North Downs Way - Oxted to Maidstone

Our North Downs Way walking has seen quite a few contrasts, and the two sections described below could not have been more different - although to be fair, mostly because they were several months apart! 

We'd planned in advance that we would do our third foray, from Oxted to Otford, on 4 January - one year exactly since the day we first met. So even though the weather did not promise good things, we decided that we should plough on regardless.

And that was pretty much what happened. 

All we saw all day was fog, ghostly trees, occasionally other walkers, and right on the border between Kent and Sussex, a massive shit load of fly tipping that almost blocked the lane. A few hundred yards further on there was a big sign warning of the penalties for fly tipping.

We'd been slightly concerned about pub options - it not being a great day for a picnic - but this was the most successful part of the day. We stumbled on the Tally Ho Pub, which despite all appearances of being a bit grim, served up huge portions of steak & kidney pudding, and Sunday roast to us chilled and hungry souls.

Then it was back to the gloom and the trees, the only benefit being that the mist damped down the sound of the traffic on the motorway a bit. We trudged our way towards Otford. Probably not the most auspicious way to celebrate our first year!

The most recent North Downs Way walk took place last weekend, and it could not have been more of a contrast! We planned to walk from Otford to Hollingbourne, although we only made it as far as Maidstone on the second day, due to a cock-up on the planning front (too much attention focused on the 15.5 miles of the first day and not enough on the 17.5 miles of the second day, which we'd somehow thought was half the length!).

It was glorious walking weather the whole weekend, and even the fact that it was the start of the hay fever season for Jon, not to mention being assaulted by his hay fever nemesis Oilseed Rape every other field, it could not bring down our spirits.

This field was particularly trying. Luckily the drugs were working by then.

On the first day we had our lunch at Wrotham, a pleasant little village near Sevenoaks which is either plagued by serious crime or full of paranoid anguish - I have never seen so many CCTV cameras in such a small area of public space. Even the children's playground had cameras at each end. Big brother is definitely watching the people of Wrotham parish.

Our bed & breakfast accommodation - the North Downs Barn in Cuxton - could not have been better, which helped counterbalance the fact that Cuxton's only pub is pretty rank. We had a couple of pints of mediocre Shepherd Neame beer to wash down our mediocre food, then bought chocolate and ice cream from the Coop on the way home to take away the taste of the beer.

North Downs Barn

Sunday the weather was just as glorious - we'd planned to come back via Hollingbourne or Bearsted rail stations, but when we realised it was 17.5 miles rather than the 8 or 10 we'd anticipated, that idea got knocked on the head very quickly! It was just as well we did; when we arrived at Maidstone we found that the trains were all delayed due to someone on the line near Bearsted, so at least we missed getting stranded.

Next section I'm looking forward to getting away from the bloody motorways, which also dominated the route today. It will be quite a novelty to have some real peace and quiet for walking.

Beautiful things

Walking, for me, is not just about getting from A to B while having some exercise and perhaps seeing some nice views.

Anyone who's ever been for a walk with me knows that I am always pausing to look at things, pick things off bushes or off the floor, taste blackberries or muse about the name of a flower or tree.

On a recent walk from Cuxton on the Medway I found/picked/came across many beautiful things.

Bushes laden with sloes - gathering the sloes for this year's gin being the main aim of the walk.

Beautiful bracket fungi on a tree trunk.

A vast array of Shaggy Ink Cap fungi, which provided a welcome and unexpected foraged supper.

Evidence of chestnut woodlands being successfully managed - the coppiced shoots in the clearing contrasting beautifully with the tall trees surrounding them.

A carved bench on the edge of the woods; a pleasant and thoughtful place to pause and eat our apples.

Fabulous sycamore seed skeletons - the filigree pattern of the wings put me in mind of winter trees, which fascinate and perhaps even obsess me.

More Kentish adventures

I pride myself on knowing Kent quite well - and I find myself often having to defend this much-maligned county against the naysayers. Until you have spent a fair bit of time exploring the many very different parts of Kent, it's impossible to get a full flavour of everything it has to offer. 

So I was very pleased to discover yet another part of the county that I didn't know, on a recent break with my folks in a little village east of Canterbury. As well as getting chance to explore the area south of the Stour, I was able to take my parents to visit some of my favourite towns on the coastal fringes.

We stayed in a small village called Preston, just a few miles out of Canterbury, and deep in the heart of apple country. I was quite surprised to find huge orchards with apples groaning under the weight of fruit - cherries yes, hops yes, but apples? Not really! But it seems that a lot of this fruit goes to make Copella apple juice - judging by the number of lorries we met on the country lanes that were bearing the branding - and it was peak apple time when we were there.

