Knockholt Circular
Length: 18.5km (11.5 miles) 5 out of 10
T=swc.7
I'm reliably informed (from a previous posting), that this walk has bluebells. It is also in Zone 6, so makes for an easy journey.
Trains: Get the 1004 Sevenoaks train from Charing Cross (Waterloo East 1007, London Bridge 1013) arriving 1049. Return trains at xx13 and xx43.
Lunch: In Downe (7.7km from the start) The Queens Head (01689 852145). Food served all day is the suggested lunch stop. Also The George & Dragon (01689 889030). Food served noon-8.30pm
Tea: Arthur's Coffee Shop Coolings Nurseries, closes 4.30pm Located 2.6km from the end of the walk.
The Cock Inn Shoreham Lane, Halstead, Located 2km from the end of the walk 600 metres off route. The Rose and Crown Otford Lane, Halstead, 600 metres off route
9 comments:
Could someone please update the notes for this walk which were last walk checked in 2017 and the print font is so small it’s unreadable without a magnifying glass. These walk notes are condensed onto 5 pages whilst other walks stretch to 17 pages windows far too much information. We need clear larger print please!!
N=28 on this walk. The group quickly split into two parts, one consisting of people who wanted to stop and enjoy the bluebells (me) and the other those who sailed through the bluebell woods with barely a sideways glance (everyone else).
The following paragraph will therefore be of interest to nobody, but the bluebells were in great form, fully out or nearly so. Several new bluebell woods seemed to have appeared since I last did the walk: it is certainly adequately supplied with them.
Every time I do a Knockholt walk, I am told one of the two pubs in Downe is absolutely to be preferred to the other. Last time it was the Queen’s Head. This time it was the George & Dragon. Its patio has been covered with a marquee, so as many of us as possible had to squeeze into the small remaining sunny section, where unfortunately one of the two tables was kaput. My food came almost as soon as I ordered it. Those who had arrived earlier waited longer. Well, I was happy.
The weather, I should mention was w=windy-sun-and-cloud: chilly in the wind or cloud, warmish in the sun. After lunch I went off piste to have a look at the Downe Bank nature reserve, and later took a short cut through Newyears Wood (awash with bluebells) and Birch Grove (an absolute sea of them - one of the best bluebell woods have seen). Beyond the latter I rejoined the walk route and found the group toiling up a hill. I told them of the wondrous floral spectacle just a few hundred metres away and was met with blank stares. (Incidentally, for balance, it later turned out I had missed a floral spectacle too: a field between Downe and Cudham that was thick with cowslips.)
I now realised it was touch and go if we would get to Coolings Nursery tea room before it shut at 4.30pm. I shared my concern with others in the group, and was met with shrugs. One said “I can’t get excited about tea and cake”. So I sped up, picking up one fellow enthusiast on the way. We got to the tea room at about 4.15. Curiously about ten others in the group then also turned up, including the not bothered one. A couple of them did not get tea because they arrived too late.
After tea we rushed for a particular train, only to slow down when we realised we would miss it, only to then arrive at the station not long after it had left so that we had a 20 minute wait for the next one. They are building new houses nearby. Let’s hope they also build a pub.
This walk hillier than I remember with lots and lots of stiles. But there were baby goats
This walk was hilly all day at least 6 out 10 and had a large number of dodgy stiles. The food service was very slow but the skate wings excellent when they arrived at the Queens Head where most of us sat in the sunny garden. Inside tables were scruffy and designed to watch the sports on TV. There is a restaurant section where tables can be booked and a cake shop next door. Only Mr Tiger could read the walk instructions as he had judiciously kept a pre 2017 copy in a larger font. Please arrange for printing in at least size 10 font without the italics otherwise no one is going to use our walk directions which is such a shame after all the hard work that goes into producing them. Nobody wants to wear reading glasses unnecessarily as you cannot see the wood for the trees and is a recipe for tripping over!!
Oh yes, I forgot the baby goats. Lots of baby sheep too. And a Spitfire flying parallel to another plane that was presumably filming it.
I don’t want to have to print out 17 pages but perhaps a different page format would help. There’s an awful lot of unused margin there.
As for below comment:
"Could someone please update the notes for this walk which were last walk checked in 2017 and the print font is so small it’s unreadable without a magnifying glass. These walk notes are condensed onto 5 pages whilst other walks stretch to 17 pages windows far too much information. We need clear larger print please!!"
There are 483 Day Walks on the website, the very most of them fully written up. Many of those have various options, so that they are basically several walks in one. There are also 53 Short Walks and 6 City Walks, mostly also fully written up. That's more than 500 text pdf's.
Way more than 90% of those walks are maintained by just 6 people, 2 of which are also holding down day jobs 'on the side' to pay the bills; 5 of those 6 are also providing the majority of the walk posts every week.
If any one of the other hundreds of people that consider themselves members of this club think that any of the SWC offerings is sub-par, can they please join the very orderly queue of people volunteering to do some of the work? Feel free to register your interest at saturdaywalkers at yahoo dot co dot uk at any time...
Failing that, edits to texts can always be submitted as comments to the walk's webpage. That is what many of the non-club walkers do when they have walked our routes independently of the group walks. The walk author will then feed them into the text.
And no: there is no need for double exclamation marks, Marion
or in other words: this club, like any others entirely living by and off the contributions of unpaid volunteers, is only as good as the contributions of those unpaid volunteers.
not happy with the level of 'service' you are getting from the club? get involved!
Many thanks to Mike A for rejiging the font of this walk as requested. Now that the walk notes are readable and only stretch to 7 pages this is most helpful to those that like to read text and not rely on satnav running out of battery power.
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