September 12, 2003: Little Chart to Ham Street

Only nine days after Day 9  (but twelve years after Day 1) the Lees and I were ready to conclude our adventures on the Greensand Way. Thirteen miles were needed to bring the walk to an end and, given the considerable distance from London to faraway Kent, we had to make an early departure. There was a choice between a 7:30 and a 7:55 train; the only advantage in the first of these was that with it we could have used bus service 523 to Little Chart; with the aid of a taxi the 7:55 would get us to the Swan pub in this village at almost the same time – and so we chose the later train.

Our young Fritz was not at all happy to see me leave without him on a sunny Friday morning at 7:00. I needed to buy only a chocolate bar when I arrived at Charing Cross. My request for a return to Ham Street was greeted by the Russian lady behind the ticket window with the retort, “You go underground, downstairs.” I persisted in my petition, arguing that you couldn’t get to rural Kent on the underground and, after looking it all up, she agreed to sell me the required ticket. At the Lees favorite coffee kiosk I bought a cappuccino and an apple Danish, drinking some of my coffee while Tosh and I waited for Harold to come back with his chocolate bar.

The rest of my drink was consumed aboard another derelict slamdoor Connex Southeast train – which was ready for boarding and gratifyingly on time. There wasn’t as much gossip to exchange this time, though Tosh continued her schadenfreude over the War in Iraq until I pointed out one logical inconsistency in her argument – to which she responded, “You should have been a lawyer.” In the meantime I had discovered an article in the Metro detailing the damaging effects on a Combe Martin caravan of a cow who had fallen over a cliff  – “at last, a weapon of mass destruction.”

We arrived at Ashford at 9:16. Tosh had to use the staff loo since the ladies had been vandalized (again), and then we wandered out in front of the station where a cab was just pulling in. We had a very nice driver who asked us a number of questions about our walk, making sure that we wanted the Swan in Little Chart – since there was also one in Great Chart. We assured him this was correct and within ten minutes we were there. I paid £11.50 for his services and we got our gear together in the parking lot of the pub in question – taking to the road at the start of our last expedition on the Greensand Way at 9:30.

We traveled only a few hundred feet back along the road we had just come before being invited into a field for a diagonal ascent of a grassy hill – with no evidence of any real path. The field was full of cows (Tosh stepped into a pile of cowflop almost immediately) and there were quite a few additional fences to hop over as we ascended. We had cleared one of these when I noticed that we had just quit the company of a gigantic golden bull, who was taking his genitals for a walk behind us.

It was chilly in the breeze and Harold put his rain jacket on, but the winds soon died down and the day grew warmer. We had to keep our eyes peeled for a number of stiles on this hilltop (where there were actually views to the north for once) but we were successful in crossing a plank bridge and circumventing some hilltop buildings as we used a roadway to reach the hamlet of Little Chart Forstal. A cricket pavilion stood at one end of the green of this tiny place but I was chiefly interested in making a pilgrimage to a place called the Granary, a converted barn that had served as the home of one of my favorite storytellers, H.E. Bates. I had brought my camera with me for a shot of this unmarked shrine; earlier in the year they had been showing the famous Bates-based TV series, The Darling Buds of May – the program that had brought to our attention for the first time the considerable charms of one Catherine Zeta Jones.

After passing the last house of Little Chart Forstal we were again directed into a field for a diagonal transverse; walking conditions were good under foot, in spite of the absence of a real path, and we soon reached a stile in a hedge (there were dozens of stiles today). We crossed a road and followed a nice path through Coldham Wood, reaching a footbridge over the River Stour. Unfortunately a cornfield greeted us on the opposite bank and, though there seemed to be a footpath through the tall vegetation, this degenerated and we were soon fighting our way through stalks that slashed at our heads.

