May 4, 2003: Ightham Mote to Yalding

It was a beautiful bank holiday Sunday when the walking season for 2003 at last got under way. I had arranged to meet Tosh at 9:45 at Charing Cross – so we left the house shortly before 9:00. Surprisingly, the “we” in such a sentence is meant to include my wife Dorothy, who was once again making a trailside comeback ­– not having walked on any of our trips since 1996! She had been doing a lot of exercise as part of her anti-osteoporosis regime – and so today we would see how she might get on. She wore a small backpack containing lipstick and water and sections of the Sunday papers.

We made orderly progress only as far as Paddington, where the Bakerloo Line developed one of its signal failures. This meant that we had to hike over to the Circle Line and begin a slow progress toward the Embankment station. We weren’t very late and even had time to pick up two cappuccinos from Starbucks before finding the side entrance to Charing Cross (I stumbled on these steps) and entering our train station. Tosh was here already (Harold was in the States); she had just spilled her coffee down her maroon Natural History Museum Kola Peninsula t-shirt. She was wearing a baseball cap with a monogrammed B on it, but in this case it stood for Brussels, where she had been singing with one of her choirs – not Boston. Of course she was greatly surprised to see Dorothy.

I bought round-trip tickets for Yalding, managing to lose one of the returns almost immediately. We were on time for the 10:00 train, spending only thirty-five minutes or so catching up before detraining in Sevenoaks. The girls wanted a loo but the regular one had been closed due to vandalism and so we proceeded out of the station (I stumbled off a curb here too) and found a cab rank. The first driver gently corrected my pronunciation of Ightham Mote (Item seems to be preferred) and we were soon off. One could tell already what a gorgeous day it was – the foliage radiant in spring shades and the sky blue and sunny throughout the day.

When the driver reached the parking lot of the famous manor house there was a lot of traffic and Dorothy was waylaid by an enterprising Girl Scout – who was selling raffle tickets. While this was taking place I attempted to find a way to the front of the property without joining the touring throngs. The National Trust lady seemed disappointed that I didn’t want to view the grounds, though I assured her that I was a member and that we had been here before. She offered directions that bypassed the house but not the loos – where our ladies joined a queue. I waited for them on a little lane, taking my sweatshirt off and preparing the guidebooks in my map case.

I was using sheets from a series prepared by the Kent Ramblers and a lovely pictorial guide (with the route superimposed on OS maps) published in 1992 by Kent Country Council, with text by Bea Cowan. The latter was not really a guidebook and so I relied more heavily on the Ramblers, but here too there had been a number of changes on the ground and it was easy to go astray.

The Greensand Way, on which we had been making desultory progress since 1991, shares a considerable stretch of its route with Chesterton’s London Countryway and Dorothy and I had already walked a section between Ightham Mote and Hurst Green in 1988. Having reached the latter spot with the Lees last year, I now proposed to skip over the already walked section and to continue the eastward journey from the manor house. I was glad I had seen it in its glory on that hot August afternoon fifteen years ago. Now half of it was covered in plastic sheeting and none of it seemed familiar.

Reassembled at last (at 11:10) we walked up to a roadway, headed south, crossed the first on innumerable stiles and headed mostly south into a woodland. Bluebells were abundant here and hillsides were covered in flowering rape; it was beautiful. I paused behind a hedge for a pee; the girls were well ahead of me on a day when I was testing my own legs – which had been beset by sciatica and hip muscle problems of late. (I had been to my physiotherapist four times in the previous weeks). I was also testing a new pair of Timberland boots that I had bought during our two winter months in Santa Monica.

Our route re-entered woodland and then there seemed to be an invitation to use a track, rather than climb a stile, as we approached Shipbourne Church. We climbed up to the churchyard and escaped by using its lych gate. Ahead was a crossroads and to our right the Chaser pub. I warned the others that it might not be open (it was 11:50) but they persisted in entering its muzaked interior, found the place indeed closed, denounced the stale food smell, and retreated.

