Dreadful Saturday weather-wise today, but, undaunted, we – my younger son and I – decided to venture out to familiar pastures. We went to Eynsford village and did a circular walk from the riverside diagonally uphill across fields to Eagle Heights, enjoying lovely, rain-swept views across the railway viaduct down the valley towards Sevenoaks. Passing the bird of prey centre (and being lucky enough to see a vast raptor wheeling in the murk above, pursued – at a distance – by two gulls) we strode on, entering Lullingstone park, turning around its central hill (the one topped by pines and cedar of Lebanon trees) and returning the way we came to Eynsford. It’s now 9.30pm – the pre-Match of the Day hour – and I’ve still not entirely warmed up; a really raw afternoon. I’ll write up the walk soon; it’ll make another good one for train users being easy to adapt to start from and return to Eynford station. Some of it covers the same ground as the Shoreham-Eynsford walk on this site.
A frosty, clear, winter’s day at last
For only the second time this winter we’ve had a beautiful sharp day with the temperature struggling to get above zero. If there have been any others, they’ve been during the week, which doesn’t count! Saturday (16 Jan) was a superb walking day, particularly towards dusk, and there were loads of people walking around Eynsford and Shoreham. Sunday was cloudier and with patches of snow and ice. Looking at the state of some of the paths I recalled that someone who had recently done the walk between the two villages described it as ‘buggyable’. Well, that’s commendable, however state of the art and all-terrain their buggy is.
Winter walks and cosy pubs, Shoreham, Sevenoaks, Downe
I’m updating this post (6.1.16) rather than write a new one, hence the discrepancy between the date and what I’m writing. Christmas has gone, sadly, and the temperature has plunged to normal January levels. There’s been plenty of rain (though nothing to moan about considering the horrendous situation in Cumbria, Yorkshire and parts of Lancashire) and some of the routes on this site are now a bit quagmirish – nothing to daunt those who are used to Glastonbury down the years though! The arrival of fresher conditions will add a bit of winter ambience to the walks and improve the light – it’s been so heavy and grey this past month – and make that open fire in the pub at the end even more welcome. So, get those boots on and start living up to your new year’s resolutions and walking off all that cheese, roast potatoes and booze-induced torpor…
Most of these walks are accessible from Peckham, Dulwich, Lewisham, Brockley within 45 minutes by train or car. The train from Blackfriars to Sevenoaks is very useful for several (click for Peckham Rye live departures, Nunhead, Beckenham Hill, Beckenham Junction (change at Swanley or Bromley South if leaving from Beckenham Junction). The Downe walk involves a bus from Bromley (146) or, from Orpington station, the R8 bus or 10-minute cab ride).
Of the routes on this site, the least affected by mud are usually the Shoreham circular, Shoreham/Otford circular, Shoreham to Eynsford and Downe Circular. You’ll still need boots, but the woodland walks at One Tree Hill and Ide Hill are true squelchathons come December, although they remain great to do if you have the right footwear (and attitude!). Also excellent are Knole Park (Sevenoaks station nearest rail) and Lullingstone Country park (where you can do a variety of walks arriving at and leaving from Eynsford station, but can also explore on the Shoreham to Eynsford walk). The latter two are great for huge skies and spectacular late afternoon sunlight. Just take a look at winter sun shining on Knole House (pictured). Shoreham is lucky to have four excellent pubs, each of which is welcoming and serves decent food. None are snooty and formal. They are Ye Olde George and The Crown, the King’s Arms and the Two Brewers. I usually stop by the George (by the church), mainly because it’s closest to the station. For the Ide Hill walk on this site, the Cock Inn is splendidly positioned right at the end of the walk and is a really nice little pub. The best pubs for the One Tree Hill walks are the White Rock Inn (Underriver) and the Chasers Inn (Shipbourne). In Downe there are two pubs: the Queen’s Head and the George and Dragon; they are close to each other so poke your head in and see which one you like best.