Eventually we reached Hothfield Common, a rare patch of bracken and heather (which seemed already to have gone to seed). I was looking for an abrupt turn to the south here and I found it; it led us along a concrete walkway accompanied by more woodland. We never found an advertised tennis court as we crossed fields and climbed stiles; there was a hill to climb as well. Then two large trees served as a landmark for a while as things leveled off. You had to admit, in this low farmland dotted with new housing developments, that the scenery on this day was turning out to be decidedly second rate.

We kept Hothfield church on our right as we descended a hillside; there were considerable ambiguities here. The countryside had a few ups and downs, but nothing seemed to slow us down and I could see that we were easily going to make it to our lunchtime village by twelve noon.

We crossed a road and took a turn around a wartime blockhouse. Our route, paralleled by the road we had just crossed, lead us into woodland and onto the grounds of Godington Park, whose Jacobean mansion was not really visible from our paths. We did cross several roads on this estate, finding some difficulty in finding an escape stile from the last field. Our route now turned south (after miles of south east as the dominant direction) and we were accompanied by Loudon Wood on our right as we circled its bottom (amid a number of route variations dictated by another new housing estate) to face Great Chart, our noontime village about a mile ahead of us.

The way forward was now easy, a trackway over the Great Stour again, then the railway line, and finally into the village itself. Here we turned right, quickly finding the Swan mentioned by our cab driver. It was just going 12:00 and we had walked five and half miles. Tosh ordered a beef and horseradish sandwich (complaining about the superfluous paper napkin on which this creation perched) and a pint of shandy and Harold and I had Stella and fish and chips. This was a friendly pub, with two resident dogs. Tess, a doe-eyed Lab eyed our plates longingly before being told to depart the premises by the landlady. The Lees ordered coffee even before the end of their meal – Tosh being on her best behavior here because we had agreed to try for an earlier train at the end of the day.

As we left at 12:45 we passed a second pub, a rather shabby rival called either the Hooden Horse or the Hooded Horse – both spellings were available. The pub sign did have a cartoon version of a horse with a blanket over it – and a bunny rabbit, which evidently replaced an earlier Red Riding Hood figure. Hooden?

Everyone agreed that it was not easy to get going again – too little rest, too much beer. Nevertheless we continued up to the church and turned left, soon escaping village life for a series of fields. The first of these contained several curious horses; we petted them and then had to scramble under some strands of wire to make the needed progress up to a field corner. A bridge over a motorway bypass was reached at this point and we climbed a hill that seemed to be the local graveyard for abandoned vehicles. We passed four of these burned out hulks, Tosh growing ever more nervous, before reaching a road that brought us by the entrance to a quarry.

A turn off to the left put us along a headland path (“headland” in the vocabulary of the text I was using seemed to signify nothing more than any path along the field boundary). Earthen surfaces were a bit more comfortable today – and I had started with a precautionary Band-aid blister-block bandage on my left heel. We turned right with the field edge and it was almost by accident that I peeked through a stile to discover that we belonged on the left not the right side of a hedge.

I had to pick the lock of a chain barring our progress through a gate (well, I had to untie it at any rate). Tosh, who wanted to climb the gate (we had to do this on a number of occasions today too) said, “I just wouldn’t have the patience for that.” Once through this obstacle we reached the road and followed it for a turnoff to Chilmington Green. We never reached this village – for our route left its road for a farm track, where we were actually overtaken dustily by a farmer in a car.

The text suggested that we continue forward when the track petered out but Tosh discovered a stile with a Greensand Way marker inviting us to climb over a fence and proceed in a northeasterly manner toward a line of woods ahead. This was clearly some sort of variation in the route we expected but it still seemed to be heading in the right direction and I wasn’t too worried that we would be delayed in our quest for the 5:02 at Ham Street.

A tractor was ploughing the huge field ahead of us and we had to step over the furrows as we made our way toward the wood. We passed through a brief stretch of trees and found ourselves on a road – much father to the north than the original route had suggested. No matter, we were now well placed to continue over several fields and emerge at last on the road into Kingsnorth. As we neared civilization Tosh came up behind a gent who was picking something from the bushes in front of his house and said, “What are you picking there?” The poor guy jumped a foot before explaining that it was just blackberries for the annual preparation of blackberry and apple jam.

