July 31, 1989: Sole Street to Borough Green

On Monday, July 31, 1989, the Lees and I began to walk the Wealdway, an eighty-mile route from Gravesend on the Thames to Eastbourne on the Channel. In fact, we had recently covered the first three miles of the route, which are identical to the London Countryway’s passage from Gravesend to Sole Street – on February 6, 1988. That is why we chose to make our first assault on the new route from Sole Street, the Kent village we now reached by train from Victoria at a little past 10:00. We were also accompanied by our dog Toby and by Jennifer Banks, who was visiting us from Michigan – where she and I had been colleagues in East Lansing. (Today was, alas, just another working day for Dorothy.) Now the Lees pored over their papers as we traveled from Victoria.

It had been a month since we had completed Offa’s Dyke Path but the chief impediment to an earlier resumption of our walking hobby had been the weather – 1989 turning out to provide the warmest and driest July since 1976. Today was almost the first walkable day in a month. It was sunny but not too hot and the skies soon became overcast. I walked in a t-shirt all day. We had shorts with us but the overgrown condition of the path did not permit us to wear them.

We paused for picture taking in front of the nearby Railway Tavern. Then, instead of following the LCW in an easterly direction, we headed out of town, at 10:15, on a southerly route, following the road until it curved – and continuing forward on a wide track. Toby was unleashed here; he got to run free for the first time and did extremely well all day in spite of an occasional skip on his right rear leg.

We were somewhat shaded from the sun in the trees that lined the track. We turned east, reigning in the dog while we passed a cottage, and continuing until we met the LCW crossing our path from left to right. I remembered this corner, with its funny little homemade signs erected by the local ramblers group, from May, 1988 – when Harold and I had walked this section of the LCW.

We headed uphill next to a hedgerow, crossed a stile, and headed downhill, with woods on our right. At our next stile things were rather overgrown. But once we had cleared the undergrowth it was possible to see our path heading off to the left, with an impressive valley containing Luddesdown and its church, to our right.

According to the RA’s guide to the Wealdway we should have descended to the bottom of the valley at the next stile, but there was a WW sign here inviting us to continue forward. This we did, heading east instead of the desired south. I could see us pull opposite the church, our goal, and then pass it by as we only slowly descended to the road – following a footpath clearly marked on the OS map. A horsewoman crossed in front of us just before we hit the road. A beautiful field of purple flowers blossomed on the far side of our road.

We now had to head back to the church on tarmac, not much of a detour, and, after a turnoff to the left, I could again see a WW sign beckoning us to climb a steep bank next to the churchyard’s perimeter fence. Here we had our first rest and a snack. I discovered that, although I had plenty of water with me, I had forgotten the dog’s bowl! However it turned out that he rather enjoyed licking water from the screw cap on one of the canteens. He would drink four or five of these capfuls every time we stopped. (By the end of the day he had finished most of the first canteen himself.) Jennifer now discovered that, in spite of the ceremonial picture taking at the beginning of the walk, she had no film in her camera.

After our rest we stood up and I began to look for a way forward. It was clear from both the OS map and the guide that our route continued south from the church but the only footpath behind the church, although it bore a number of similarities to the guidebook maps, was heading too far to the west. This was confirmed when Harold extracted my compass from the top of my pack. After a third of a mile we even encountered a road – which was a sure sign to me that we had taken a wrong turning. I ordered a long retreat to the church, where my scouting encountered only wire fences.

Finally I decided to believe the compass. We were supposed to be heading south and if the only way to do this was to climb back down to the road and continue around in front of the church, so be it. As we were doing this my mistake finally dawned on me. The inviting WW sign, which we had climbed up to, had been intended for northbound walkers only. If we hadn’t been driven off route earlier we would have approached this spot from another direction and now we would have to compensate for this mistake – after wasting over half an hour.

