kent

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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Bluebells 2015
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Bluebells 2015

(Read latest bluebell piece for 2020, here) The bluebells, as I write on April 26, are in full swing. They generally love moist, even swampy ground in sun-dappled woodland (so coppiced trees are very good) and south-facing slopes where the drainage isn’t great. The best places for walking amid bluebells – of the walks on this website – are:

1 Ide Hill-Toy’s Hill circular walk via Emmett’s Gardens. Here, bluebells are everywhere. Especially brilliant on the south-facing slope of Emmett’s Gardens.

2 Shoreham circular – extend the walk into the woods above Shoreham to the west, as far as Andrews Wood for great bluebell vistas.

3 Downe circular – at Point 3, instead of turning right towards Downe House, turn left on the path that heads down into woods (in to the valley between Downe and Cudham – an area called Downe Bank, which also contains some orchid varieties). The bluebells here are amazing. In fact every little copse around Downe, Biggin Hill and Cudham has spectacular seas of blue.

Other superb displays can be seen at One Tree Hill (1km south east of Knole Park), near Sevenoaks. Then, and closest to SE London, there is Petts Wood/Hawkwood. For the latter, enter the wood from the entrance under the railway line at the intersection of Towncourt Crescent and Birchwood Road and take the second path on the left and you’ll soon be in the realm of the bluebells (in Edlmann Memorial wood) after passing through a grove of chestnuts.

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Big trouble (sort of) in little Downe

Downe is a quiet village with a big history but it’s home to Nigel Farage’s two local pubs, both of which are pretty decent places for a drop. So, the Ukip leader was ousted from his Sunday lunch in the Queen’s Head last Sunday (22 March) by the Beyond Ukip Cabaret Group who had originally hired the George and Dragon‘s function room (without revealing the nature of their booking).

Having been tipped off that Farage was eating 200 metres down the road at the Queen’s Head, the group speedily headed there. No one likes deserting a family Sunday lunch so I guess what started off as a good humoured affair might have turned a bit ugly. Usually Downe is full of cyclists and walkers at that time, many no doubt enjoying the bonus entertainment provided by the cabaret group, whose desire to represent diversity led them to appear like extras from some under-resourced global disaster movie.

The Downe circular walk

Anyway, let me just reassure you, dear readers, that EU flag-burning nights and torchlit processions behind smouldering Jean-Claude Juncker effigies remain unknown in Downe; it’s just a village dragged reluctantly into the limelight, for a few days only (hopefully).

Read accounts of the protest by a Guardian journalist who joined the cabaret group, and the riposte to his report from the Guardian-reading landlord of the Queen’s Head. Interestingly, many of the protestors have realised that the events were a bit of an own goal, given that Farage’s children and those of other diners in the pub were apparently terrified. To avoid deep depression about the future of the country, don’t read the comments.

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A weather lesson

The viaduct at Eynsford from the latter stages of walk 3, in awful weather

The viaduct at Eynsford from the latter stages of walk 3, in awful weather

I went out this afternoon with my older son for a decent walk around Lullingstone/Eynsford. I hadn’t checked the weather, in fact I hadn’t glanced outside all day (football was on). I was dimly aware of it being windy but somehow had thought it would be mild. We considered going to see Whiplash at the cinema but decided some fresh air would do us good. Fresh?! Horizontal, freezing rain; a wind chill of -3C… well, it shows that even the North Downs have their wild side. The picture above just looks dull; doesn’t do justice to the sheer pain the elements inflicted on us today.

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Mud

Mud near the Roman villa (walk 3)

Mud near the Roman villa (walk 3)

In February the mud league table needs publishing, especially with some quite big rainfalls this past week.

So, from the driest to the wettest and muddiest walk (I haven’t loaded all these walks yet)

1 Knole (where does the water go?)
2 Downe (nothing too serious but popular stretches of paths quite squelchy)
3 Lullingstone river path (nasty, but the river distracts you – and the danger of sliding in)
4 Shoreham (some bad spots, particularly by the river on the way to Eynsford)
5 Toys Hill (soul-sapping seas of mud)
6 One Tree Hill (detours into the brambles will leave your clothes in tatters and your arms bleeding!)
7 Lullingstone path by Roman villa (pictured; after the steps the path is a morass of vile goop with no escape; mercifully short)
8 Andrews Wood slope (you’ll be on your arse in no time at all)

A bucolic welcome to you
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A bucolic welcome to you

Sometimes you just need to get out of the city. Even in good ol’ south east London, with its verdant parks and Victoriana, the urge to swan around in ancient landscapes, free of the roar of traffic, does sometimes come to us all of a weekend. The good news is that there are beautiful fields, woods and villages to walk in just 30 minutes out of town by car or train.

Whether you’ve moved to south east London for work purposes or whether you are from these parts and just haven’t felt the urge to shift your butt into the woods and fields, my aim with this site is, without wishing to be rude, to tell you where to go. I want to share with you the great places you can walk in without much planning and without dedicating too much time to it. Many of the routes are great to take children on, too.