8.7 miles or 10.6 miles T=3.112
4 out of 10: some hills, but relatively gentle gradients
Take the 10.15am train from Charing Cross (dep 10.18 W’loo East; 10.24 London Bdg) arrives Stonegate 11.26
RETURN TRAINS Depart from Robertsbridge 14 mins and 44 mins past the hour
TICKET: Buy a day return to Robertsbridge.
This is a hilly – but relatively gentle – walk through the High Weald, beautiful any time of the year, especially autumn with a rich array of hornbeam trees, and during leaf fall it has plenty of fine autumn colour.
The walk shares a very short section of the Stonegate Circular walk on this website and like that walk visits the pretty ridgetop village of Burwash for lunch and Batemans, the former home of the writer Rudyard Kipling, now owned by the National Trust. But its route is otherwise quite different.
In the morning it takes a shorter route across a valley to Burwash and from Bateman’s onwards, the walk strikes out into completely new territory, climbing by gentle stages up onto a ridge that gives you a fine backwards view towards Burwash. It then crosses the country estate of Socknersh Manor before descending via another ridge, with fine views, into Robertsbridge.
WALK OPTIONS: For a longer morning of 6.6km (4.1 miles), use the standard morning route of the Stonegate Circular walk on this site. This lengthens the walk to 17km (10.6 miles) in total.
LUNCH AND TEA: All lunch and tea pubs are open. Please remember no groups of more than 6 when going into pubs. For the lunch pubs, it is always advisable to book.
There are two pubs in Burwash for lunch, 3.6km/2.2 miles into the walk. The Rose & Crown (01435 882600), which has both inside and outside seating, Saturday and 12pm-2.30pm. The Bear Inn (01435 882 540), 150 metres to the west, serves food 12-9pm Saturdays.
For picnics Burwash churchyard or the fields between the village and Batemans are a good spot.
BATEMANS NT: If you are planning to visit Batemans, it is only 1.1km beyond Burwash and has a National Trust tea room serving hot meals at lunchtime (until 2.30pm or so) and tea and cakes until 5pm March to October. To access the tea room, you have to pay to go into Batemans, however – unless you are a National Trust member. NT website states: Important notice - We’ve re-opened the ground floor of the house, gardens, estate, shop and Mulberry tea-room for take-out food and drinks. Please book in advance, especially at weekends and bank holidays. If you do not book we cannot guarantee admission.
After that, there are no further refreshment stops until you reach Robertsbridge. Here the Ostrich by the station is a pleasantly quirky pub with a nice garden, or you can walk up to the village centre for other pub options, such as The George. Judges Bakery in the village centre also has two or three tables and is open until 2pm Monday to Saturday.
For walk directions, GPX, map, photos etc click here
3 comments:
The religious community you walk through right at the end of this walk was featured in a BBC documentary in August called "Inside the Bruderhof": alas, no longer available on iPlayer, but if you Google it you can find out more about them.
Intend coming and doing the shorter morning option but would like a pub lunch
Stonegate to Robertsbridge
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This walk is lovely as ever. We broke up into groups of 6 in the station forecourt, and people decided in their groups whether to do long or short versions, pub or picnic. My group had lunch on the two benches on the grassy slope just before the church in Burwash, with lovely views (and a white squirrel. We went through the grounds of the religious community again with great views - and quite a few people had tea or other drinks in the Ostrich pub - split up into small groups of course. Due to being in small spaced out bubbles I don't know who had pub lunches or what their experiences were, so please add to this comment if you wish.
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