Chilham to
Canterbury Walk – A Good Friday Walk
Length: 20.09km
(12.48 miles)
Toughness: 4
out of 10
From the SWC
description of the walk: ‘This walk starts beside the Great Stour River and its
attendant lakes, visits the church and green at Chartham and passes through hop
fields and apple orchards to Chartham Hatch, where picnickers stop for lunch.
From
Chartham Hatch the walk continues through Church Wood then Blean Woods Nature
Reserve to the parklands of the University of Kent, with fine views down over
Canterbury Cathedral. The entrance to the city is along the River Stour,
through the Norman Westgate and down the medieval high street and alleys,
entering the cathedral precincts through its ornate Christ Church Gate.’
Leave early
to give yourself time for site seeing at the end.
Travel:
9.34 from
Charing X; 9.37 Waterloo East; 9.43 London Bridge. Arrive Chilham 11.10
OR:
10.04 St.
Pancras; arrive Ashford Int at 10.42 where you change to the 10.57 which
arrives at Chilham at 11.10.
Return:
After 4pm the train schedule is:
Canterbury
West to Charing Cross is XX.06
Canterbury West
to St. Pancras XX.23
Canterbury
East to Victoria XX.47
Canterbury
West to Charing Cross XX.06 and so on,
Ticket types:
Buy a day return to Canterbury Stations
Lunch: Artichoke
pub, and The Local Pub, both just off the route in Chartham. Otherwise, there is The Hare in the village
of Blean much later into the walk. Picnickers
usually stop in the village of Chartham Hatch in the playground where there are
picnic tables and benches.
Plenty of
tea rooms and pubs in Canterbury.
1 comment:
[Posted on behalf of Kevin] #9 #cloudy_and_dry
A friendly group of nine on this seasonal outing. Six of us enjoyed a pleasant lunch in the Origins Restaurant at the Canterbury Chartham Garden Centre, while the other three sped on. A large portrait of Rudyard Kipling benignly watched over us, with a caption announcing that he was the ‘instigator of cake’. While he was the instigator of many and varied things, Kipling cakes were not among them. Service was fairly slow in a busy restaurant, but the food was good, with decent portions at reasonable prices. While it is important to support country pubs, it is also good to see a better rhyme between price and portion size. After lunch, two more walkers sped off, needing to get back to London. Between Chartham Hatch and Upper Harbledown, we passed an uprooted orchard and met some very friendly pigs, who enjoyed having their backs scratched. They multi-tasked by vigorously rooting around in the soil while following us as far as the wire allowed. Later, three lively young horses chaperoned us very closely indeed. At one point, they engaged in what could only be described as horseplay, jumping on each other and biting. Anxious to afford them some privacy, we moved on. We lost one lady at Upper Harbledown, as she was keen to explore a shortcut to Canterbury. Plenty of wood anemones were visible as we moved through Church Wood/Rough Common. As we approached Blean, one lady gave a poised and moving reading of a Seamus Heaney poem that often finds its way into UK schoolrooms. Shortly afterwards, the triplet became a couplet, and I opted for the prose of walking down Whitstable Road to Canterbury West, getting the 5.06. I hope that everybody else got home safely, and that the Peak District trippers on this walk enjoy their adventures next week. Thank you to branchline for organising what is, I think, an underrated walk.
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