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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Saturday 18 November 2017

Saturday walk - Hayes to Knockholt - Lots of little woods on the outskirts of London

Hayes to Knockholt (SWC Walk 82)
Length: 16km (10 miles)

9.47 train from Charing Cross (9.50 Waterloo East, 9.55 London Bridge) to Hayes, arriving 10.33

Your journey today is entirely within zone 6, so use Oyster.

For walk directions click here. For GPX file click here.

You get straight out into the woods on this walk, and throughout the walk there are lots of different woody bits. So you should get exposed to lots of different species of trees, some of which will hopefully be showing their maximum tint by now.

Lunch is either at one of two pubs in Downe after 7km (4.3 miles) or at Cudham after 9.5km (5.9 miles).

(If you are minded to visit Down House, home of Charles Darwin after lunch, it is open until 4pm today, costs £11.80 (free to English Heritage members) and there is a handy 146 bus at 20 past the hour till late from Downe Church to Hayes and Bromley South)

It is worth doing as much as possible of the walk before lunch so as to get to the tea stop in time - the very lovely self-service coffee shop at Coolings Nursery, which has wonderful cakes and is worth pushing through all the acres of pot plants and garden implements to get to. It is 4km (2.4 miles) beyond Cudham and shuts at 4.45pm today, but useable daylight will have run out by that time, so you will want to be on your way well before that anyway.

Time your arrival at Knockholt station carefully, as it is a charmless place to wait, with little shelter and no refreshments. It is 2.5km from the nursery to the end of the walk, or about 40 minutes walk, and trains go at 12 and 42 past (the 4.42 will be the last one in anything resembling daylight).

Don't forget to tap in for the return journey. T=3.82


1 comment:

Walker said...

Sigh. For third week in a row rain was forecast on Saturday. On the previous two it barely materialised: today we had w=light-rain-all-afternoon. Still, n=34 turned out for this walk which made a super autumn outing: a big hit of colourful woods to start with and then plenty more smaller woods during the day. Glorious golds on beeches and oak, yellow on hazel and field maple. A pity that there was not enough light to take good photos, but my “mind camera” took many great pictures.

For lunch we split between the non-Farage pub in Down and the Blacksmith’s Arms in Cudham. The latter had barely any customers apart from us but did creditable food. ‘Twas a bit before we arrived there that the rain started. After lunch, damp, drizzle, more leaf colour plus a fine tea at the Coolings Garden Centre tea room. I am guessing the advance party got the 4.12. The less advanced aimed for the 4.12 but were on the 4.42. We dawdlers also got the 4.42 - some after sprinting to reach it - despite finding the directions confusing on the golf course. Nice to (just about) finish in the dark: makes one nostalgic for the good old days.