• Pubs in Shoreham – West Kent Camra crawl
• Rainfall radar live
• Download Walk 1: Downe circular (near Bromley, 2.6 miles) View on your phone/PC
• Download Walk 2: Shoreham circular (3.5 miles) View
• Download Walk 3: Shoreham to Eynsford (4.2 miles) View
• Download Walk 4: Ide Hill circular (3 miles) View
• Download Walk 5: Otford circular via Romney St (5.5 miles) View
• Download Walk 6: One Tree Hill circular (near Sevenoaks, 5.5 miles) View
• Download Walk 7: One Tree Hill figure of eight (near Sevenoaks, 5 miles) View
• Download Walk 8: Shoreham/Otford circular (5 miles) View
• Download Walk 9: Hever circular (4.5 miles) View
• Download Walk 10: Chiddingstone/Penshurst circular (4 miles) View
• Download Walk 11: Knole Park’s Wild Side (3.5 miles) View
• Download Walk 12: Eynsford/Lullingstone circular (4 miles) View
• Download Walk 13: Chislehurst station to Petts Wood station (3.7 miles) View
• Download Walk 14: Shoreham’s mystery eastern valleys (4.5 miles) View
Birds of Kent and Kentish birds
Most walkers will often ask themselves ‘I wonder what that bird is?’ at some point along their favoured trudge, before moving on none the wiser.
On my most recent walk (Shoreham to Eynsford, December 3, 2015) I was lucky to spot a little egret (instantly recognisable) at Shoreham, and later a troop of long-tailed tits followed me along the hedgerows beside the Darent.
Soon after this I came to a young tree with plenty of seed heads draping from its thin branches. There appeared to be no birds in it but I could hear the whirs, whoops and clicks of finches. As I neared, a never-ending stream of birds left the tree – incredibly there must have been at least 75 in there, goldfinches or siskins. Being silhouetted I couldn’t tell exactly what they were.
Now, my mate Dave would have been able to tell me – and in a pleasant non-anoraky style too. He’d also have known what kind of tree it was, what type of birds make that call, and deduced what species they were from what they were eating (if he was on form). If Dave had been there we’d have spotted and heard so much more, but I was on my tod, so apart from the usual jackdaws, robins, parakeets, various gulls, mallards and blue tits, I saw nothing else. But there are a host of exciting birds on these walks – from various owls to tiny goldcrests – and it’s worth knowing what they are, even if you never see them!
So with this in mind I invited Dave to write a page for this website, and here it is.
Autumn becomes winter
That seemed to happen very quickly. A dreamy, misty, surprisingly warm autumn has suddenly snapped into winter with a blast of Arctic air. Truth to tell, the past 10 days have become increasingly turbulent, with high winds stripping the trees of much of their leaves… all those beautiful greens, oranges and reds were too good to last. I know; this happens every year, but somehow it all seems somewhat abrupt each time, in the same way as you feel plunged into darkness when the clocks go back.
So … up for a winter walk? Of the routes on this site, the least affected by mud are usually the Shoreham circular, Shoreham/Otford circular, Shoreham to Eynsford and Downe Circular. You’ll still need boots, but the woodland walks at One Tree Hill and Ide Hill are truly squelchathons come December, although they remain great to do if you have the right footwear (and attitude!). Also excellent are Knole Park and Lullingstone Country park (where you can do a variety of walks arriving at and leaving from Eynsford station, but can also explore on the Shoreham to Eynsford walk). The latter two are great for huge skies and spectacular late afternoon sunlight. Just take a look at winter sun shining on Knole House (pictured).
I’ll soon be adding some more winter pictures on the site and maybe my routes around Knole and Lullingstone (nearly mud-free). So stick around.
Autumn colours around Shoreham and Sevenoaks, Kent
Fine days at this time of year are fantastic for colours and light. All fine days are great of course, but there’s a surprise element when it’s nice in October and November that somehow helps you enjoy country surroundings all the more. Yet some of the finest autumn colours are to be had in London: Dulwich Park, for example, with its variety of trees (the turkey oak by the western perimeter lane is amazing) and also Burbage Rd, nearby, which has some maples of the deepest red right now, yellow-green honey locusts (I think), and wine-coloured cherry plums amid others.
Trees are such a part of the landscape in the city or out in the sticks that most of us hardly bother to stop and wonder. I’d been doing the One Tree Hill walks for years before I noticed the most amazingly tall, straight oak (picture). Great beech trees abound on all of these walks; some of the most extraordinary, again, on the One Tree Hill escarpment (picture).
The images below are from One Tree Hill, Shoreham and, most recently, Ide Hill, which was right on the borderline between foggy and sunny on 1 November.
