Toughness: 4 out of 10, mostly gentle gradients, but this is the Weald, so expect mud.
9.30 train from Charing Cross (9.33 Waterloo East, 9.39 London Bridge) to Wadhurst, arriving 10.52. Just for you, I have also asked Southeastern to route this train via East Croydon (depart 9.56) today. (This is engineering works obviously, but only adds marginally to the journey times.)
Buy a day return to Wadhurst.
It has been three years since we went to the Wadhurst Bonfire and Fireworks (in 2019 it was cancelled due to high winds). For those that don't know it, it is a lovely village event: big enough to have a proper fireworks display and the usual hot dog/burger/mulled wine stalls, but intimate enough that you can get close to the great big blazing bonfire without heavy-handed crowd control. Gazing into the hot flames, thinking ancient fireside thoughts, is your last sunbathe of the year...
You can pay on the night for the bonfire using contactless payment on entry to the site, but to avoid queuing you are advised to book online here (up to midnight on 5 November). This also gets you in for £6.50 rather than £7.50. (Note: local shops will NOT be selling tickets this year.) Gates open at 5.30pm, the bonfire is lit at 6.30pm and the fireworks are at 7.30pm. See ** below for information about "après-feu" activities.
If you don't want to go to the bonfire, fine: many don't. You can still come on the walk, which is a nice Wealden outing, with short, main and long options to suit all leg muscle arrangements. This is the Weald, though, and it is autumn, so mud is to be expected.
Your lunch stop is the Old Vine in Cousley Wood, just 3.3 miles into the walk. This charming pub has had many incarnations over recent years - 1970s timewarp, gastro, Latin American. Now its website talks of "pub grub done properly", which sounds good to me. It isn't the largest place in the world, but we usually squeeze in. Those doing the short walk could have a late lunch instead in Wadhurst, which has two pubs and two cafes. It wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to divert to there even on the main and longer walks, come to that.
Wadhurst is also your tea stop. The Wealden Wholefoods Cafe sadly now shuts at 1.30pm, while the nearby Piccolo Cafe gives up the ghost at 4pm. So one of the two pubs - the Greyhound or White Hart - is your likely venue. Those of us going to the bonfire traditionally assemble in the former, but the latter can't be ruled out: it depends which has room for us.
After tea you have a choice of 1.4 mile walk down the main road (with a pavement all the way) to Wadhurst station, or the much nicer 2 mile walk down the back roads. I always say allow 40 minutes for the main road and an hour for the back roads, but then people post comments saying how they did it quicker. I suppose the worst that can happen is that you just miss a train and have to wait half an hour on a bare platform for the next one.
Trains back from Wadhurst are at 00 and 29 past until 21.29, and then 22.29
** Après-feu: the fireworks are usually over by 8pm. It is then is a tradition of some of us to walk the back roads in the dark - very atmospheric. When I say "dark" here, I mean DARK. There is no moon to help us this year, and the use of torches is discouraged because it spoils your night vision. This might sound nuts but it is actually an enchanting experience and the perfect introduction to winter. If you are not comfortable with this, you can walk down the main road, as outlined above: there is pavement all the way and a lot of it is lit. The back roaders will probably be aiming for the 21.29 train.
7 comments:
I suspect scientists will be keen to find out how the Wadhurst Bonfire Committee achieved nuclear fusion on their blaze this year!
prob doing short walk, thanks
Two bits of information from the Wadhurst Bonfire
1) They advise you download your tickets as a pdf onto your phone - or print them maybe? - just in case the mobile network is not up to everyone trying to open their emails at once
2) They are trialling a shuttle service to the station this year, presumably a bus. I am not sure how well this will work, but if you don't fancy the walk down the road afterwards (see walk post for details) that might be an option.
N=16 on this walk. W=Cloudy weather. There were occasional flashes of sun and some spots of rain. The wind was a bit keen at times. But basically it was signature November grey.
The morning passed pleasantly apart from one woman suggesting we bunch up so as not to scare her horses. Possibly don’t pasture your horses on a public footpath if walkers make your horses nervous, missus? We ignored her and the horses seemed unperturbed.
On to the Old Vine. Most lunched here, two separate tables having been booked and others being available. Despite this, our arrival put them in a pickle. It was not clear if we were to order at the bar or at the table. Some did one, some the other. Food came erratically, some who ordered early getting their food late and vice versa. When two who had ordered 20 minutes before us were still waiting when we had already finished our meals, we suggested to our waitress that they might be given a free drink or some peanuts. This apparently caused the waitress to burst into tears behind the scenes. The manageress then came out to tell us off and inform us that the disorder in the kitchen was due to us all turning up precipitately to occupy tables we had rung to book. At least one early orderer was then served an over cooked beef sandwich on white bread not brown.
It was quite a relief to get out into the open air. Lots of us then did the long walk around the tranquil, two thirds-full Bewl Water Reservoir. Some presumably did the main walk.
We got Wadhurst by 4.45pm. Some ensconced themselves in the Greyhound but when two more of us tried to join then there were no more chairs, though plenty of free tables. The barman shrugged when we asked if we might source some other chairs (eg from the nearly empty restaurant) so we went elsewhere.
I was glad we did. It turns out a lovely new grocery shop cum tea room has opened on the corner, and there we found other walkers. Across the road there is also a friendly French wine bar to which the pubbers later decanted for wine and cheese. In general Wadhurst has gone remarkably upmarket since I was last there - due to COVID and working from home? The other pub, the White Hart, which went upmarket several years ago, was heaving. The Greyhound needs to ditch the rural rudeness and up its game maybe?
So on to the bonfire. Ten of us went. There were unfortunately some rain showers (not forecasted!!) and the organisers had this year shifted the bonfire to the bottom of the field. It was cute, though - a Viking longship on a stack of pallets which was lit by attendants in horned helmets. Unfortunately a quite brisk wind was blowing straight up the field, so that the fire turned into a horizontal sheet of flame that looked a bit like a NASA rocket engine test. (The stewards managed this well, however, using a rope to push us back out of danger.) Starring into the flames as the rain fell was a bit surreal, but still nice.
Thanks to having someone planted cunningly at the front of the enormous food queue, we then had delicious sausages in buns - real quality produce. There was then a spectacular fireworks display - Washington DC on the Fourth of July could not have done better.
Afterwards six of us walked down the back lanes in the profound dark, as magical an experience as it always is. We unexpectedly arrived in time for the 9pm train and joined the other four bonfirers there, and we consumed pre-purchased “supplies” and generally made too much noise on the journey home.
Were tables prebooked for the pub? We understood there were no bookings made.
As it was only 3.5 miles to pub, and we were generally together this made it difficult for the pub it seemed, about thirteen of us turned up at once.
My meal was excellent.
The firework field was pretty packed this year, with about three thousand people, about four times usual crowd!
One table for six and another for four. Both had “Reserved” signs on them.
Ok, thank you Peter. The understanding I had at our table is that the leading lady, land lady, who spoke with us suggested, indeed more or less said that we hadnt booked. So, good job we weren't in too much of a hurry as we wouldnt have finished by dark time.
And then wouldnt have enjoyed the great coffee and cakes in the newly opened cafe shop, which closes at 5 (the other cafes close about 4) in increasingly upmarket Wadhurst. Lovely place though and a great day.
Although, apart from my old peculiar on the train home, the ales were not that exciting.
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