Length: 17km (11m)
Toughness: 4 / 10
Transport: Take the 9:08 from London Charing Cross, 9:17 from London Bridge, arriving at Robertsbridge at 10:28. Return trains from Battle at xx:01 and xx:35
(Initially I posted 9:08 from London Bridge which is not correct)
This is option 2.20b of this walk.
A great walk through the Weald to Battle. One highlight is Killingan Wood where the forest floor is carpeted with wood anemones and/or bluebells. This year the season is a bit early so we shall see which plants decided to call it a year and which ones thought that the early bud catches the bee ....
3 comments:
I'm still trying to work out the official route. Hopefully I will by the time I get to Battle.
Not expecting to write this report, I did not count exactly, but n=13 or so on this walk - or at least at the start of it. But maybe five almost immediately disappeared, apparently to do one of the circular walks via Bodiam (was it something we said?)
The rest were taken on a slight shortcut by yours truly to the best corner of the first wood for wood anemones. But oh what a falling off was there, my friends! In the week or so since I was last there, the wooden ms had all gone over. Thereafter on this wood anemone walk of all wood anemone walks, which normally leaves one begging never to see another wood anemone ever again by its end, we saw only a few scattered ones that had not got the memo. It was like sailing the Atlantic after the Titanic had sunk. (Mixed metaphors, and this is all getting far too laboured - Ed)
But w=the-sun-shone and it was warm and springy, and who could be downhearted? There was lots else to see. Good showings of bluebells in places, a fair scattering of orange tip butterflies, celandines still at their best, the eye-aching bright green of the new foliage, nuthatches piping away. We were a friendly, chatty group, covering all sorts of interesting topics. (Hell, at times we even talked about the birdsong…)
Our walk poster drove us pitilessly forward to the later lunch stop. Five of us ate here in the garden in glorious warm sunshine, with our own personal blackbird fluting away overhead. The food was a bit of a boar. Wild boar stew, in fact, which four of us had, discussing whether it really counted as vegan. I asked the lass behind the bar if the boar was really wild and she assured me that she herself had had terrifying encounters with tuskers in the nearby wood. (Good sales patter, if nothing else…)
After lunch our walk poster took us on a variant ending, taking in said wood (no tuskers seen) and a very close pass of a sewage farm (what is that green stuff that grows on the poo tanks?). We rejoined the main route for its lovely approach to Battle. There we found a pub with a littie patio where we could squeeze in a little more of the sunshine. Tea was served in magnificent great pots.
On the way to the station we saw an even better pub with an even bigger patio which we vowed to remember next time (but almost certainly won’t). Absent friends with an astronomical bent might like to note that we did NOT get supplies for the train….
Those who went on to Bodiam did so because they thought the walk went via Bodiam, as I did. They have walked with SWC before.
There was a problem with the walk decription leaving Staplecross on the B2165. As the exit shown on GPS is not the exit required. This is about 50 yards or so further on where a stile is crossed. This was verified by others on the walk.
I didn't see any Wooden Enemies either. Everyone was quite friendly.
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