June 13, 1984: Wye to Sandling
From this vantage point it is possible to see the church tower at Postling.
Hoping to avoid a repetition of the conditions that had so unsettled the previous outing, I decided to abandon the car as our primary form of transportation; my fiftieth day of walking (Monday, June 13, 1984) brought a return, therefore, to British Rail. There was a good, fast Charing Cross connection at 8:55. Tosh had a day off because of exam week at ASL and I had enjoyed pretty much of a free schedule with the return to work, at the beginning of the month, of Bill McKee – for whom I had been substituting in Middle School English. Harold, Dorothy, and Bertie completed our party.
Our train was late, about nine minutes, and this meant that our connection at Ashford was a bit chancy, since only three minutes had been provided for this transfer by the timetable architects. I didn’t mind waiting around for another train so much, but it was obvious that a guilt-ridden Tosh, with much to do at home, wanted us to return on the 4:46 – and this didn’t seem at all likely at this stage. I was often bothered by the addition of such pressures – which often distort the flavor of a walk.
We drank coffee and scrambled aboard our train when it finally arrived. An hour later we discovered our connecting train still waiting for us. At about 10:15 we were once again in Wye and the ever-excited Bertie had managed to bung himself up with his first roadside doo doo of the outing. Tosh made a candy bar stop.
Having reached Dover last time, it was now time to head for Dover – but this time we would do it via Folkestone, rather than Canterbury. The first of two days needed to complete this task began with a walk along Bridge and Church Streets and through the grounds of the agricultural college. It was funny to be walking on a weekday; we could look into classroom windows and see the students at their desks. We passed several allotment gardens and began a walk up a track beneath the downs. An Edward VII coronation crown was cut in the chalk of the hillside above us.
It was a humid day, often warm when the sun was about, but there was a cool breeze to keep things in proportion. On the whole, it was less bright and more hazy than last time, and the visibility was only a few miles at best; I took few pictures this day. We had our first rest in the junipers (not many of these in evidence) near the top of our hill. Bertie received the first of innumerable bowls of water and Dorothy and I had some wine gums.
After a little bit of road walking we climbed the first of dozens of stiles and reclaimed the grassy crest of the Wye Downs, not far from the top of the king’s coronet. We followed a fence, somewhat conservatively, for the route seemed to lie close to the edge at a number of points. It was very pleasant walking on grass but as we neared the Devil’s Kneeding Trough we encountered a large school party, one that considerably slowed our progress at the stiles. “Devil’s Kneeding Trough,” Harold snorted, “where I come from they call this a gulch!”
Tosh kept looking for an opportunity to pass the kiddies at some tree-side lecture site, but they continued to block our passage for a number of minutes. “They making you learn a lot?” she asked one shy ten year-old lad. “The minimum,” he responded. Fortunately the group turned down the hill at Cold Blow Farm and we continued along our crest, a field full of Holsteins rushing over to see us; one cow with a barbed-wire inspired bloody nose.
Walking was very easy along trackways. After the triangulation pillar on Brabourne Downs we walked down a road with fenced sheep on either side. Bertie, who usually resembles a bunny rabbit on a rampage, was so delighted by this vista that he jumped up and down like a lamb himself. We were pressing forward at some pace now because we wanted some drinking time at the Anchor Inn. We walked along one of the roads of Stowting inside a field whose verge had been scorched with chemicals. The guidebook warned us that the route rejoined the road opposite the pub so we were a bit disconcerted when we debouched opposite a new bungalow.
Harold and I spotted an umbrella table in front of the next house and so we pressed on to discover the hostelry in question, renamed the Tiger, locked against all comers – “closed for lunch on weekdays.” We stood on the doorstep in uncomprehending outrage. It was a moment of cultural confusion for Americans – who long before this should have been inured to the vagaries of British commercial enterprise. I suppose with the more liberal licensing laws of a later era the Tiger added Saturday and Sunday to its closed season as well.
