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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 7 July 2018

Saturday Walk – A lavender farm in the Darent valley (Shoreham Circular)

Extra Walk 289 – Shoreham Figure-of-8
Length: 19¾ km (12.3 miles), with shorter options. Toughness: 6/10

09:46 Sevenoaks train from Blackfriars, calling at lots of stations in south London and arriving Shoreham at 10:45. Or take the 09:55 Ashford train from Victoria and change at Bromley South (arr 10:11, dep 10:23) for the above train.

A return to Otford (the next station down the line) instead of Shoreham (Kent) would allow you to duck out there in the afternoon; whatever you do, don't buy a ticket to Shoreham-by-Sea

Trains back from Shoreham to Blackfriars are half-hourly, at xx:02 & xx:32. Change at Bromley South if you want to return to Victoria.

We had a Saturday walk in the Darent valley at the end of May but it should be a good time of year for another outing as this walk goes past some extensive lavender fields at Castle Farm. It hasn't yet had a Saturday posting and although there's some overlap with the Otford-Eynsford walk, there should be enough new stretches to keep your interest.

The walk is a true figure-of-8 in that it does a loop to the north of Shoreham before lunch, and one to the south afterwards. You can shorten it by diverting to Otford station in mid-afternoon, or simply by heading straight back to Shoreham station after lunch.

There are four pubs in the village so you should be able to find one which appeals for lunch. It also has a couple of tea rooms for refreshment at the end of the walk, now that the Honeypot Tea Rooms have reopened; the other is at the Aircraft Museum. And there's always the four pubs…

You'll need to bring the walk directions from the Shoreham Figure-of-8 walk page. Clicking 'Main Walk' under Walk Options will hide a lot of unnecessary directions for an alternative walk which does a shorter version of the two loops the other way round.
T=swc.289

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was out on a different lavender walk yesterday and it's in full bloom at the moment and the scent is wonderful.

MG said...

The clicking main or any other version to hide non-relevant sections doesn't work in my browser even though I've given permission for features to be displayed. It would be very helpful to have a list of which sections go with each of the walk variants.

Sean said...

MG: This sounds like a 'permissions' thing. In Internet Explorer's Options (Security tab) I've listed the SWC site as a 'Trusted site' with a 'Medium-low' level, and that seems to work.

Some time ago our webmaster silently changed the site's name from http://www.walkingclub.org.uk to https://www.walkingclub.org.uk and I had to add the new site name (starting https). Have you checked that?

I'm not very familiar with browsers other than IE but if you say what you're using someone else might be able to help.

For tomorrow's walk we're simply doing §1-10, plus the final instructions back to the station (if you need them) in §17. If you want to call it a day after lunch and watch the football, skip §5-10. Unless you want to be creative and mix'n'match, you won't need §11-16 which are for the Alternative walk. Hope that helps.

MG said...

Clarification appreciated!

Mr M Tiger said...

N=24 people turned up for this alternative to the various sports on offer on this w=hot-hot-hot day. Why else would the lofty peaks of the Kentish Serenghetti hold such an allure? The starting pistol sounded and they were off, along the river and up the first of several hills, as if a lion was after them. One seasoned walker took up the rear, stolidly plodding along at a measured pace, never complaining, always cheerful, with a smile for everyone.
The advance party kept up their pace past the flowering lavender fields, pausing only to devour the lavender flavoured ice cream available at The Hop Shop, (”can’t taste the lavender” one said later). Then they were off again, the imaginary lion only inches behind them. I came across several of the front runners in the Crown. I never saw the others again (doo doo doo). They presumably distributed themselves amongst the other refreshment establishments in Shoreham. How many completed the course? I don’t know. I myself only managed a figure of 6 finishing at Otford and I know of at least two others only managed a figure of 0. Could I have made it back to Shoreham? “No way, Jose “– as they say in this part of the Serenghetti. As it was, it took copious amounts of fermented apple juice to bring my core temperature down to something still capable of sustaining life.
Nice walk though, with plenty wild chalkland flowers and plenty butterflies and one particularly colourful big one that wouldn’t stay still long enough to be identified. Possibly the one Val Doonican sang about. The “far corner” in the field atop Fackendon Down was a bit hard to find but I located it eventually by retracing my steps back from the far corner.