Length: 17¼ km (10.7 miles) or 22¾ km (14.1 miles) if walking to East Grinstead.
Difficulty: 5 or 7 out of 10 T=swc.110
After an initial stretch along the low hills above the Medway valley the walk skirts the attractive Wealden village of Hartfield and makes for a country pub in the nearby hamlet of Gallipot Street. After lunch the walk goes over a low ridge and continues alongside the stream immortalised in AA Milne's famous books – though not crossing it at Pooh Bridge itself – before climbing onto an open ridge leading to the Ashdown Forest Centre. A contrasting descent through the wooded Broadstone Warren and a section across a golf course brings you to Forest Row and a choice of places for tea.
You can either finish the walk here or complete an Extended Walk up the long gentle incline of the Forest Way, a popular cycle route along the trackbed of a disused railway line.
Travel: Get the 1000 Thameslink, Horsham train from London Bridge (Farringdon 0949, Blackfriars 0954), changing at East Croydon (arr 1015) for the 1022 Uckfield train to Ashurst arriving 1057. Note: There are no trains from Victoria to East Croydon this weekend.
"There is no station in Forest Row, so if you finish the walk there you will need to take a bus up the hill to East Grinstead. Metrobus 270 & 291 alternate to provide a half-hourly service to around 7pm"
Return trains from East Grinstead to London bridge xx06 xx36. "East Grinstead is on a different line from Ashurst but it is also operated by Southern. The suggested ticket is a return to East Grinstead, which is slightly more expensive and likely to be accepted if checked on the outward journey (there are no ticket barriers at Ashurst station)."
Lunch: The suggested lunch place is the Gallipot Inn (01892-770008) on the B2110 at Gallipot Street, after 7¾ km. This attractive old pub is fairly small inside but has a large back garden with fine views across the Weald, and serves food all afternoon
Tea: Various options in Forest Row and East Grinstead
1 comment:
Do you know, I did not count, but I think 8 at the start of this walk on a day of w=sun-and-cloud. Some confusion at the get-go as the walk author has changed the route a bit and some had lovingly preserved copies of the old directions. But we soon worked it out.
Fine rolling Wealden scenery but more mud in places than on the other walks today, it seems - enough on one bridleway to elicit cataclysmic accounts from some commenters, but we either waded through it regardless (me) or picked out way gingerly around it (everyone else).
As for nature - acres of celandines, banks of primroses, drifts of cuckoo flowers, the multifarious tootling of nuthatches, baa-ing lambs (once), and - my biggest delight - a willow warbler on the Ashdown Forest heathland. But privately I was wondering where the blackbirds, chaffinches and butterflies are this year (just one of the latter seen all day).
I think nearly everyone ate in the friendly Gallipot Inn, which was full inside but empty but for us in its lovely garden. We were joined by the walk author here, who walked the rest of the way with us, so n=9 altogether. In the afternoon the gorse was full out in Ashdown Forest and the Visitor Centre there had a well hidden tea machine (only I partook).
We had by now split into an advance party, who seem to have ended up in the Hop Yard microbrewery and got the 5pm bus (having a bottle of wine on the train), and three of us in the vanguard, who found the former Taeffels now reopened as another cafe and had tea there. We got the 5.30 bus.
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