August 27, 1983: Dunton Green to Borough Green
Tosh and Harold at the Rising Sun
Four weeks later, on Saturday, August 27, 1983, I returned to Dunton Green for my sixth day of walking on the North Downs Way. I was accompanied by another former colleague from the Humanities Department of M.S.U., Roy Matthews, and by Tosh and Harold Lee, who were beginning their very first stint as my faithful walking companions.
In the preceding eventful weeks I had ended my brief career in retail – with Tony Babarik’s unexpected decision to wind up Between the Sheets. Almost as surprising, I was now about to start the fall term at the American School as Jim McGovern’s full-time replacement – for the indefinite period needed by him to recover from the shock of a failed pancreas. Much of this sudden transformation in status had been due to the intercession of Tosh, now my boss as acting chair of the English Department, and I was anxious that she have a good time after our many recent conversations on the subject of walking. She and Harold had been our dinner guests on Thursday and they were well-prepared for today’s outing – which began at 9:00 with a rendezvous near the ticket counter at Charing Cross.
The Lees were already there when I struggled up from the depths of the underground, heavily laden with liquid against the possibility of another searing sky – like the one endured on the last walk. As it turned out, almost none of it was needed: the day was warm and sunny but a tad cooler than last time and with fewer open stretches.
Tosh was wearing a dress, which she felt would be cooler than trousers, and a red hat with a long bill. In the brim she deposited wild flowers throughout the day – looking more exotic (schoolmarm commando) as the day wore on. Harold was a model of trailside neatness; he carried a small shoulder bag which contained an essential supply of toothpicks. None of the other walkers wore boots but then we never encountered a wet patch.
Tosh bought me a cup of coffee while we waited for Roy. Then we all bought second-class singles to Dunton Green. Roy and Harold began a long exchange of information about their careers in History and overseas studies – ah that musty old academic dance – like two Bull Terriers sniffing out each other’s territory.
We had a few minutes to wait for our 9:24 train and about 45 minutes of gentle chatter before arriving in Dunton Green. Two other walkers preceded us under the pedestrian tunnel and along the paved path to the village center – but we soon lost track of them and I don’t know what direction they took. On a bench I adjusted my pack, put on my silver-rimmed glasses, and got out my camera and guidebook. I had just obtained the long-delayed HMSO guide by Denis Herbstein. I found the style a bit too cheery, but the volume itself was quite useful, especially as it contained colored versions of the OS maps and updates on controversial portions of the route. We started walking about 10:20.
We rejoined the NDW at the Rose and Crown but at the Donnington Manor we got lost in the parking lot – that is it took us a while to find the overgrown entrance to our path, one which climbed along a hedgerow next to a recently burned wheat field – a method of post-harvest treatment that the Iowans disapproved of. We crossed a rail line and descended to the suburb of Willow Park, west of Otford. Orchards stood on either side of us and a farm offered homegrown produce. We had to dodge cars on their way up the lane in pursuit of these vegetables and we exchanged greetings with Saturday gardeners as we walked along their pavements, passed over the clear Darent river, and up the main drag of Otford – a very nice village street crowded with shoppers.
Tosh inquired if we could stop for a drink and I was surprised to see the pubs already open. “I’m going in here anyway,” she announced, heading for the ladies room at the Bull. So the rest of us followed her inside and each of us had a half lager at 11:20! The bar staff were most amusing. We had a long chat about licensing hours and I was brought up to date on the state of play on day three of the New Zealand Test. When it was time to go Tosh obligingly indicated that they were just waiting my signal and the bartender interrupted, “You don’t want to follow him; he stops at every pub.” As we exited, another chap provided us with a summary of how to reach every other licensed premises in Otford!
I took a few pictures as we chugged uphill to the railway station and turned right after several dangerous pedestrian crossings. I warned the others to walk facing the traffic but there was only a little road walking before it was time to ascend Otford Mount. Our legs protested at this sudden sharp incline but, after all, this was the only substantial bit of uphill all day. Today’s route proved to be far more beautiful than I had imagined, with lots of shady hedgerows and wooded sections. We paused to look back down on Otford before ascending the next stile; there seemed to be dozens today, with pretty good Kent waymarking. There were even a few waymarked stiles in spots where the fence they were meant to span had long since disappeared – so that they stood in splendid isolation in the middle of nothing. Tosh asked Harold if that white pillar on the top of the Mount was for keeping bees. I had to explain to them that it was an OS trig column.
