Saturday Walk – [New] The Medway Valley and Teapot Island

Extra Walk 338 – Paddock Wood to Yalding
Length: 18¼ km (11.3 miles). Toughness: 2/10

10:01 Ramsgate train from Victoria (Bromley South 10:23), arriving Paddock Wood at 10:58. Buy a return to Yalding.

Trains back from Yalding are hourly at xx:40 and go to Tonbridge, where you change for Victoria or Charing Cross. You could also take a train in the other direction at xx:18 and change at Strood for a High Speed train to St Pancras, but you'd need a more expensive ticket for this route.

Note that trains to and from Tonbridge are running to an amended timetable because of engineering works, but the journey time is not much longer and you've got a choice of London termini on the way back.

In the last couple of months Saturday walkers have been able to try out new Medway valley walks on either side of Maidstone, and this walk continues the exploration a little further upstream. Paddock Wood is not the most rural of starting points but once out of the town and across a main road the rest of the morning is much more pleasant, including an attractive long stretch alongside the meandering River Medway.

There's a tempting riverfront pub at Twyford Bridge but if the Boathouse looks too busy you could continue for a further ten minutes to The George in Yalding, a good-value village pub with its own riverside beer garden. The afternoon is a loop out along the Beult valley, returning to Twyford Bridge for a tea stop at the café on Teapot Island (no tea-bag-in-a-mug here). If you're not in a hurry to catch the hourly train back you can head for the station via a small nature reserve, Yalding Fen.

There are several opportunities to shorten the walk (the ‘official’ one cuts out an outer loop of 5½ km). Conversely, you can extend the walk by continuing to the next station along the Medway Valley line (Wateringbury) or even further, although you ought to buy a ticket to whichever station you plan to return from for this.

You'll need to bring the walk directions from the Paddock Wood to Yalding walk page. T=swc.338