I was glad I was using my compass, because this was needed to get us moving down the right road across the common. Nevertheless we stayed on the road too long (a white house having turned cream since the Ramblers had last looked) and we were well downhill before I called a halt. (My greatest virtue as a pathfinder is that I can usually tell when we are lost). So I turned us around and we rejoined the Shipbourne cottages and soon located a turn-off sign on the north side of the road (I had been looking south) and, trailed by two other confused GSW walkers) we followed a track up through Fairlawn Home Farm.

More woodland followed and after a few more stiles (not that easy on my hip) we reached the road that led us into Dunk’s Green. It was 12:30 and time for some lunch at the Kentish Rifleman. All the inside tables were booked but we eventually found space at an outdoor table in the beer garden ­­– where Dorothy could face the sun. She had a seafood salad, I the chef’s salad (disdaining the roll like a good Atkinsonian) and Tosh a cheese ploughmans and, inevitably, a cup of coffee. Dorothy drank only mineral water and I Diet Coke. It was lovely to be outside on this warm but fresh day and we lolled about for an hour or so.

Then it was some road walking as we descended a hill, crossed a bridge and looked for a turnoff to our right. Things were pretty well waymarked with GSW signs today, though sometimes these were not always sited in the best spot. There was no ambiguity as we carried forward along a field edge and entered a meadowy grassland but here things no longer seemed to replicate the guidebook instructions. These call for the assistance of some electricity pylons but our route seemed to sweep around them, cross a bridge and head uphill. We were following a couple (she well along in her pregnancy) and I think the front runners (i.e. Tosh) got carried away here – for we missed a stile that should have put us into a field for a diagonal climb toward the converted oast house of Little Egypt. Instead we headed up the hill without this half left turn and there were two surprising consequences. The first was that we encountered another field full of llamas and the second was that we uncovered a hitherto unsuspected pub, the Artichoke.

I vetoed a stop here and we continued uphill past Little Egypt, until the GSW came in on our left. There was another walking party ahead of us, including a blonde Lab, and these folk climbed from the roadway and headed east as we completed the last of our ascent. We had open fields on our right, with wonderful views over the Kent Weald and, sure enough, after a kind of dual carriageway of tracks, we encountered the route of the Weald Way itself. I did not have much of a sense of being here before this, but I did say to Tosh at one time that I did remember that there had been quite a puddle at the bottom of our route, and, indeed, as we neared a cottage with its own pond, the deeply rutted roadway contained some fine examples of standing water.

We continued forward along field edges and then dropped down along a hedgerow, turning left at the bottom with the church at West Peckham before us. We should have entered the churchyard but we did the west and south sides of the village green first – before reaching our old WW lunch spot, the Swan. Here, at about 2:50, we took a picnic table on the green and Dorothy went in for mineral waters and a Diet Coke. It was a wonderful sunny Sunday British scene – with someone on a tractor rolling the grass, a game of rounders in one corner, and lots of walkers about. Next to us was the lovely Lab, having a rest in the grass. I pointed out the table where Toby had perched on the bench, eating his chips. A lad, on his first day of work, came out to clean off our tables. He said this was the pub’s busiest day of the year so far. We had completed five miles (I later added half mile to our days total, making it nine) and now we had three and a half to go.

I must say that Dorothy was doing very well. I could definitely feel a tug in my right hip, but this usually slackened after a rest. Unfortunately Tosh was in her hard charging restless mode and there were precious few of these pauses. I didn’t drag, but I could certainly have used a more leisurely pace; the latter would also have given me a bit more time to study the text.

We continued east on Mereworth Road, leaving the company of the WW, and turning off to our right at a well-hidden manor house, Duke’s. I can’t say I spotted all the landmarks needed to get us across the woodland and fields as we continued in our easterly direction, but the waymarking was good. We emerged at our next roadway at Forge Farm – where someone had parked a large truck containing a Dutch organ.

