Length: 16km
Toughness: 4/10
Transport: Take the 9:42 train from London Victoria to arrive in Sole Street at 10:31. Return trains at xx:32.
This is a shorter version of the Meopham Circular. The suggested tea place is the Cock Inn in Henley Street from where it is about 25mins to the station.
From the blurb: "This walk explores a variety of landscapes in the chalk grassland of the Kent Downs, with an early stretch through redundant farmland being transformed into Jeskyns Community Woodland. After a circuit around a fine collection of veteran trees in Ashenbank Wood the walk comes to the attractive village of Cobham, with a choice of three lunch pubs along its single street. After lunch the walk goes through the landscaped parkland of Cobham Park and Ranscombe Farm Nature Reserve"
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#4 regulars off the train at Sole Street. We imagined 30 setting off from Riddlesdown, but apparently not. #Cloudy with some sun from lunchtime onwards.
Horses: lots in the fields around Cranbourne Equestrian.
Rewilding: Jeskyns Country Park includes a community woodland, much of it planted I think but maybe some rewilding. Lots of discussion about what is wild – the Downs? Fields of pretty wild flowers? Scrub and forest? And what role modern humans, iron age humans and large herbivores play in this. Some impressive tall sculptures made of single tree trunks. (But we failed to spot Essex in the distance.)
History: we couldn’t see the tumulus or barrow in Ashenbank Wood but an information board explained about the war time use of the area – Gravesend Airport (open 1932 – 56) became an RAF airfield, and there were accommodation huts (all disappeared) and the brick entrances to two air raid shelters still visible.
Church: we were strongly encouraged by one walker to look inside the mostly 14th century Cobham Church and rightly so. The extravagant 1561 tomb of Lord Cobham and Anne, his wife, (surrounded by little figures of their mourning sons and daughters dominates the chancel and numerous bronzes from the 14th and 15th century are set into the floor.
Trees: Huge, old, sweet chestnuts in Ashenbank Wood, some missing boughs that had splintered and fallen, but plus new growth from the sides; lots of newer, lighter silver birches in Birch Wood, past the Cobham Mausoleum, and more huge misshapen and old trees in Nor Wood – this time beeches. And in all the woods there were trees that had fallen on their sides years ago and the side branches have grown up as high as the surrounding woods.
Pubs: 2 lunched at the Leather Bottle (vegan burgers with cheese, apparently satisfactory), the 2 sandwichers had coffee/tea inside but weren’t allowed to sit near the lunchers as those tables were reserved. Later we had a quick drink in the Cock Inn – warm and interesting but no cider as the pump was frozen – I guess it’s a pub term.
3 on the train home at 16:32, one had left us at Cobham to visit a niece.
Great walk and lovely day out.
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