The area is dotted with quiet villages, which are mostly off the beaten track; many have beautiful churches of a very typical Kentish style, covered in flint and generally quite simple inside - a lot are on pilgrimage routes to Canterbury so it's also more common to find them open than you would expect in such small villages.

I love wandering around the graveyards and checking out the headstones - here's a particular favourite that I happened upon in Fordwich.

The river at Fordwich is also particularly stunning - slow moving, crystal clear water streaked with weed and with the village houses built almost into it. I would happily have waded in - in the nip, perhaps! - and lain right back in water, felt its cool touch and maybe run my fingers through the green ribbons of weed. There was something deeply inviting about it, something reminiscent of Ophelia. 

Others clearly found the water just as hypnotic; this man stood on the beach at Deal for so long that I started to wonder if he was an art installation. His shirt and smart trousers made him look all the more incongruous, we wondered if he was considering doing a Reggie Perrin. In the end he turned round, walked back up the beach and disappeared into the roads of suburban Deal.

I visited a few old favourites too, including Walmer Castle where I had a short break a few years ago. Fond memories of having the castle grounds to myself when all the visitors had gone home.

We ate well during our stay - including a fabulous lunch at the Black Douglas cafe on Deal seafront - well worth seeking out for fresh, seasonal food, although at this time of year you might be out of luck if you don't like beetroot. We also had lunch at the very shiny new Wyatt & Jones in Broadstairs - it had the feeling of not having been open very long, and certainly represents a step up in terms of the food offering in the Thanet towns. Hopefully it will survive and flourish, it has a lovely location and the three old shop units that form the restaurant have been nicely converted.  

It wouldn't be a British holiday without paddling and beach huts, and we found both of those at Broadstairs, one of the few sandy beaches in Kent.

The beach huts are much more utilitarian than the chi-chi offerings at places like Whitstable, and I must confess I rather prefer their brash colours and pebble-dash finish. I don't think I'll ever be able to do chi-chi successfully, but I can certainly do brash and utilitarian.

And finally, the oddest moment of the holiday was coming across this steam-engine graveyard behind the church in Preston. My mum and I stumbled on it just as dusk was falling - there were probably a dozen or so of these huge rusting engines all lines up, along with various enormous boilers and other assorted machines that we could not identify. Someone obviously Has Plans for them, perhaps a life's work of restoration, but in the darkening gloom and silence of a field in eastern Kent, it was nothing short of spooky.

Cliffe Pools, north Kent

Friday was a cold and grey day, but sometimes a girl has to get out for a walk no matter what the weather, and that's how I felt when I woke up on Friday morning.

What's more I wanted somewhere marshy and deserted, perhaps a bit of industrial wasteland and possibly a view of the sea or the river at the very least. The only place that seemed to suit was the Hoo Peninsula, and so I headed for the RSPB reserve at Cliffe Pools.

In two hours at the pools, I saw only four other people, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of birds - coot, little grebes and all kinds of water birds that I didn't recognise, as well as spotting the flash of a kingfisher a couple of times, and seeing a heron and little egret rise from the shallow water as I came up to a viewpoint near the edge of one of the pools.

There was some extreme picnicking on the banks of the Thames - hot soup with chunks of French sausage and paprika in it, and the heel of my homemade loaf - but other than that I just crunched around the still-frozen paths, watched massive ships drift by along the water, and gazed into the slightly hazy distance.

Luckily it wasn't so windy as to bring the temperature down any further, and I was nicely warm as I yomped around the deserted reserve.

No pictures of trees today, but plenty of bullrushes and reeds and seed heads - similarly hypnotic winter silhouettes, almost as good as trees.

December walking

Contrary to what I would have expected (and would have predicted, given the generally awful weather), the last month of 2012 was a real feast of walking for me.

It kicked off in dramatic fashion with a visit to Edinburgh early in the month, combining work (a site visit to the new Forth Crossing) with the pleasure of a weekend in the Scottish capital.

At my host's suggestion, we signed up for a six mile walk in the Pentland hills with his regular walking group. I'd been very envious of a walk he'd done earlier in the year in the same area, which I'd seen the photos of, and was keen to enjoy similar views.

