New Walk – Wateringbury Circular
Length: 13 km (8.1 miles), with optional 3 km extension. Toughness: 2/10
10:40 Dover train from Charing Cross (Waterloo East 10:43, London Bridge 10:49, Orpington 11:06, etc), changing at Paddock Wood (arr 11:32, dep 11:40) and arriving Wateringbury at 11:51. Buy a return to Wateringbury.
Trains back from Wateringbury are hourly at xx:08 and go to Tonbridge, where you change for stations to Charing Cross. You could also travel via Maidstone at xx:51 and change at Strood for a High Speed train to St Pancras, but you'd need to pay a supplement for this.
As you'll be losing an hour's sleep with the clock change it seems considerate to pick a leisurely walk with a short morning section, allowing for a late start. The first half-hour of this new Medway Valley walk will be familiar to the large group who turned out for the Yalding Circular walk on New Years Day, but there's only a little overlap after that, with a different lunch pub and tea places.
You should reach the Good Intent in Farleigh Green by 1pm, with the Bull Inn about 25 minutes later as an alternative lunch stop. As it's Mothers Day, however, I suggest packing some emergency provisions in case they're overwhelmed with family groups. There shouldn't be any problem getting tea'n'cake at the Ramblers Rest Café, but give them a call if you think you might get there after 4pm as they'll usually stay open for walking groups.
The café is close to Wateringbury station, but if you've got the energy for another 40-50 minutes of walking you could try one of the walk's two short extensions. One is a loop back to Wateringbury, the other carries on alongside the river to the next station (Yalding; trains at xx:12).
You'll need to bring the written directions (no GPX file) from this temporary Wateringbury Circular walk page. T=swc.336
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3 comments:
One of those days ! I missed the train by a minute, so took the next one an hour later and spent all morning valiantly trying to catch up with the group, sadly to no avail, despite marching like a centurion. Possibly because I got lost in the orchard section, the directions there are a bit confusing. It proved nigh on impossible to find a place to stop for sustenance; neither the Good Intent nor the Bull would give me a table, but in the end I found an excellent establishment by going slightly off piste, The Walnut Tree on Forge Lane. Did you find a place to dine ? After that I gave up on finding any other SAturday Walkers so continued along the Medway to Maidstone instead, very pretty . Right now am in a snooker club opposite Maidstone Barracks station, passing the time before my train home, which again I managed to miss by minutes. Better luck next time !
Gabriella
Bad luck Gabriella. Yes there were 9 of us ahead, so that makes n=10 altogether on a w=cold-cloudy-breezy-but-dry day The sun did come out later but only to mock us as we boarded the 16:08 home.
The others sped off ahead of me so I didn’t hear the conversation in the Good Intent. I understand they were told it was fully booked, despite it being empty. We suspect they were primed and waiting for a squadron of mothers and their high-spending, simpering offspring.
So lunch, for those who had brought their own, was outside with Al Fresco on the green with half pints from the pub. We didn’t stay long, nor did we stop at the later Bull though some looked wistfully at it as we sped past.
We too had a frisson of doubt traversing the orchard but we did have the walk's author with us which helped.
The walk was cleverly planned to not coincide with several flowering seasons – the wood anenomes had either just finished or slept in and the wild garlic although present in profusion in one place, was not flowering. There were some pretty white bushes possibly blackthorn (or maybe cherry plum)and some marsh marigold. At the end we patronised the Ramblers Rest café and sat outside taunting the swans with our provender. Here, one of our number rather let the side down by consuming three portions of cake. I think there was some excuse about not having had any lunch (though this was difficult to hear through all the cake).
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