SWC Walk 1 - Lenham to Charing
Length: 13.3 km (8.3 miles). Toughness: 3/10
Catch the 9:55 from London Victoria arrives Lenham 11:16.
Buy a day return to Charing. (Hollingbourne ending: Day return to Lenham.)
For anyone preferring a variation, then after 2.5km you may take the alternative ending to Hollingbourne which adds 1.2km to the walk.
Return from Charing: xx:04
T=swc.1
6 comments:
Intend going
This looks like two separate walks that happen to start together for 2.5km, have i understood the map & instructions properly? I'' buy a day return to Charing then i guess I'll have a choice.
Yes that's correct, you can decide after 2.5km.
#8 met at Lenham Station on a #sunny_cool day. 2 set off at some speed and either knowing the way, or correctly following the 55 degree directions, disappeared at the top of the field just below the North Downs Way. The rest of us spent some time scrambling through a very thorny, slippery gap in a hedge, then back again when we realised it was the wrong hedge, before finally finding the correct gap in a different hedge. Another failure further on to take the correct bearing meant we had to retrace our steps a little, and by this stage we started to think about the last-food-orders time at the pub. We reached the Harrow Inn but were either months or years late (shut) so kept going. Still thinking about food we skipped a couple of field footpath sections to walk on the (luckily quiet) road and did reach the Plough in time for 3 to order food, (one of the earlier ones had already finished) others had drinks and one continued on in the hope of getting the 3pm train. (After a wrong turning, then being persistently followed across a field by a flock of 20 sheep – think “Grandmother’s footsteps” - and deciding to take an entirely different but also lovely bridleway into Charing, they missed it). The Charing Tea Rooms is now “micro pub” but was not open until the evening. Except for the 3 later pub eaters, the rest of us all got the 16.04 which was 9 minutes late, held up by the Armistice Kentish Belle steam train, which thundered through Charing Station very fast with lots of black smoke. Some of us worried that we’d miss our connections but luckily they were held up too. Lovely part of the country, lots of mushrooms (?) growing singly in meadows, and toadstools (fly agaric) in the woods. Also, fields with a variety of plants – flax, beans, brassicas – all growing together, we wondered whether it was green manure or “set aside” allowing seeds from different years to grow.
I think your mixed crop fields are what is called “cover crops”. In order not to leave the field bare (not good for the microorganisms apparently) and yes, to fix nutrients back in the soil, fast-growing legume crops are planted after the August wheat harvest. They are then ploughed back in later in the winter before re-seeding with the new wheat crop.
I got this from a farmers daughter this week, so hope I have reported it correctly. There are also “stubble turnips” which perform the same function and are then grazed by sheep.
Yes, cover crops. Also known as "green manure". They're used routinely on the farm where I occassionally work.
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