Ahead I could see several motorcycles parked at the corner and I was just wondering if this meant a rather rough crowd in our mid-afternoon pub when I realized that our pub was across the street (the vehicles in question belonged to the motorcycle showroom across the street.) It was about 2:00 when we entered, through the back door, the Queen’s Head.

Each of us had a half and visited the loos (a playing card queen decorated the ladies room door, a king the gents). The rafters of this place were decorated with drying hops and Tosh plucked a handful, having forgotten to send Margie a sample of this Kent specialty after our last walk. We didn’t linger long and continued uphill in suburban surroundings past the church hall (with its Yellow Elephant play group), St. Michael’s and All Angels Church itself, and a graveyard that was left purposefully untended in order to encourage local flora.

At the top of a hill we crossed several fields in the direction of Bond Farm – which offered lamb as its specialty. We had just pushed through a wrought iron gate into the farmyard when a gent drove in – only to be accosted by Mrs. Lee with a question about the lamb. “It’s got nothing to do with me,” was his response.

We headed uphill to clip a corner of woodland (not pausing to visit the nearby pet cemetery) and turning left on another field edge path – abandoning this for a power pole that was our signal to cross the field itself. A few more field crossings put us out on the appropriately named Stumble Lane.

We turned off this road after only a few steps and followed a road past a caravan camp and, as our surface degenerated to farm track, into the confines of Braeside Farm. Tosh wanted to pluck apples from a tree here but I discouraged her from doing this (there were farm workers about and you didn’t want to give walkers a bad name). At the end of the track there were some ambiguities about how to proceed. A GSW marker pointed to the right but an impromptu wooden gate fastened by orange cord blocked progress. Ahead there was an elderly gent with a sheepdog; he saw our indecision and shouted, “Just put a leg over it!”

This we did and we were soon on a long southerly journey through sheep country (Tosh also stepped in sheep shit now). The gent held open another wreck of a gate for us as he and the dog made their own way down this lane on official business. We reached Lone Barn Farm and circled its pond – here I was able to tell Tosh that she had reached her 2200th milestone on British footpaths – as Harold had done only a few days earlier.

We continued forward to a corner of Golden Wood where we were invited to climb a stile and turn left; a train went by ahead of us – this made sense since we were supposed to be heading for the rail line, but I was unprepared for another busy bypass, one not mentioned in the text or a shown on the map at all. Indeed it seemed to have been constructed on the route of the Greensand Way itself; the latter had to content itself with a thin trod in the litter strewn verge for several hundred yards. Here we could see the advertised railway crossing, reached only after a dash across the highway.

The gate at the far side of the crossing had collapsed and could not be opened any longer so we did have to climb it too. A brief patch of wet woodland (the only time I saw mud in a countryside parched of any moisture in this long dry summer) was entered and we turned south again. Just as I had been surprised by the appearance of a motorway I now discovered that a road clearly visible on my map had been erased. Our direction forward was pretty obvious – we just had to keep woodland on our left  – but the farther south we got the weaker the footpath became. We thrashed our way through the margins of the wood and reached a sere field with knee high vegetation and no evidence of any footsteps on its surface. The only people using the GSW, it seemed, were the heroic souls who erected all the stiles (many were derelict) and the waymarks – and us.

There was supposed to be a stile in the hedge opposite but no one could see where it was and we headed too far to the east – where it looked like there was a break in the hedge (curious how one yellow leaf at several hundred yards looks like a waymark). We arrived at a field corner but there was barbed wire here and a ditch after that and we decided that it was too dangerous to cross here. I could see a road junction over the hedge and this permitted me to determine that we had come too far to the left. So I ordered a retreat to the west along the hedge in question and within a minute we had found our overgrown stile.

