Length: 19.5km (12.2 miles), with options from 10.6 miles to 13.8 miles. T=swc.173
9.42 (Gillingham-bound) train from Victoria (9.52 Denmark Hill, 10.05 Bromley South) to Meopham, arriving 10.28
A day return to Meopham is fine if you are planning on the full circular walk. If you might want to finish at Sole Street buy a day return to there, and Rochester ditto. To keep your options open buy a day return to Rochester.
** Not many people know this, but if you click on the blue subject headings in the walk directions, you get a summarised version, which is useful for using in conjunction with a map.
This walk was posted two weeks ago, but completely scuppered by train cancellations due to Storm Eunice. So I thought we might try again....
The main walk (12.1 miles), a reworking of the former Cuxton to Halling route with some new twists, takes you from Meopham up onto a chalk ridge and then over the M2 motorway bridge (noisy, but with spectacular views) and on into historic Rochester (12.1 miles). But there are also two circular versions (12 miles and 13.8 miles) which loop back to Meopham through pretty territory that will be familiar to some of you from other Cuxton/Sole Street walks. On the way you pass close to Sole Street station: if you finish there, it saves you 1.4 miles, so 10.6 miles or 12.4 miles, depending on whether you did the extra loop of the circular walk.
Lunch is after 5 miles in Cobham, where there are three pubs - the somewhat over-touristed Leather Bottle (which makes too much of its slight Dickensian connections), the Darnley Arms and the Ship Inn: all three seem from their websites to be open normally. For tea options see the walk directions.
Trains back from Meopham are at 16 and 35 past (the 16 past being faster, at 35 minutes, while the 35 takes 55 minutes, though you can change at Bromley South and cut that to 45 minutes)
From Sole Street there is just one hourly train at 32 past (the nearby Railway Inn should be open to shelter you while you wait).
From the shiny new railway station at Rochester (much closer to town than the old one...) trains go at 05, 23 and 38 past to Victoria, taking around 40 minutes. Slower (1 hour 15 minutes) Thameslink trains go to London Bridge at 12 and 42 past, carrying on to St Pancras etc. There is also a 29 minutes past Southeastern High Speed service to St Pancras, but you need to have pre-purchased a ticket with a high speed supplement for this and it offers zero time advantages over the Victoria ones.
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N=9 on this walk, despite a discouraging weather forecast. In fact it was just w=grey-and-damp rather than wet, with one VERY short shower in the afternoon, and more persistent rain only at the very end of the walk (just in time to wash the mud off our boots).
I had not done the Meopham start before and found it interesting, with a couple of (soon to be) bluebell woods (one also scattered with violets), one very frisky horse, and the nature reserve, where a lark sang and the big wood had more incipient bluebells.
This brought us to lunch, where at my urging we avoided the Leather Bottle and Darnley Arms and tried the Ship Inn. Not bad: a chain pub, perhaps a bit lacking in decor, but we could order at the bar and the food came quite quickly. No complaints about the fare that I heard.
We had a vigorous discussion over lunch about whether we would walk to Rochester or back to Meopham. Actually we didn’t. My attempts to raise the subject were met with embarrassed silence. So using techniques I learned when staffing the London Visitor Centre at Victoria station in my youth, I “shut down the options” and suggested that the consensus seemed to favour Meopham. No one dissented.
Shortly after lunch two walkers branched off at a non-authorised place to do a short cut back to Sole Street. The other seven of us did the longer loop around Ranscombe Farm but - at the urging of one of our number - did it backwards, which worked quite well. It meant the Medway Valley view was in front of us and we avoided doing the same woodland path twice. The farm is actually a Plantlife reserve and over its fields there was a positive cacophony of larks singing (at least four, maybe more) - an incongruously summery sound.
The walk along the downs ridge and through the woods to Henley Street was very pleasant. There was discussion about stopping at the Cock Inn, but in the end we pushed on to Meopham. There we found the Station Inn rather basic. Possibly the last pub in England which does not serve hot drinks, food or anything but booze, and which offers nothing but wooden seating, though to be fair it seemed popular with locals. We did not linger long and caught the 17.16 express to Victoria (calling at Longfeld and Bromley South only!)
Group cohesion factor: 88.8% (based on 9/9 keeping together in the morning and 7/9 in the afternoon: do check my maths…)
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