After a wonderful woodland stroll we neared the entrance to Hildenborough Hall. The route once went north of this Christian conference center, now it went south; indeed, a small section had been made official here only since the publication of the HMSO volume. It proved to be a narrow file through a field with wire fences at either elbow – you can cross my land but do it quickly. We saw one sign that said baldly what this fence only implied, “No picnics, no dogs, no game playing.” “But walking is a game,” I shouted. A fly-pestered horse put his nose over the fence as we marched past. Then we began a descent around the grounds of the Hall, doubling back on top to reach our summit track – again in delightful woods.
At 1:15 we reached the turnoff to the Rising Sun pub at Ashdown Farm – even marked in tiny script on a yellow style sticker – but the route away from the NDW was shorter than that to Knockholt. The pub, however, though much more remote, was even more crowded. We found a table inside and had pints and ploughmans. Just as this was the first time that I had ever had more than one walking companion, so today was the first walk on which I had managed (in spite of the jokes at the Bull) to get in two pub stops in a single day. I would do better than this in the future.
We were all having a grand time. My only objection was to the squawking of the barside tannoy when food orders were ready to be picked up. At one point we heard, “We have a public announcement to make. Will the person who nicked the salt please return it to the counter.” While he was doing this, Roy fell into conversation with a chap who had a Michigander in his party. Outside, and after a photography session, Roy went over to meet this chap from Petosky. He was a hospital administrator well-acquainted with Roy’s next door neighbor in Okemos!
We regained our path and continued through woods to a road. Near Cotman’s Ash we encountered a solo walker very intent on making progress with the aid of the magenta-colored OS map alone. A few stiles later I warned my lot not to be lead astray by this chap, who had clearly taken the wrong line across a field for want of a proper guidebook. Sure enough we could soon see him righting himself as he reached an impenetrable wire fence and a few minutes later we found him having lunch next to a stile. “I thought there was a pub hereabouts,” he complained in a strong West Country accent. The recent rerouting of the walk had cost him a pint at the Rising Sun. We commiserated and pressed on in a lovely wood with tall beeches, coming out after a sly dogleg onto the tarred road to Kemsing.
Across this space and down the hill there was an ambiguous NDW arrow pointing off the road. I lead my lot down a steep wash and stopped to check my references while we had a brief rest and consumed some liquid. The solo walker caught up with us here, having charged down the road because he hadn’t quite understood what the arrow required. We discovered that, at 3:00 in the afternoon, he still had to reach Chatham on the other side of the Medway – that is, go beyond our day’s destination and cover all of the next day’s walk too! I don’t approve of these breathless marathons; indeed, this chap now said goodbye and started to run down the hill toward our turn off onto the Pilgrim’s Way Lane to Wrotham.
Tosh tried to slide down the steep grassy slope but here she was impeded by her skirts. I had removed a Between The Sheets plastic bag and my Swiss Army knife and on the lane, heavily scented with hedge flowers, I collected samples for later identification. Tosh harvested dry specimens for an arrangement at home and added her own contributions to my bag, including a tiny scarlet pimpernel. I rejected the spike of rosebay willowherb that she tried to palm off on me next – “I know that one already.” Her own hat now looked like something left over from a carnival, but Harold made her get rid of most of the foliage as we neared civilization. It was still warm but there was cover in this lane. We encountered a number of berry pickers and dogs and one old toothless granny who identified one of the hedge flowers for us as “old man’s beard.” “That’s not its right name, ” she shouted after us, “that’s its country name.”
I had to be careful with the turn off in Wrotham so as to be able to pick up just the right spot for our next encounter with the NDW – which we now had to leave behind. Tosh and I were even talking about bringing students along sometime. I suggested a last break in a park, where we shared an orange soda and ate apples. It was shortly after 4:00 as we descended through little Wrotham and headed along tarmac toward Borough Green and its railway station. We were now pretty tired and I was a bit anxious about finding the station, as it lay three quarters of a mile or so south of the edge of my map. In the event I had guessed the distance correctly and we were soon buying tickets for the Victoria train, which arrived at 4:45. Borough Green – if only I could have guessed how many times I would use this station during walks over the next few years. In reaching it today we had walked a whole Pounds worth – that being the difference in price between this morning’s ticket and this afternoon’s.
Our return journey brought us back through Otford. I suggested that if we had detrained here and walked back to Dunton Green we could have used day return tickets – but no one was amused by this idea. The others napped. When we got to Victoria there was no one, as at Dunton Green this morning, to collect our tickets. We could have done the entire day’s journey without any tickets for all that Southern Region knew. “I don’t cheat British Rail,” Tosh remarked sternly.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: