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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Saturday 24 September 2016

Saturday Second Walk - Gentle Kentish countryside and a tall tower

SWC walk 219 - Hildenborough to Tonbridge
Length: 13.3km (8.2 miles) or 21.5km (13.4 miles)
Toughness: 2 out of 10

10.00 train from Charing Cross (10.08 London Bridge) to Hildenborough, arriving 10.42

Buy a day return to Tonbridge.

For walk directions click here.

We have so many walks these days that some are created, debuted and then forgotten in our mad rush to try ever-newer walks. (The fact that some walk creators go on to research further walks in the same area does not help....)

According to the database this one has not had an outing since October 2014. After a bit of road walking to start it rises into gentle Wealden countryside and offers a choice of two pubs - the Chaser in Shipbourne and the Kentish Rifleman in Dunk's Green - for lunch.

You might recognise these from SWC walk 41 Yalding to Sevenoaks and relentless seekers after novelty could switch to the afternoon of that walk after lunch if they wanted. But the official route is to carry on to Hadlow, with its tall tower (a folly, which is easily visible but frustratingly inaccessible at ground level) and - perhaps more to the point - Broadview Gardens which has a nice tea room, open till 5pm.

This is the 8.2 mile version of the walk and from here you can catch the 7 or 77 bus to Tonbridge at 02, 24 and 42 past until 17.42, then 18.35, 18.47, 18.55, 19.43, 20.46, 21.46.

Alternatively it is a flat five miles, initially across fields with good views of the Hadlow Tower, latterly along the River Medway, into Tonbridge - the 13.4 mile version of the walk.

Trains back from Tonbridge are very numerous - every ten minutes or so.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

After Hadow Tower, you could also detour to the PM of the Tonbridge Circular walk, passing Tudeley Church and it's fabulous Chagall windows: http://www.tudeley.org
It's open until 6pm over summer (until the clocks go back).

Sean said...

Tudeley church is on the morning of the Tonbridge Circular walk, not the afternoon. You could do this section in reverse to return to Tonbridge, but even if you took the short cut at Five Oak Green this would more than double the length of the walk, from 13¼ km to about 27 km.

The Tonbridge Circular was posted on two Saturdays in 2015 and I'm rather pleased to see that Walker has chosen to give an outing to its relatively neglected cousin.

Bridie said...

A curiously slow and gentle day out.
Out of N=30 people on the walk there was 1 who got an earlier train and 2 arrived on a later train Train dropped us into a W=sunny-with-a-light-breeze day so excellent walking weather and dry under foot which made for ankle breaking journeys across several fields of ploughed hardened mud though as far as I know the day was without incident.
Incident free ( even for the sock and sandal crew ) the walk is nice and gentle with no real slopes and very green views throughout.
Throughout there are excellent foragong options for the last knockings of blackberries and a patch of plentiful hedgerow damsons which delayed a few walkers who seemed to be trying to make this their lunch
Lunch at The Kent Rifleman was good though service slow but ameliorated by a friendly barman and server and nice food at reasonable prices.
Prices for tea at the Hadlow Garden Centre were standard but don't bother with the chocolate cake ( toooo dry ) and a poor selection of teas and extremely slow service, served I would guess by students from Hadlow Agricultural College but otherwise it was fine ?
Fine for most of us to get the bus at Hadlow but 6 people or so did the extra 5 miles to Tonbridge with one miraculously being on the station at Tonbridge when we got there.
There were loads of orchard and windfalls on the last part of the walk acording to the walker who beat us to Tonbridge where it turns out though it is a fair size twon there is no cinema
Cinema beckoned to a couple of the walkers who spent some time sussing out the cheapest Bridget Jones Baby and ended choosing Shepherds Bush which seemed to fit the bill
Bill wasn't on the walk this time
Time – too much on my hands