it might be that the children’s graves at nearby Cooling is where this was imagined) and Charles Dickens’ daughter was married nearby at St Mary’s, Lower Higham. More recently, the marshes served as paddy fields in Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick’s Vietnam movie made in the late 1980s.

The beauty of the area is that you can just walk off into the marshes and make for the sea wall – there’s lots of interesting historical features including a beached boat. Otherwise there’s big skies, a lot of birds (the plaintive calls of waders accompany you throughout), ships gliding on the river beyond the wall, timeless atmosphere … I’ll add details of the route I took soon, as well as the Westerham-Chartwell route. Yet another place near London that takes you to another time seemingly hundreds of miles away. Some pix…

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Soft light on a December walk in Kent

There’s no doubt about it. Winter walks aren’t always particularly uplifting. Views are subdued and less vibrant. The oranges and reds of autumn have gone, to be replaced by toned-down browns and greens. There’s mud, damp and murkiness that can make you want to flee the country. But the sky picks its moments to remedy everything; pink and orange sunsets, swathes of deep azure; the rush towards dusk bathing ancient Kent rural scenes in yellow and grey light. There are times when you feel that our little pokey-out county is in tune with the timeless far north; Iceland, Norway, Lapland… maybe the Vikings who settled here felt most at home on these dark cold days. Am I being pretentious? Stop me if I am. I’ll stop then.

Here are some pictures from early afternoon on December 16, 2017, on the high-level Meenfield woods walk, to the west of Shoreham and the little valley separating Meenfield and Andrews woods (an extension to walks 2 and 8).

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Winter walks of Downe, Shoreham and Sevenoaks

The autumn colours have well and truly gone and the more subtle tones of winter are with us. I’ve had to change all the header images on this website to suit… didn’t feel as though the autumn ones got much of a run. My favourites of the headers are the row of trees against a blue sky in late afternoon at Lullingstone with flinty field in the foreground, and beautiful winter sunset colours from east of Shoreham. Snow at Downe and in Meenfield Wood feature, as does a fantastic fog at Ide Hill.

Mud has set in on all the walks so if you lack wellies you may want to know that Knole Park, Shoreham circular, Lullingstone and Downe are the most mud-free strolls on this site (See walks at top of page) – perfect for Boxing Day. Below is that misty sunset from farmland just east of Shoreham.

Nearing Dunstall Farm

Nearing Dunstall Farm at the end of the walk (walk 14 and walk 5)

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Find a north-west Kent walk that suits you


Here’s a map of all the walks on this site so far. Click on the pointers to take you to descriptions of the walks online or in printable pdf format. Alternatively, use the walk tabs at the top of this page.

The best walks on this site for public transport, if you live in SE London are:

Best for public transport: Chislehurst/Petts Wood walk (13): direct train to Chislehurst/Petts Wood/Bickley stations from Brixton/Hither Green/Catford/Herne Hill/West Dulwich/Peckham Rye/Nunhead. For the Shoreham/Eynsford and Otford routes (walks 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 14, 16) there are trains direct to the starts of the walks on Thameslink services between London Blackfriars and Sevenoaks (stopping at Peckham Rye, Nunhead, Catford, Bellingham, Bromley South etc). Trains are relatively frequent and take about 30 minutes from, say, Catford to Otford. Pubs in Shoreham and Eynsford well placed for any delays or cancellations!
So-so for transport: Downe (walk 1): closest route to SE London but involves a (fairly frequent) 25-min bus ride – 146 from Bromley South station
OK for transport: Knole Park (walk 11) – you’ll have to walk from Sevenoaks station (good rail services to Sevenoaks station on Thameslink – see above – or Charing Cross line (Hither Green etc) for nearly a mile to the leisure centre and enter Knole from there, joining the walk as per instructions and map.
Bit of a stretch but do-able: Hever (walk 9) actually has a station, on the London Bridge line via East Croydon, so quite easy from Forest Hill, Brockley etc if you plan ahead. The walk starts at Hever Castle, 1 mile from the station but there’s a path that will take you there from the station.
Not so accessible: Sevenoaks routes (walks 4, 6, 7): can take train to Sevenoaks station on Thameslink or Charing Cross line (Hither Green etc), but then a taxi ride – Ide Hill is about 4 miles from the station; One Tree Hill about 3 miles (also quite close to Hildenborough station).
Car only, although…: I think Chiddingstone is definitely best by car. But, you can take the train to Hildenborough or Edenbridge and get a taxi (more details on walk’s page). Westerham/Chartwell is best with a car, though again bus from Bromley is possible (246), as is taxi from Sevenoaks station.

Always check ‘live departures’ online for trains – service disruption is quite the thing these days you know.

Best for views

One Tree Hill, Ide Hill, Otford circular via Romney St, Fackenden Down, Westerham/Chartwell, Shoreham’s mystery eastern valleys, Polhill, Eynsford/Lullingstone. Oh… actually all of ’em.

Best pubs on the walks – click here

See menu at top of page for full list of walks

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Downe in winter snow

Awful weather this week – overcast, cold – but at least there was some snow today to enliven proceedings. I decided to get some fresh air on the Downe walk. In south-east London the snowfall didn’t stick whatsoever but by the time I reached Keston there were extensive patches. Below are some iPhone images of the Downe circular walk taken sequentially. I nipped off-piste down to the golf course after point 5 – the unblemished snow on the fairway made me feel as if I were walking on goose feathers; the powder had a strangely translucent appearance I’d never seen in snow before. Popped into the Queen’s Head where a half of Westerham Ales’ Grasshopper by the fire, with Italy v Ireland rugby on the telly, was a splendid ‘warm down’. Once again, a rotten day for weather comes up trumps (whoops, sorry, banned word there).

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New walk: Shoreham’s mystery eastern valleys

Beyond the steep, thickly wooded eastern wall of the Darent Valley is a quiet chalk upland area of dry valleys, meadows and plateaus. There’s a disused golf course, now overgrown and becoming a bit of an unofficial wildlife reserve, lovely north-south views, a discreet private airstrip behind a strip of woods from which vintage light aircraft are regularly flown, and, well… that’s it really. It’s a very atmospheric area and, for me, quite different in nature from the western valley wall. My new, ‘eastern valleys’ walk (number 14, 4.5 miles, pix below) really digs into this tranquil, timeless landscape via the little hamlet close to the defunct Austin Lodge clubhouse. Also the Otford/Shoreham/Romney St walk (5) takes in some of it. Walkers can combine the two routes to make a 10-miler or combine them with the Shoreham Circular strolls (8.5 miles). The starting point for the new walk is Shoreham railway station, which is well connected to south-east London, by Thameslink trains (not the most reliable line but so handy for the countryside). It can also be started from the church with an alternative route up to the plateau. There are some steep sections so you’ll feel this one afterwards. Enjoy. (Download a pdf of this walk.)

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