We wandered on to a crossroads where an Irish Wolfhound the size of a pony cavorted in a backyard. I suggested that we follow the road to the turnoff for Cobb’s Hill. A deliveryman in a van stopped us to ask for directions. When we had climbed up the steep hill a bit we collapsed in the grass and ate our lunch, unbothered by the attentions of any publican. Of course my companions had eaten most of their lunch on the hoof, as it were, but Dorothy had packed a lot of food we could now share round. Best of all, considering our recent disappointment, I had packed two cans of beer. Thus we got over our vexation by supping John Smith bitter. The dog had some meal and biscuits and some more water and, since Tosh was still keen to make the 4:46, we packed up after only a few minutes and inched up the rest of the hill.
The others were delighted by today’s scenery but I found too little variation in the endless downtop fields. Perhaps if visibility had been better all this would have changed but, indeed, as we marched along the field verge opposite Monks Horton, I asked Dorothy, “Would it surprise you very much if it started to rain soon?” Just the opposite happened, however, because it became sunny again. By this time we were beginning our descent – and we now lost any chances for more extended vistas.
Harold was far ahead of us in the grass; the loyal family dog was by his side and Dorothy and I, using them as our bearing, cut a corner below Monks Horton and caught up with the Lees as they were puzzling out how to proceeded. Above us was a high acornless stile onto a road. I climbed it to see what was on the other side – another overgrown stile, this time with an acorn on it. So we crossed the road and proceeded east in a narrow slit in the grain; the hedgerow that followed was also overgrown and both Tosh and I got stung by brambles, even through our trousers. The next day Tosh appeared at school with a bright red ring of rash above each ankle.
Our path led us down to a pass between hills; a tall electricity pylon towered above us. It was not easy to figure out how to continue. On a little hillock I found an uprooted acorn post but its arrow was no longer particularly useful. Our line required eastward movement so I plunged over the hill, Dorothy clinging to my knapsack once again. We found one further acorn at the bottom but thereafter waymarking seemed to come to an end – and I am convinced that the fence-side paths we followed only shadowed some of the spaghetti twistings of the official route above us. We had a last rest overlooking Postling’s farmyard church and descended a steep hill to cross a stile near the village crossroads – much too far to the south.
We then walked up the road from the telephone kiosk toward Staple Farm. It was warm between the hedgerows and the dog was limping on his left hind leg – probably the result of a slight strain caused when he had been deposited too abruptly on the ground after being handed over a stile to Dorothy – who had recoiled from this squirming burden when it had placed two indelibly muddy paw prints on the front of her white t-shirt.
At Staple Farm we left the NDW and turned south to reach the railway station at Sandling. Neither of my guidebooks had mentioned this halt, but, though two miles off-route, it does allow day-at-a-time walkers the opportunity of breaking the long Wye-Dover run at a point somewhere near mid-course. This turned out to be an uncomfortable stretch of road walking, with a charging Tosh reigning in a reluctant Bertie every few minutes. Unfortunately the dog continued to have a tendency to walk on the left – even at times when pedestrians are supposed to face oncoming traffic by walking on the right. After a mile we inherited a pavement and this made things easier. The motorway had been added since the printing of my OS mapbook, but a turn to the left along Sandling road soon brought us to the rail line. I stepped into a crater in the tarmac on this bit of downhill and twisted my ankle – but the boot prevented a recurrence of the Canterbury injury.
We had been racing along, still in quest of the 4:46. “I would have enjoyed this day considerably more,” I told Dorothy, “if we had aimed for the 5:46.” The breathless quality of today’s march had diminished my enjoyment of the outing which, at last, came to an end ten minutes before train time when we reached the parking lot of the station, still full of the cars of commuters. The stationmaster did not insist on a separate fee for the Sandling-Ashford portion of the trip, but punched our Wye returns for us instead. We had only a short wait before the Charing Cross train sped us to the city. It had been another day of milestones – Harold’s 100th mile, my fiftieth day, the eve of our twentieth wedding anniversary, and, at Sandling station, mile 650.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: