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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 16 December 2017

Saturday walk - Otford Circular, short or longer

Otford Circular via Romney Street (Book 1 Walk 43)
Length: 12km (7.5 miles)
Toughness: 5 out of 10

OR

Longer Otford Circular using afternoon of walk 290
Length: 17.2km (10.7 miles)
Toughness: 5 out of 10

9.52 train from Victoria (10.09 Bromley South) to Otford, arriving 10.28

Buy a day return to Otford

For walk directions click here. For GPX click here.

If doing the LONGER AFTERNOON, also click here for walk directions and here for GPX.

I have had a request for the Book 1 Otford Circular walk, a fine little gem of a walk on the North Downs which lands you after 8.7km (5.4 miles) in the village of Shoreham for lunch. Here SWC walkers tend to flock to the conveniently located Kings Arms but I would also recommend the very cosy Two Brewers and Crown Inn: to get to these carry on up the road past the Kings Arms and in 170 metres turn right at the T-junction: the Two Brewers is on the right in 200 metres or so, with the Crown 300 metres beyond that.

After lunch it is a short and easy walk on the book 1 route to Otford - just 2.6km or 1.6 miles to the centre of the village, which has nice tea options such as the Hospices of Hope cafe or the Willow Tea Rooms. Ideal if you want to get back to town early for some Christmas shopping.

For a LONGER AFTERNOON WALK, I suggest switching to the walk 290 directions (starting with section 4) which provide a loop of up to 8.5km (5.3 miles) back to Otford ("up to" because there are two possible short cuts saving 1.8 or 2.3km respectively).

Allow 10 minutes to walk from Otford to its station.

Trains back are at 00 and 32 past to Bromley South and Victoria (fast trains taking 35 minutes). 

There are also stopping trains to Blackfriars at 07 and 37 but these take 57 minutes and are only likely to be useful if you live near one of the stations on route. T=1.43

3 comments:

Sean said...

Any slug-a-beds who fail to make the scheduled train and start half-an-hour late could catch up by doing the shorter morning route in Walk 290. In fact these renegades would probably get to Shoreham first, and meeting up with the main group might require a diligent inspection of the village's four pubs at some point.

The afternoon leg of Walk 290 is significantly tougher than the flat return leg of the original walk since it climbs up the other side of the valley. I'd have said that the toughness rating of Walker's suggested 'Longer Afternoon' combination is closer to 7/10.

Walker said...

N=22 on this walk on a day of w=glorious-morning-sun-but-cloud-and-some-rain-after-lunch. We got a bit split up in the morning, a few taking shortcuts, a few getting lost, so I am not sure what happened to around half the group. But eight us had a fine lunch at the Two Brewers, a very pleasant place which sees itself as more of a restaurant than a pub but which accommodated a few extra drinkers from the sandwich crowd (rather reluctantly, according to one of them). Unable to fit onto our table, one joined the Walk Inspector in the Crown.

Emerging at about 2.45pm to grey skies and rain - what a change! - several who had planned to do the longer afternoon decided not to, and only six of us that I know of set off to do it. Three of these basically reversed part of the Otford to Eynsford Walk route, but three of us did the full 290 route, and very fine it was too, despite including its author’s trademark close encounter with a motorway. I reflected that I would love to come back and do it in summer, though I guess then it would seem too short a walk for many SWC-ers.

We got to Otford at 4.35, finishing in the dark and were too late for tea at the Hospices of Hope tea room, which closed early - hopefully not because of earlier walkers turning up in muddy boots (we always take them off for pubs, rarely for tea rooms: just my observation). But several of us instead found The Bull pub very cosy, and it even had vegan chocolate pudding.

Anonymous said...

6 who ate at Two Brewers did short cut. We were joined by 4 others who ate in the other pub ( King George?) which was very good and value for money. 7 then went to Hospice tea room (excellent tea and cakes as ever, also for a good cause) whilst 3 decided to go for something stronger - 2 rejoined the Hospice group on the train. 5 more walkers who took short cut came to Hospice just when we set to leave. So we vacated the table for them. We took 4:32 train back and met two more walkers at the station. PS Two Brewers had very nice food but expensive (ie London restaurant price) - be prepared to spend £20+ for food and a drink. So the other two pubs may be a better choice for future outings.