We had a peek inside the churchyard before passing through a construction site and easily locating our route. It climbed a hillside next to a wire fence and then carried us forward through fields of wild flowers, vetches, poppies, and thistles, as we headed straight south. We crossed the “Bowling Alley,” the local name for the next valley, on a thin trod through shoulder high wheat that tickled our bare arms. Tosh would not believe me when I insisted that there were no amenities in the tiny hamlet of Great Buckland but after we had cleared the last of the wheat and climbed up to the road she gradually became convinced.

We passed flower-bedecked Great Buckland Farm and left the road to continue up fenced-in paths, with rabbits scurrying away before Toby could spot them – and dogs baying off in the distance. We sat down next to the path for our second rest here. I ate an Almond Yorkie and gave Toby some biscuits and several capfuls of water. I fished my new green hat out here and wore it for the rest of the day, chiefly as a means of sopping up perspiration.

We continued uphill accompanied by wire fences but when the route turned into Luxon Wood brambles and nettles took over and we wandered around disconsolately for several minutes trying to find a way forward. Toby was adept at jumping over fallen logs, having to do so several times as I retraced my steps looking for a missing passage. My arms were covered in nettle stings when I returned to the forest clearing to announce that we would just have to climb up through the woods without path. This we started to do but I continued to cover our left flank and after only a few paces I found our path, marvelously free of undergrowth, striding forward confidently to a large field – which we crossed to another side of the woods.

The way forward was now unobstructed. We walked on tracks and lanes by Boughurst Street Farm and waited in front of the farm for the garbage man to pass in front of us with his lorry. We then joined a tarmac road and headed south. When it turned I suggested that we were only ten or so minutes from the pub at Harvel and everyone agreed that we should undertake this detour. It was 1:36.

I knew about the pub because Harold and I had reached this turning point after visiting it a year ago and I now remembered how to get across the intervening fields with their fences and stiles. Toby had to be lifted over the first of these – he was very clever at slithering under most fences and stiles without assistance. Before long we were entering Harvel from the south and we sat at our same table at the Amazon and Tiger. There were the same cars and the same noisy kids as last time too.

Each of us got some food at the pub, Jenny a ploughman’s and the rest of us sandwiches. The pint tasted very good, although there were wasps buzzing everywhere. It was chilly in the breeze and I actually wore my UCLA sweatshirt for a few minutes. The rickety table spilled its share of lager, and Toby knocked into it a good number of times as well, especially when a black cat with something furry in its mouth passed in front of us. Jennifer found some film in the little store across the street and there was posing in front of the wonderful pub sign, augmented by a new wooden cutout of a buxom babe. I asked Jennifer to imitate the pose of the pub sign using Toby as the tiger: Amazon and Schnauzer.

After the Lees had slowed things down with their inevitable toothpicks and coffee we resumed our march, retracing the LCW to its junction with the Wealdway – which it would now join for two and a half miles. When Harold and I had been here in May a field of wheat had prevented our cutting off a corner from the road to the WW’s track, but this had now been harvested and we were able to do it this time.

Once again there was some ambiguity about the route south. While I was dithering with my compass Toby flushed a pheasant, chasing it proudly across the field as it slowly became airborne. We turned to the right and crossed some stiles with the WW insignia, soon sighting the back of a barn at Poundgate. Toby walked in some muck here but his feet soon dried off.

We turned right at the next road, passed Poundgate, and turned off onto a now much overgrown path into Whitehorse Wood. How different a few months growth had made to this wood – which had been carpeted in bluebells in May; now it just looked untidy. We passed the crossroads at the top of the heath where Harold and I had eaten lunch, also much overgrown, and headed south through more woodland to the crest of the North Downs. A toe-twanging descent brought us down to the brief stretch where the London Countryway, the Wealdway and the North Downs Way all share the same track. A few yards to the right we turned south to follow a path down to Coldrum Long Barrow.

How did Toby know that we were planning to visit this ancient site? He left the track and jumped over the stile that lead up to the stones long before any of the rest of had arrived. At the top we had a brief rest. We had seen the last of any sunshine for this day.

