rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_12cb6a87-5d7d-5f54-bdd5-51952b0fb7a6">When to go
1 Lullingstone Park to Shoreham
3 Westerham to French Street and Chartwell
4 Crockham Hill to Toys Hill and Obriss Farm
5 Toys Hill to Ide Hill, Crockham Hill and French Street
6 Ide Hill to Manor Farm
7 Sevenoaks Weald to Boarhill
8 Shipbourne to Underriver and Ightham Mote
9 Four Elms to Winkhurst Green and Bough Beech
10 Marsh Green to Crippenden Manor
11 Cowden to Horseshoe Green and Bassett’s Farm
12 Cowden to Hoath Corner
13 Chiddingstone to Penshurst
14 Penshurst to Salmans and Nashes Farm
15 Penshurst to Fordcombe
16 Groombridge to Speldhurst
17 Brenchley to Matfield
18 Yalding to Hunton and Buston Manor
19 Teston Bridge to Wateringbury and East Farleigh
20 Linton to Boughton Monchelsea Place
21 Ulcombe Church to Boughton Malherbe and Grafty Green
22 Pluckley to Little Chart and Egerton
23 Wittersham Road station to Small Hythe and Tenterden
24 Appledore to Stone-in-Oxney and Royal Military Canal
NORTH AND EAST KENT
25 Camer Country Park to Luddesdown and Great Buckland
26 Stansted to Fairseat, Hodsoll Street and Ridley
27 Trosley Country Park to Coldrum Stones and Ryarsh
28 Newington to Upchurch and Lower Halstow
29 Leysdown-on-Sea to Shellness and Harty
30 Faversham to Oare Creek, Uplees and Oare
31 Faversham to Ham Marshes and Oare Creek
32 Wye to Crundale and Coombe Manor
33 Wye to Wye Downs and Cold Blow
34 Chilham to Stour Valley
35 Stodmarsh Nature Reserve to Grove Ferry
36 St Nicholas at Wade to Chitty and Sarre
37 Bridge to Patrixbourne, Kingston and Bishopsbourne
38 Elham to Breach
39 Sandwich to Sandwich Bay
40 Dover (White Cliffs Picnic Site) to St Margaret’s at Cliffe
41 The Darent Valley Path
42 The Eden Valley Walk
43 The Elham Valley Way
44 The Greensand Way
45 The High Weald Walk
46 The Medway Valley Walk
47 The North Downs Way
48 The Royal Military Canal Path
49 The Saxon Shore Way
50 The Stour Valley Walk
51 The Wealdway
Appendix A Route summary table
Appendix B Useful addresses
Appendix C Recommended reading
The 13th century church of St Mary’s was destroyed by a doodlebug in 1944 (Walk 22)
PREFACE
The first collection of Kent walks appeared in 1988, a few months after the landscape was drastically changed by the hurricane of October 1987. A second collection, with a broader reach across the county, was published in two volumes in 1994 and 1995. Later, in 2007, it was decided to select the best walks from previous collections and present them in a new edition. Having gone through three updated reprints, it’s now time for a complete revision. This is it.
We’ve spent a year checking and re-checking the routes for this edition, travelling to every corner of Kent and being reminded, yet again, what a wonderfully diverse county this is. One day we might be wandering across the North Downs, plunging into what appeared to be a secretive little valley in which we’d discover a hamlet lost to the world. Another day might find us following a path beside saltings, whose exposed mudflats bore the prints of scores of gulls and waders that rose as one, wheeled across the water and returned to land as though they’d forgotten something important.
Some days we’d take a clifftop path with a view across the Channel to France; on another we’d be tracing the Greensand Ridge, the Weald spreading into remote distances below and beyond. There were woodland walks, walks that took us through orchards, vineyards and (rarely nowadays) the once-ubiquitous hop gardens. Our paths have drawn us through fields of barley, wheat and oats. We’ve wandered beside streams and rivers, watched kingfisher, heron and more ducks and geese than we could count, and listened on so many outings to the mewing cry of a buzzard. A fallow deer has sometimes crossed our path; we’ve stood for ages, barely breathing, to study an adder curled asleep on a half-cut log in the sunshine. One morning I watched a mother ewe licking clean her moments-old lamb as she expelled the after-birth into the grass behind her.
We’ve been walking in all weathers: in winter, muffled against the cold, frost on the ground, elm and oak producing stark outlines, naked without their leaves. In spring we’ve almost tiptoed among