After crossing the Tonbridge-Maidstone road we continued forward and uphill on tarmac, with woodland on our left (I hid among the bluebells for a pee) – climbing, at the end, up some steps and so into the churchyard of the abandoned East Peckham church. Here I made a small mistake, taking the first exit I saw in the churchyard wall instead or persevering to take a second. I could tell almost right away that we weren’t in the right spot and a gentleman taking photos of the church redirected us.

We had a fine descent, accompanied by woodland, as we reached a valley bottom and the gateway to Roydon Hall, towering above us on the left. We used the hall’s access road but I wasn’t convinced that the GSW was still in compliance here with the old guidebook instructions.

Still, the waymarks encouraged us in our transit over grassland and into Moat Woods, where a long, often wet ascent began. I was getting tired and thirsty but there was no slowing Tosh down; even more worrying was a northern bend in the path – something not alluded to in the guidebook at all. Fortunately I could see such a kink in the pictorial guide so we persevered – Tosh claiming she didn’t like the woods: “I want to get out of here.”

The descent at last brought us to a stile where we climbed into an open field and I paused for a pull on my canteen. As we approached Nettlestead Green I made the mistake of following the hard charging Tosh downhill, but the path she had taken petered out behind some cottage fences and we had to retrace our route back uphill (past a backyard with an hysterical sheepdog) – to a spot where I suspected we should have used a stile to escape into another field in the first place. The proprietors of this establishment were clearly in support of the anti-Saddam Alliance, for they were flying both the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes in their backyard. We passed between two houses and reached the Nettlestead Green road.

We had already missed the 4:33 and I didn’t want to miss the 5:33 so I vetoed another pub stop and we crossed the road and climbed a stile into a large field where a blossoming crop filled all the space before us. There was an ambiguous left leaning arrow in the waymark sign here and Tosh followed a path along the edge of the crop – but when this turned north (opposite to the direction we most wanted) I called for a retreat to the aforementioned stile. Here I took a southern route, one skirting the western edge of the field, a rutted earthen gutter that was quite uncomfortable to negotiate. Fortunately my boots (and the feet inside them) seemed to hold up well. The problem was how to escape the field. There was no exit at the southeast corner so I headed east along the southern edge of the field, cottages on our right and an ICI works beyond them. I suspect that the route we wanted had headed from the last stile in a southeasterly direction across the field – but that there was little evidence of it left because of the vegetation. Tosh said she wouldn’t tread on these plants anyway.

Fortunately I found a grassy corridor out to the street and, when I turned, to the left, I was surprised to see our destination, the Yalding train station, across the tracks. My improvised route now almost seemed like a shortcut. It was 5:15. I looked for a ticket machine (still worrying about that missing return) but there was none. A sour chap pulling on a can of beer, was sitting on the trackside bench (I had to sit on the platform) and he wouldn’t believe that we had walked all the way from Ightham Mote. He had much to say about the war, he didn’t like America (i.e. New York) and he had nothing good to say about any politician. I could have done without his depression – which sucked the life out of a very lovely day.

At about 5:30 the bells sounded and the level crossing arms descended and soon a two-carriage train appeared and we climbed aboard for a short ride to Tonbridge. We had only a five-minute wait here before climbing onto a Charing Cross train – where the girls, who had enjoyed a great day of gossip, returned to their newspapers. The ticket guard very kindly accepted my credit card receipt as evidence that I had started out with two returns, and he didn’t charge me anything more. It was 6:40 when we reached our terminus, with Tosh accompanying us on the restored Bakerloo Line as far as Piccadilly. We were home at 7:20, after a very successful outing.

To continue with the next stage of our walk you need:

Day Eight: Yalding to Sutton Valence

Day walks from London:

If you are looking for additional London-based walking opportunities you may want to have a look at our experiences on the following routes:

A Chilterns Hundred

The Chiltern Way

The Green London Way

The Greensand Way

The London Countryway

The London Outer Orbital Path

The North Downs Way

The Ridgeway Path

The Saxon Shore Way

The South Downs Way

The Thames Path

The Vanguard Way

The Wealdway