9.29 train from Charing Cross (9.32 Waterloo East, 9.38 London Bridge) to Borough Green, arriving 10.15
Buy a day return to Borough Green, which usually seems to be accepted for return from Sevenoaks. (If not, buy a single from Sevenoaks to Otford.)
This pretty little Kentish walk has had winter outings over the past three years, but has not been aired in spring since 2022. It is not massively long or demanding, but worth lingering over, as it goes through a range of pretty territory including woods, apple orchards and the cute village of Plaxtol. The grassy expanses of the Fairlawne Estate may well have lambs on them (no guarantees, though).
You can have lunch at the National Trust tea room at Ightham Mote, but if you want a pub lunch the excellent Chaser Inn in Shipbourne is reachable by a small diversion. It has super outside tables by the church if the weather is fine. After the Chaser, the route takes you back past Ightham Mote, which could be an early tea stop.
After Ightham Mote, the standard walk route climbs up into the hills, but I personally much prefer the route westwards along the Greensand Way, a delightful walk that slowly climbs the escarpment with fine views and good spring flowers, including some wood anemones and a lovely field of primroses. This route is waymarked but a GPX or directions for it can be found in SWC walk 41: Yalding to Sevenoaks. It is about the same length as the standard route.
(Full disclosure: there are also some patches of wood anemones on the standard walk route too, and approaching Knole Park it skirts Godden Wood, a very good wood anemone spot that is worth exploring...)
Either route eventually takes you to Knole Park, whose National Trust tea room can be rather busy but has a nice upper deck if the weather is fine. It shuts at 5pm. A late tea option in Sevenoaks is Gails, open till 6.30pm.
Trains back from Sevenoaks are every ten minutes or so.
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N=25 on this modest little outing. W=Sunny for the most part (a bit of high cloud mid morning and some grey cloud at the end). As with all large groups there was a fair bit of stretching out, with hares streaking off and yours truly in the tortoise position, but a compensation for being a backmarker was that one walker ahead of me remembered to stop and observe the partial solar eclipse (using the pinhole on paper method). That in turn reminded me to dig out the eclipse viewing glasses I bought in 1999 and never used (because the eclipse was blocked by 30,000 feet of cloud). Finally, after 25 years in a drawer those glasses had their day in the sun.
After this myself and another walker again fell behind, but getting to the Chaser Inn found a cheerful group eating in the garden. There were about 14 of us in all, with others apparently having gone on to Ightham Mote. What a delight it was to sit in the sun in interesting company and with the whole of spring before us! The pub has also upped its (formerly woeful) game when it comes to vegetarian choices, though the vegan fish and chips two of us had turned out to be a ball of batter covering…I don’t know what. Slivers of a distinctly weird fibrous substance. I shall try to blot out the memory.
We lingered over tea and coffee at the pub, so were not in the mood for further refreshment at Ightham Mote. Around 10 of us split off from the official route here to follow the lovely Greensand Way, where the flowers included far more bluebells than ought to be out at this juncture, lots of violets, and a bank of wood anemones that were perplexingly all closed up (stern letters will be sent to their parents). There were almost no butterflies to my surprise.
At One Tree Hill we had a pow-wow and I proposed a diversion to Godden Wood to see more wood anemones. But in the event the group had once again streaked off by the time we got to the splitting point. So only three of us did this. The flowers were sparse at the edge of the wood, but there were great carpets of them further in - a joyous sight.
I could have lingered there for hours, but tea beckoned. Here the choice was braving the appallingly long queue for the tea room at Knole House or going into Sevenoaks for other options. Both had their adherents but for me and my companions the temptation of sitting on the Knole House sun deck won out. A very nice cream tea watched by patient and polite jackdaws (who knew they would get the crumbs in due course…)
The Knole House crowd got a 5.29 train: some of those who had tea in Sevenoaks got the 5.21. Back to London by 6pm, which will be 7pm tomorrow. Happy days are here!
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