Length: 18.5km (11.5 miles) - or 20.3km (12.6 miles) according to the GPX file...
Toughness: 4 out of 10
9.15 train from Charing Cross (9.18 Waterloo East, 9.24 London Bridge) to Robertsbridge, arriving 10.34.
For walk directions click here. For GPX file click here. For the walk home page click here. T=2.20
This is a fairly gentle Weald outing, whose most beautiful moment is when you crest a hill and see Bodiam Castle, surely the archetype of all medieval castles, below you. Bodiam's National Trust tea room is also a good place for tea, so usually this walk only gets done in the summer, but it is now light till 6.10pm, so I think we can have chocolate cake and still finish the walk.
That is, if you don't choose Bodiam as your lunch stop. It is 8.4 miles into the walk, but the Castle Inn by the castle serves food all afternoon on a Saturday, so at a stretch you could delay eating until then.
Otherwise your lunch stop would be the Waterside Cafe at Hawkhurst Fish Farm, 5.1 miles into the walk, which proved a satisfactory lunch stop (with a lakeside setting) on this walk's last Saturday outing in 2017 (and yes it is licensed).
Note that the original early lunch stop on this walk is long gone, and the Royal George pub in Hurst Green, which transitioned into the Eurasia restaurant, is now apparently transitioning back again. The new establishment has no website yet, so I assume it has not yet re-opened, meaning there is no point in doing the Hurst Green diversion.
After Bodiam it is a pretty 3 or 4 miles (depending on which length of the walk you believe) to Robertsbridge, but as long as you leave by 4.30pm or so, you should do it in daylight. Robertsbridge has at least two pubs, one being the quirky Ostrich by the station.
Trains back from Robertsbridge are at 14 past the hour, but just for you there are two additional trains at 5.44 and 6.44.
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N=28 on this walk, with an equally large Meet-Up group also on the platform at Robertsbridge. They were doing a similar but not identical walk and we only tangled up with them once mid-morning. Each member of that party, we calculated, had paid £10 on top of the train fare for the walk once you took into account group discounts. A nice little earner for someone.
It was a long while since I had done this walk and I was surprised by its variety and interest. Nice dry ground after the recent sun and pleasant views at times. Primroses were coming out in several places and wild garlic shoots were appearing in the woods. Over an arable field two larks were singing. The weather was pleasant, w=brightish-cloud-and-some-sun, enabling some to walk in shirtsleeves for a time, though with a cold wind and greyer skies towards the end.
With so large a group (and no “trained mountain leader”) we inevitably got a bit spread out, but many, I think, had lunch at the Waterside Cafe, leaving generous amounts of mud on their floor. The food choice was good but we quickly exhausted it, consuming first all the fish and chips and then all the vegan curry. Everything came very fast.
It was three miles after lunch to Bodiam, where lots of us had tea at outside tables at the (new?) cafe by the castle moat but some went to the pub. It was still only 3.30pm so nearly all pressed on to Robertsbridge, one getting the bus.
We let the 17.14 train go to have a drink in the Ostrich and then caught the 17.44, with the traditional wine, nachos and hummus to smooth our passage home.
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