This put us onto a road and we followed it first right, then left. Ahead I could see a familiar waymark, not the GSW’s church, but the green Viking helmet of the Saxon Shore Way; we had reached a junction with a route we had walked in June 2000 and we were soon on familiar ground in Ham Street Woods. A gentleman with a dog saw me looking at my map. “Are you lost?” he asked. “Not yet,” I replied. In fact I knew how to complete the rest of the walk without the confusing set on instructions that were now issued by this man. Though the GSW text had ended the map was easy to follow and I pretty well remembered this woodland lane anyway.

I took my sunglasses off (I had put them on only after lunch, where I had at last removed my sweatshirt), snuck behind a tree for a quiet pee, and, when I had caught up with the Lees, assured them that, with our speedy pace, we still had fifteen minutes in hand. At this point Tosh began to complain that I should have pre-planned for an extra fifteen minutes on the station platform anyway – since this was cutting it much too finely. I wanted to know how I was to do this – “So which part of today’s activity should I have curtailed so that we could arrive fifteen minutes earlier than we’re going to arrive now anyway?” Harold, not amused by this foolishness, mulled over the possibilities – a thirty minute lunch, no stop in Kingsnorth, an earlier train – and finally Tosh had to apologize for this suggestion. She’d have her revenge on Harold for taking my side, though; dinner was to be beans and eggs and they were out of eggs at the Lee household – where they had just sold their last London car.

As it was we now neared the parking lot at one corner of the woods and I lead us on a westward diversion that I remembered from our SSW adventures, climbing several stiles (still bearing GSW markers) and emerging at trackside. We crossed the rails and took a bench on the platform of Ham Street’s station; it was 4:45 and I had now walked the entire Greensand Way.

I ate a bag of crisps and a banana. A young curly-haired woman with a Levi Straus t-shirt joined us on the platform and soon announced the arrival of the train. A red-headed guard in glasses supervised our boarding at 5:02 but before sitting down Tosh began to fuss with her hops – which had fallen apart in her pocket and which she now proceeded to throw out the window of the speeding train. Some of these leaves blew back in my face and others hit the guard in the next carriage and he jokingly reprimanded the lady for throwing objects from a moving train; she rushed off to apologize.

There was a brief pause in Ashford where we changed trains. The Lees bought coffee but Tosh couldn’t be restrained from boarding our next carriage before it had been properly coupled with the rest of the Charing Cross train (in spite of announcements not to do this) and the consequence was that she fell over when, with a jerk, the union was at last affected.

Aboard this train there were other senior delinquents: two guys with the last extant donkey jackets sitting in a puddle of beer cans (one was soaked in beer himself). They didn’t actually know where they were going and had to ask other passengers the destination of this train. I called Dorothy on the mobile, shared my bar of chocolate with the Lees and dozed between Tonbridge and Sevenoaks. We arrived at Charing Cross at 6:35 and, saying goodbye to my walking partners, I made my way stiffly down the long corridors to the Bakerloo Line. Next to me a chap was reading a large volume of poetry by Charles Bukowski – whose work I had started to publish in my little magazine, Nomad, 45 years ago! My Greensand Way adventures were over.

Footpath Index:

England: A Chilterns Hundred | The Chiltern Way | The Cleveland Way | The Coast-to-Coast Path | The Coleridge Way | The Cotswold Way | The Cumberland Way | The Cumbria Way | The Dales Way | The Furness Way | The Green London Way | The Greensand Way | The Isle of Wight Coast Path | The London Countryway | The London Outer Orbital Path | The Norfolk Coast Path | The North Downs Way | The Northumberland Coast Path | The Peddars Way | The Pennine Way | The Ridgeway Path | The Roman Way | The Saxon Shore Way | The South Downs Way | The South West Coast Path | The Thames Path | The Two Moors Way | The Vanguard Way | The Wealdway | The Westmorland Way | The White Peak Way | The Yorkshire Wolds Way