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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 9 June 2018

Saturday walk - Tunbridge Wells to Hildenborough - Across the Weald and down into the valley

Length: 17.7km (11 miles)
Toughness: 4 out of 10

10.00 train from Charing Cross (10.03 Waterloo East, 10.09 London Bridge) to Tunbridge Wells, arriving 10.58

Buy a day return to Tunbridge Wells

For walk directions click here. For GPX click here.

This walk starts in pretty Tunbridge Wells and heads north - into hilly territory but never too strenuous, finally coming to the northern escarpment of the Weald, with fine views. After that you descend onto flatter lands to come to Hildenborough, where there is a nice place for tea, owned by former Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes.

There are two pubs for lunch. From memory last time we ate at the Kentish Hare, which was a bit gourmet but has nice outdoor seating. The walk author does not give distances to the lunch pubs, but I don't remember it as being a big stretch.

In the event that the Bidborough pub is full, one option that was mentioned when this walk was last posted is to divert for 600 metres eastwards up to through the woods just before you get to Bidborough to the main road. This is the centre of the charming old town of Southborough, which predates Tunbridge Wells and has at least two pubs - the Hand and Sceptre and the Imperial.

On the last outing three of us also continued walking from Hildenborough to Sevenoaks, but this was a map-led option, ie no walk directions. A very pleasant walk if anyone wants to try it, though....

Trains back from Hildenborough are at 05 and 35 past the hour. T=3.238

3 comments:

Mike said...

The Kentish Hare is officially 7.3kms in to the walk. The Plough comes after 14.1 kms (or 12.9kms if you take the more direct option bypassing Bidborough).

Mike said...

Did anyone do this walk?

Dirk said...

About n=14 walkers on a w=sunny-and-pleasant day. Half of them picniced in the church yard in Bidborough with great views across the valley and half of them had lunch in the pub. Two finished the walk in Tonbridge, one talked about continuing on to Sevenoaks I suppose the majority ended up in Hildenborough. Of note is that the underpass under the A21 is closed for what seems like another year. You need to detour along the road towards the west or the east, either is possible and recapture the walk at the Medway.