Toughness: 4 out of 10
10.15 train from Charing Cross (10.18 Waterloo East, 10.24 London Bridge) to Robertsbridge, arriving 11.34.
As well as passing possibly Bodiam Castle - the most perfectly-formed castle in the world, the kind of castle a child would draw if you gave them crayons - this walk also has another attraction which I am keeping secret. Call it the X Factor. To find out what it is, you have to come on the walk.
Otherwise, we are in pleasant Wealden territory. This walk has always suffered in the pub lunch department, its original one being too early in the walk and now closed for good anyway. There is a Waterside Cafe five miles in which may or may not be a place to get lunch (ie I have no idea if it will be booked up). If you can hold on till you get to Bodiam Castle, 7.8 miles into the walk, the Castle Inn is open all afternoon: as to its table availability, who knows?
Bodiam Castle, which you can walk right past on public footpaths, is otherwise a grand place to have tea, there being both a NT tea kiosk (by the castle entrance?) and the "Wharf Tea Rooms" beyond it. Both close at 4.30pm, though.
There will be a Kent & East Sussex steam train arriving at Bodiam Station at 4.21pm and departing at 4.40pm, if anyone is interested: you can't ride on it without pre-booking a round trip from Tenterden, but it is a cute thing to see. And no, this is not the X Factor alluded to above
2km before you get back into Robertsbridge, I see that the Salehurst Halt pub is also cited as a tea stop in the walk directions, though it is not mentioned on the walk home page. Just by Robertsbridge station is the quirky Ostrich (if it is open: its website says it is resuming food service on Sunday 9 August - which was last year...)
Trains back are at 14 past the hour
2 comments:
The train down was rammed. All apart from the last carriage which was empty. An earlier train cancellation might have been the reason, or perhaps a fool was giving fifty pound notes away in Tunbridge Wells High Street. Whatever, I think the days of near empty trains are over.
N=13 on this walk, plus a whippet-spaniel cross, who walked (or ran) six times further than the rest of us. At last we could walk in a big happy group and not have to split into groups of six! Except we all fragmented into subgroups anyway: this is the SWC after all.
Partly this was because three decided to do the short walk. Partly it was because a sizeable portion of the rest of us went the wrong way after the railway line and ended up doing the Hurst Green alternative. In the said village one newbie on our walks detected on Google Maps a possible pub not previously known to science, but we avoided that and carried on. On the next section there was a mass revolt and everyone sat down in the fields to eat their sandwiches. My stomach was now rumbling and so I joined them, even though I had promised the newcomer (who did not have a packed lunch with him) that I would go with him to the Waterside Cafe. I then promised I would pass by the cafe later to pick him up. But the getting to the cafe proved to involve a 220 metres diversion up a busy road, so I did not do that either. What can I say, except that I am a moral degenerate?
Going the Hurst Green route meant we didn’t do the X Factor bit. The X Factor was supposed to be some wild garlic woods. I didn’t want to say this in the walk post so as not to encourage foragers. But most of the wild garlic we did see was over anyway.
The weather was w=showery. But the showers were fairly short and there was some sun in between. In one shower most of the group I was with failed to make a right turn or to hear our shouts and whistles, so just two of us carried on alone to Bodiam, where we had tea in the tea room and then went to see the steam train arrive. Bodiam station was closed, but they let us into the platform to see the train arrive. They had set up a tea stall purely to cater for the train passengers, who only spent ten minutes on the station while the train turned around. It seemed rude not to have another tea, so we did. I carefully positioned myself to take a great video of the train departing in clouds of steam - except I forgot to press the record button, so my smooth camera panning went for nothing.
Approaching Salehurst we ran into the short walkers and also the newcomer, who took his earlier desertion cheerfully, and we learned that some had lunched in the Castle Inn in Bodiam, which I had completely forgotten to check when passing it. I forgot to mention that in Bodiam we also saw the party that had got lost, so they obviously recovered from their mistake. They took the river ending: we went to see the steam train and then took the main route.
In Robertsbridge we went to the cosy Ostrich, which was busier than I have ever seen it. We met one other walker. Several got the 7.14 train and two of us got the 8.14 - I was surprised it was so late. Presumably other walkers got the 6.14.
It felt very strange going in to the Ostrich without a face mask. Generally not the most photogenic of walks, apart from the picture postcard Bodiam Castle that I'd never seen before.
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