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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Saturday, 29 March 2025

Saturday Walk: Rochester to Aylesford along the River Medway

10 miles / 16km

This walk links two historic buildings - Rochester Cathedral and Aylesford Priory, by following the River Medway.  Both are free to enter.  Aylesford Priory grounds are open til 5:30, but sadly the tearoom and chapel shut early this time of the year.  

This is not a regular SWC route and completely untested.  I am planning to try it out this Saturday and explore both buildings.  

Route:  The route simply follows footpaths/lanes as close to the River Medway as possible.  You can download a gpx file from this page:
or try this fresher version which starts from the current location of Rochester station

Trains:  10:10 from London Victoria, arriving at Rochester at 10:53.  Return trains from Aylesford at xx:03/xx:33 via Strood (you can go back to Rochester from here for a fast train to Victoria or take a slow train to London Bridge).  
A day return from London Victoria to Aylesford is valid for Rochester. (If like me you are coming on a slow local train via Strood, an Aylesford return is still good, but you will need to get out at Strood and walk across the bridge to Rochester)

Lunch: The village of Wouldham is a little over half way.  There are 2 pubs - The Watermans's Arms and The Medway Inn.  There's also a Co-op further on at Peter's Village.

At the end of the walk:  the Chequers Inn is a historic pub on the River Medway in the old part of Aylesford.


1 comment:

Mr M Tiger said...

n=8 at the station and N=3 more meeting in the cathedral, makes n=11 After an interesting look round, and a bout of passport stamping, we set off along the river.
A w=sunny day, dry underfoot.
We stopped in Wouldham for lunch. Some in the churchyard, and others in the later Medway Inn (The Watermans wasn’t doing food). All met up eventually for drinkies.
Later, a short detour took us past a stone marking where Caractacus beat the Brits.
Nearing Aylesford, the entrance to the priory is not obvious. A big corporate-looking sign advertising “The Friars” confused 2 laggards, who shot past and were in town before they realised. One made the weary slug back. The other, yours truly, with no passport to stamp, threw in the towel and got the 17:03.
Apparently, the visit to the priory/Friars was interesting.
The walk was easy to follow and there were some points of interest, but I don’t think it will make my top ten - with long samey stretches, not all of which were through attractive scenery.