As we continued south into Ryarsh Woods there was another mix-up – but I should have remembered this problem from last time. At a parting of the ways a stile invited us to continue to the left but an unfriendly “No Bridleway” sign hung from a wire suspended over the track on the right. Of course there was nothing from the Wealdway people, who did occasionally nail a sign to a stile but didn’t seem to know about finger posts yet. We headed off to the left but after five minutes I decided we were heading too much in an easterly direction – were just passing too many things I didn’t remember from the last time. So we returned to the junction, stepped over the “No Bridleway” sign and continued south, soon encountering remembered sights. A wonderful field of rosebay willowherb appeared on the right as we cleared the last of the forest and crossed several fields to emerge on the road north of Addington. I remarked to Harold that this overgrown junction would be very hard to spot for northbound walkers.

We said goodbye again to the LCW at the next turn off, continuing west along a road that paralleled the M20. After a bit I asked Harold to climb a hill to see if he could spot any way over or under this obstacle and he reported back that he had spotted an underpass. To reach it we had to pass through a huge sand quarrying operation, which was not at all pleasant. When we got to the other side we were supposed to turn right and head toward Westfields Farm but the landscape was changed out of all recognition by more digging in the sand. We wandered around in a quite interesting lunar crater, one that reminded me of L.A.’s Baldwin Hills – where my father used to dig sand for Rusty and Danny’s catbox. I couldn’t see any way forward so we again had to retreat (the last time today, as it turned out) and head south along a stream to St. Vincents road.

From this spot we could see the LCW route over the first of a series of tortuous golf courses, but we headed west as we began a long diversion in search of a train station, passing the entrance to Westfields (and a tantalizing WW sign) before turning south with the road. A chap with three dogs on lead dragged them off the road as my tethered beast hove into view. We crossed a bridge and turned right behind a house to continue along the wood edge. The owner of the house was on our path chopping nettles. “I don’t know who is supposed to maintain this,” she said despondently, “but the nettles are invading my garden. I sprayed only last week and look at them.”

We crossed several more stiles, Toby on lead because both sheep and goats were about. Then we sat down for a last snack and rest. It was getting dark now and there was just a tang of moisture in the air. I had to give a foot-weary Tosh updates on the remaining distance at regular intervals.

After a little more forest we reached the busy A20; it took us some time to get across this and reach the safety of the Chinese Restaurant (always a sign of approaching civilization). Then we ducked under a railway embankment, were charged by a flock of curious goats on the other side of a fence, and made our way up through a nice forested path to another road. South on this brought us to Valley Wood cottage, where Harold and I had emerged after struggling with the last golf course. For a few yards we were on the LCW again but it headed off to the west (hopefully to a less obstructed end than we encountered fifteen months earlier) while we headed southwest on a nice descent through hurricane-scarred woodland to the first of Platt’s many suburban side roads.

We turned west here and, Toby on lead for good now, walked into the village itself, passing the church, the Blue Anchor pub, and, on pavement all the way, continuing on up to the A25. Here we turned toward Borough Green, heading west against the late afternoon traffic, tired and ready for the walk to be over. “Now what was the name of that pub again,” Tosh asked, “The Amazon and Turkey?” A Boxer was being walked in front of us and Toby had to visit every bush and fencepost used by the other dog  – “I’ll see that pee and raise you one.”

At last we got to Station Road at 6:20 and made our way up to the railway bridge. As we were nearing the station Jenny had Toby on lead. A commuter waiting for his wife was standing out in front – “Well, he said to her, “your dog looks fresh.” The dog in question had the first of a number of green seeds removed from his whiskers in the ten minutes we had to wait for our Victoria train. He had done magnificently; indeed everyone had done well. Officially this had been a 12-mile walk but we must have walked another mile and a half with all the wrong turnings.

The rain came just as we reached Battersea but it was dry when we made our way back to Morshead Mansions – just before 8:00.

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

Day 2: Borough Green to Beltring