With such expectations it was bound to fail; although I look back on it now as a memorable experience, at the time it was something of an ordeal! Three miles of climbing with ice and snow underfoot, cold conditions and little sunshine, followed by three miles of mud of the kind that you don't know how much of your leg is going to disappear each time you put your foot down. Right in the middle of those six miles, the main peak of Allermuir was wreathed in icy mist. It's good to laugh about it now, and I was saved from despair by the good company and the promise of ale at the end of it, but the walk will go down in the annals of history as the one that gave me a new perspective on mud.

Christmas was a time for urban walks - a Christmas day stroll from Deptford to Tower Bridge along the river gave us a glimpse of sunshine after a morning of heavy rain, and the chance to pop into the Mayflower pub for a lunchtime pint. We climbed Stave Hill to look across the treetops to Canary Wharf, and to add a few flights of stairs to my friend's daily pedometer total.

On the return trip, although the light was fading by now, the last of the sun's rays lit up the buildings across the other side of the river as we passed by.

On Boxing Day we headed along the river in the other direction, all the way to the Thames Barrier with a couple of pints of Doom Bar to keep us going, and just managed to get up the hill to Charlton Village before the rain returned with a vengeance.

A trip to the Austrian Tirol to visit my sister, her partner and my niece, offered the opportunity for some rather more dramatic walking, although we were restricted to mostly flat paths on our family walks. A walk around Schwarzee near Kitzbuhl gave us lovely views of the jagged mountains once the clouds parted in the late afternoon.

On the last day, my elder sister and I took a yomp up the mountain at the back of Ali's house to get some cardio-vascular exercise - the views were almost as spectacular has they had been from the cable car we'd ridden on the first day we arrived, with the added thrill of having to dodge across the ski slopes a couple of times, in between the skiers.

The photo below was taken from the lower slopes of the valley, showing the church in Hopfgarten, which dominates the village.

An evening return flight meant that I was late joining the new year's eve celebrations - the plus side being that I didn't drink a great deal and was able to leap out of bed the following gloriously sunny day and make the most of the holiday.

My chosen walk started at Toys Hill in Kent, and was six miles of glorious views, steep hills and almost deserted footpaths around Chartwell; a route recently devised in celebration of National Trust founder Octavia Hill, who lived in the area.

Although only six miles long it had a number of good climbs and descents, sufficient to give me a bit of a workout and raise my temperature on such a balmy day.

Some great trees too - I was able to add to my burgeoning collection of photos.

Autumnal pleasures

The last two weekends have been full of all the things I love about autumn; glorious light, foraging, and a real feeling of the changing of the seasons.

I spent the last Saturday of September walking the 6 mile route around Cuxton that I first explored on Boxing Day last year, but this time I took my friend Sue with me. She was good company and barely complained about the hills, even the last three that took me by surprise, having promised her that there were no more. My rubbish memory for such things (endings of films, books, and now it seems, walks) is legendary among those who know me well, and Sue has now found herself at the sharp end of it a couple of times. I honestly plead that I don't really remember the hills much, not unless they are real killers, like those ones on the Dorset coastline!

The route was noticeably quieter than the last time I walked it - we encountered only a handful of people the whole way round - and the sun was much warmer. We sat on the trunk of a fallen tree by the Darnley Memorial for half an hour or more, just chatting and enjoying the peace and quiet.

On the slopes heading back down to Cuxton we came across masses of sloes, and lingered in the late afternoon sun to pick them, admiring the views of the Medway bridges in the distance.

That box of sloes went in the freezer overnight, the following day they were defrosted and tipped into a huge Kilner jar full of gin where they will remain for a couple of months.

Today was a new walk, and a new walking companion as I dragged my friend Keith along for a try out. I'm completely happy to walk on my own, and often enjoy the freedom of just jumping in the car or on a train and heading off at my own pace.

But it's good to walk with other people too, and my recent walking companions have reminded me of the pleasure to be had from good conversation and a shared experience. I've shied away from joining big groups because of the impact that would have on the peace and quiet I like to savour, and the spontaneity of lingering awhile or cracking on the pace as you wish. But walking in twos or threes appeals, and I'm gradually starting to build a little network of people who share my love of the countryside and match my pace and interests.

Keith passed the test, barely murmuring about the rather steep slopes and muddy paths we encountered on our six-mile circuit out of Otford, while sharing my total contempt for the golfers and their silly little buggies that disturbed the peace and quiet of a couple of the first valleys we crossed.

It was hard to believe that we were only just outside the M25, although at times this was proved by the views back to the London skyline.

The best walks are those which have a good pub halfway round - a requirement drilled into me by my parents since early childhood - and this was no exception. The Fox & Hounds at Romney Street provided a very fine pint of ale to keep us going for the return leg.