Starting from Hurst Green: This attractive route
starts at Hurst Green station and has some fine bluebell woods in its
early stages. It later skirts along the bottom of the Greensand escarpment,
then climbs up it, with panoramic views, to join the main walk route at
Crockham Hill. Today’s route then goes
through Chartwell (which can be omitted) Toys Hill, Scords Wood (plenty
bluebells) Ide Hill, and up through Emmetts Gardens (more bluebells) and onto
Westerham.
This walk was done in extremely muddy conditions in February
2025. Now that the mud has dried out and
the bluebells are out, it should be lovely.
Length: Around 11.6 miles
T=swc.79
See notes or GPX for shorter options.
If using the Notes to do this route, START at Paragraph
173 on page 12 and follow the directions from there.
Toughness: 4 out of 10
Travel: Take the 10.07 from London Bridge; East
Croydon 10.22; arrives Hurst Green at 10.38
Returns from Westerham:
Ticket: safest to buy a day return to
‘Edenbridge stations’
Return travel from Westerham is by bus. Stop B on Westerham Green.
Bus 246 to Hayes Station (29 minutes) departing
at 15.07; 15.39; 16.10; 16.41; 17.12; 17.43; 18.14 (and hourly after this).
Bus 246 to Bromley South: as above and takes
about 41 minutes
You can use your Oyster cards from Westerham to Bromley
South and Hayes Station.
Bus 594 bus stop adjacent to Kings Arms
Westerham. Buses leave at 15.03 and 16.34 to Oxted station Road East takes
about 20 minutes. Hurst Green return ticket is valid from here.
Lunch: Chartwell
National Trust cafe no need to pay to use café, toilets, shop etc.
On the full main walk only, a very late lunch (7.9 miles in) is
possible at the Cock Inn in Ide Hill.
Fox & Hounds pub is now showing as
permanently closed.
Westerham has plenty of options for tea or stronger stuff. There is also a
tea room in Emmetts Garden.
5 comments:
Actually, if you have zone six coverage, you might as well buy a day return to Hurst Green. For this version of the walk the Edenbridge Stations bit is only to cover the journey from Bromley South to Victoria, but I am guessing that for many of us that is already free anyway….
Having said that, Edenbridge is only one stop beyond Hurst Green, so it is no biggie either way.
As the walk author, I much prefer the Hurst Green start to this walk. In fact, I have thought of ditching the Edenbridge start altogether…
London bridge train has been delayed - still at LB now
LB train is about 25mins late - on our way now
I'm on the bus to Westerham and will walk from there. Aiming to meet the group at lunch
There were train delays at London Bridge - nothing to East Croydon for a while - but eventually the specified train left half an hour late. 12 were on it, and it turned out that two more had taken an earlier train from East Croydon and set off ahead of us. We acquired them en route, plus a further walker who started from Westerham and reversed the shorter ending. So n=15 in all.
The weather was nicer than expected w=mostly-sunny, but with a killingly cold wind that popped up at unexpected moments. The countryside was as lovely as you might expect - abundant flowers, fresh green foliage. Only birdsong and butterflies were rather lacking (some orange tips excepted).
The bluebells were in good form. The most intense display was on Mariners Hill, but only two of us saw that - the Westerham starter and myself. (The hill also has the most intense carpet of dandelions you ever saw). The others baulked at a Private Property sign on a gate at the bottom of the hill, which I do not remember seeing before. I am puzzling over this. Mariners Hill is definitely National Trust land and NT paths cross over its upper reaches. There was no sign at the upper end of the gated path to say it is private. It is not a right of way, but neither are the other Mariners Hill paths. So I am not sure what is going on here.
Seven or eight us ate at Chartwell, whose food offering is better than it used to be. The queues were a bit horrendous but moved reasonably quickly. After the big climb up to Toys Hill three decided to do the shortcut to Emmetts Garden. That left five of us to do the best bit of the walk: the glorious descent and ascent to Ide Hill.
There the bluebells were plentiful but the community shop and cafe closed (it now shuts at 2.30pm on Saturdays, sadly). So we ploughed on to Emmetts, where we joined the three who had done the shortcut for tea in the garden. The NT has a hot drinks and ice cream pop-up to complement the regular self-service tea room, so ordering did not take long. We lingered a good while in the sun.
On then through the woods, where the beech leaves were all freshly out, and down to Westerham by 5.40pm. Three went straight for the 246 bus: five of us hopped over to the Grasshopper and had a quick al fresco drink before getting the 6.14pm bus. It is a long time since I did this journey in the daylight. From the top deck it looked very pretty.
Post a Comment