Summer’s lease
Bit of Shakespeare there… and I prefer the phrase to ‘Indian summer’, I never knew what that meant. Two great weekends in a row prolonging that mournful ‘end of summer’ feeling, which hangs in the mild, limpid air. On September 20 we did the Downe circular walk on Saturday and on Sunday traipsed around a few miles of the Ashdown Forest. In between, I nipped up to East Mersea, near Colchester, to play saxophone at a really good wedding – now that’s an interesting, quiet part of the world (until the band cranked it up, anyway). Back in Kent/East Sussex today we enjoyed perfect temperatures, just a gentle breeze. Near King’s Standing in the Ashdown Forest we watched kestrels, and heard stonechats and goldcrests. There were many dense webs among the heather, which would have made for a good photo, but yours truly forgot the camera. Still, with the iPhone here are a couple of shots… Back to work, and rain tomorrow. But (updating on September 27) another great weekend followed and, after a sojourn in sunny Loughborough, we made it out to Otford late on Sunday in incredibly clear conditions. Could it be three great weekends in a row? Suddenly a high pressure area is sitting over us so I suspect another brilliant walking country weekend is in store… Another update (October 4): amid glorious sunshine we did the Ide Hill walk, marvelling at the hazy late afternoon light, lending the countryside a mystical, timeless glow. Well, it helped me get over the rugby…
Hazy sunshine on October 3 overlooking the Weald from the Ide Hill circular walk point 2
On the lower Darent Valley path near Otford, September 27
Downe circular, mid-September
Gill’s Lap, Ashdown Forest, September 20
Darent Valley ‘cloud forest’
What an appalling bank holiday weekend for weather. I can’t remember one like it; only Saturday morning was up to scratch. And this on top of a week of heavy rain. In need of exercise though, we drove over towards Shoreham and walked for five miles on various paths in the the western Darent Valley above the village to Andrew’s Wood, then through Pilot’s Wood and Meenfield Wood back to where we’d parked (where Shacklands Rd meets Castle Farm Rd and the High St). With the humid, steamy, very damp conditions the woods had the feel of a tropical cloud forest. At the highest points we were in the clouds, draped over the tops of the North Downs. The wildlife consisted of wrens, pigeons and a robin, however; not quite up there with howler monkeys and the three-toed sloth.
Ashdown Forest – great even on rainy days
Just a one-hour drive from south-east London or train journey from London to Tunbridge Wells, Crowborough (nearest station), Uckfield or East Grinstead then bus/taxi/cycle. More info on public transport options here
Further afield than the walks on this site, but not inaccessible from London by train/bus/taxi/bike, is the extraordinary Ashdown Forest (map here) in East Sussex. ‘Forest’ is a misnomer; the word did not originally mean just woodland, it referred to areas where deer were kept for hunting – often in a mixed habitat.
The Ashdown Forest lies on the high weald of sandstone between the chalk of the North and South Downs. It’s a great place for walking – you can wander anywhere, there are few fences and loads of paths. There is scots pine, heather, gorse, rare birds like the dartford warbler, lizards and snakes, many varieties of butterfly, moth and dragonflies. There’s also a lot of history – the area was a favourite hunting ground for Henry VIII (useful for nipping into Hever Castle on the way back too or, if Anne wasn’t in, Bolebrooke Castle), and there was a medieval iron industry in the forest too. On a misty, drizzly, murky day like Monday this week it really resembles parts of Scotland (you wouldn’t be able to see any mountains on such a day anyway).
The pictures here were taken around Gills Lap – a place immortalised by AA Milne in Winnie the Pooh – and Wren’s Warren Valley (Eeyore’s gloomy place in Milne’s stories).
Where to go: Parking is easy in the Ashdown Forest. There are many little car parks from which paths meander off. My favourites are King Standing, Gills Lap, (both off the B2026 from Hartfield and great for high level walks between the clumps of pines), Hollies (off the Nutley Rd near Duddeswell), Lintons (ideal for the Tabell Ghyl walk), and Broadstone (close to the excellent visitors’ centre).
• Mapped walks in the Ashdown Forest from the Ashdown Forest Centre
• Guided walks
• Map of walking routes and carparks
• Forest Row bike hire
Near the Ashdown Forest is a flat off-road cycle route called the Forest Way running 6 miles from Groombridge to Forest Row (bikes for hire in Forest Row). Groombridge (home of the superb manor house, gardens and woodland, Groombridge Place) is on a steam train line – the Spa Valley Railway – between Tunbridge Wells and Eridge, on the edge of the Forest.
Ightam Mote walk added
What a beautiful house Ightam Mote is. A real treasure kept open by the National Trust dating from the 14th century set in lovely gardens and surrounded by woods and hedgerows, oast houses and old stone barns. It’s also at the junction of several excellent walks along the greensand ridge of the North Downs. My newly added walk 6 is one of these. Nearby pubs and villages offer a lot too – Stone Street, Underriver, Plaxtol and West Peckham are all great places to stop off in.
Kent walks near London 