9.45 train from Charing Cross (9.48 Waterloo East, 9.54 London Bridge) to Hildenborough, arriving 10.25.
Buy a day return to Tonbridge
It is two and half years since this walk has had an SWC outing, though its mid section covers familiar territory, taking in the two potential lunch pubs of the Chaser Inn in Shipbourne and the Kentish Rifleman in Dunks Green.
Until 2023 there was also a lovely garden tea room on the outskirts of Hadlow, but this sadly - tragically! - has closed. That leaves a small tea room called Weathered and Worn (open to 4.30pm only) as the only refreshment option in the village, its last remaining pub having closed too.
You can end the walk in Hadlow (after 8.2 miles), taking the number 7 bus at 16 and 46 past (until 18.14, then 18.44, 19.11...etc) into Tonbridge (7 mins journeys time). There are lots of tea and pub options there.
Or you can walk to Tonbridge, adding 4.4 miles to the walk (so 12.6 miles in all). This is an entirely flat route, at first across agricultural fields, then along the River Medway, whose banks may (or may not: I have no certain knowledge) have nice displays of buttercups.
Trains back from Tonbridge are very frequent - every ten minutes or so
3 comments:
Does this mean the Rose & Crown in Carpenters Lane is closed? Always was a bit on the rough side.
The "temporarily closed" pub in Hadlow is the Two Brewers. The Rose & Crown and the Rose Revived are both shown as open, but they're some way off route and not mentioned in the directions. One of these days I might look at tweaking the route to take in one of these, but in some ways it's easier to hop on the bus and take your pick of Tonbridge's watering holes.
N=7 on this walk, others possibly put off by the dire weather forecast - thunder! potential flooding! But - and you know what I am going to say, right? - W=it-did-not-rain, not for most of us anyway…
After the rather tiresome road section at the start of the walk we were out into pleasant scenery - lots of green meadows, damp from the overnight rain. There were a number of large fields planted with an interesting set-aside mix of buckwheat and phacelia. Also several fields of oats.
The initially cloudy weather cleared to some sunny intervals, so much so that the two of us who wanted a pub lunch took the risk of occupying an outside table in the otherwise deserted garden of the Chaser Inn. This lovely pub never disappoints. I had a fabulous homemade pie, while my companion had fish and chips. Three sandwichers joined us for drinks; two went on ahead.
In the afternoon we saw house martins and swallows (twice!). We had an interesting diversion at one point while engrossed in talking about Queen Victoria. But we found a very nice unmarked path in the woods to get us back on course.
Two of our party pulled ahead on this section and were not seen again. On the outskirts of Hadlow we met the two sandwichers who had gone ahead at lunch, but they got the bus. That left three of us to go to Weathered and Worn for tea.
This we also had on the otherwise empty patio, enjoying the floor show (a robin and dunnock disputing the territory and so missing most of the cake crumbs we dropped). We scrutinised the rainfall radar. There was no doubt that there was an enormous splodge of rain to the west that was heading our way, but it was too early (4pm) to call it quits, so we decided to go for it and walk to Tonbridge.
This section offered contrasting scenery: big flat arable fields but interesting wildflowers on their margins. Later by the river more swallows and more meadows. Some drops of rain, but nothing persistent.
Then at 5.30pm our luck finally ran out and it bucketed down, giving our rain gear a thorough workout. We got to Tonbridge at 6pm. A planned “quick drink” in the ‘Spoons turned into a bit of a session, and it was not till 8pm that we caught our train home.
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