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Autumn becomes winter

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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
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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.

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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…

View of Kent Weald, near Ide Hill

Hazy sunshine on October 3 overlooking the Weald from the Ide Hill circular walk point 2

Otford path

On the lower Darent Valley path near Otford, September 27

Downe

Downe circular, mid-September

Ashdown Forest

Gill’s Lap, Ashdown Forest, September 20

Darent Valley ‘cloud forest’
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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.

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Ashdown Forest – great even on rainy days
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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.

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Ightam Mote walk added
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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.

Summer dusk walks
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Summer dusk walks

The extra hours of daylight means you can even get out into the countryside from south London after work if so inclined. Worth the effort I’d say. Pictured is Darwin’s house from the adjacent field, June 2015 at about 8.20pm; the others are of various fields on Walk 1.

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Ide Hill’s Cock Inn open again. Hooray!

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It’s bad news for Romney Street’s Fox and Hounds (see below) which seems a long way from reopening, but good news for walkers finishing up in or passing through Ide Hill – the Cock Inn has been superbly revamped and is now open after a short period of uncertainty. Here’s the slightly convoluted story of its refurb which sounds like a bit of a planning mix up. Anyway, the end result is good; the place looks excellent and its original character is alive and well. Pictures above from the Ide Hill circular walk.

Ide Hill Walk

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Here’s the gorgeous Otford circular walk … but the Fox and Hounds is closed. Noooooo…

Thunderstorm approaching

Thunderstorm approaching – seen after leaving point 7. April 2012. This storm ended a long warm spell from March to April and ushered in the rain that went on for all of May and much of June that year (spoiling the queen’s regatta among other things)

I’ve finally got around to adding the Otford circular walk. At six miles it’s the longest on this site so far and the most hilly, but it’s worth it. But it’s a crying shame that the halfway-point pub, The Fox and Hounds, has shut down. It had a really good, large beer garden and giant fairytale shoe for kids to play in with a slide on top. I guess it was a bit isolated to survive the rural pub blight – especially in the winter months – not being in a village. Also newly shut is the Austin Lodge golf course, which clearly was suffering from the downturn in golf. There are also quite a number of courses in the area and competition must be tough. Presumably the valley it was in will now go back to farmland, but for now it’s got a rather wistful, wild look to it. The walk, like the others on this site, is within the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The walk is best in April-October – after that it gets too muddy at some points. The first time I did it, in 2005, I got home just in time to see Steve Harmison bowl Michael Clarke in the amazing 2nd Test of that momentous ashes series. A big moment (for some of us anyway), and a great ending to a great day.