North Downs Way Day 5 - Westerham to almost Wrotham

The George and Dragon in Westerham is everything that’s good about a pub. It appears to be a community hub, and also serves excellent food and provides very comfortable beds. The staff were also delightful. There was a young chef on breakfasts, apparently new to the job, and although what he made me was delicious, he appeared to lack confidence, asking for reassurance from the waiting staff that it looked ok. They were so warm and encouraging to him, and my eggs florentine set me off with a spring.

Not so much that I wanted to reprise the mile and a half along the busy road back to the path though. So I commissioned a taxi, driven by a woman of my age. We agreed that the fixed price that her company had set was extortionate, commented on the cold and then swapped stories about the winter of 1962. And the joy of infant school frozen milk. It was to be the only conversation I had for the next 2 and a half hours, this morning has been very solitary and quiet.

Setting off, the walking was perfect. Today it was cold enough for the mud to be frozen, with just enough give to be springy underfoot. The skies were utterly blue, and it was utterly joyous. .

As were the small herd of deer I disturbed in the field, who looked at me intently before they went skittering off into the sunlight.

There always seems to be a hill to start the day, but where yesterday was so slippery, today the frozen divots made footholds, and I made much less heavy weather of it.

Into the woods to see another mysterious object. Thanks to my friend Janna, I now know that the trombone slide with cogs of yesterday was an old fence straining post. This grey plastic object that looked like a large top hat doubling as a convenient seat was in fact, google tells me, a game bird feeder. I saw one pheasant all day today. Maybe they’d not found the feeder.

I continued to walk though woodland with the Downs to my right, through what yesterday would have been a quagmire, but today was icy and firm. Not for much longer though, I thought, as the sun was beginning to loosen it.

The map I’d plotted diverged from the signage, after having had a period of surprisingly poor signposting. Generally national trails are excellently marked, but this first section was missing the little acorns at many of the critical moments. Which is no problem if you’ve got a map. But when they re-emerged, pointing in a different direction to the one I was expecting, I decided to follow the route on the ground. Although further, it was a beautiful day and I had lots of time. And then all the ground signage disappeared, leaving me to take a path round a housing estate and along a road before getting back to where I’d intended to go in the first place.

Out onto the fields. There has been a lot of field walking today. I enjoyed looking down at a farmhouse with the smoke curling lazily upwards. It felt a centuries unchanged view, and gave me a surge of happiness.

Seeing a post indicating that I was in Kent, it made me wonder when I’d missed crossing the border. Maybe it was even yesterday. Later I looked it up, and realised that it was at the very end of yesterday’s walk, as I was grumpily trudging to Westerham sans taxi. A lesson there, that cold and tiredness can mean you miss big moments. Anyway, I knew I was now in Kent, a county that has become very close to our heart.

The path walked through an ash grove, about which I knew a song. I ran it through my head whilst noticing just how quiet the woods were. Very little birdsong, little sign of green, everything felt still asleep. Even the motorway felt muted in the distance. So I admired the fortitude of the small clump of snowdrops, swimming against the tide by pushing new life out of the ground. A cracking mixed metaphor there.

As I emerged from the woods I told myself that I would stop at the next suitable place. It felt a long time since breakfast. There’d not been many opportunities to rest in these first couple of hours of walking, so I thought the chances were that I’d be sitting on the icy ground. But as I thought this, the Downs opened up in front of me, and there was a bench. In the sunshine I was even warm enough to take off my coat. I had my thermos cup of tea, ate the battered old protein bar that has been in my rucksack for weeks, wrote up a bit of this blog, sat in the warm sun and felt very grateful that my life is such that I can spend a Monday doing a walk like this.

In the half hour that I’d spent enjoying the sunshine, the ground had been enjoying it too, and was embracing its old muddy identity. Descending off the tops was quite hairy, with steep slippery slopes meaning I needed all the help I could get from my poles.

I met the farmer of the contented sheep in the fields that I was walking through. He agreed that it had been perfect walking earlier, and hard going now, and drove away in his 4x4, his sheep following him in single file.

Back to cross my friend the M25. I stood on the bridge, watching everyone busily going somewhere.

The Cicerone guide talks about Day 5 as being made of distinct parts, and I agree. I’d had elevated views, field walking and the Downs in the first 5 or 6 miles, and now the going was much more pastoral, as I joined the Darent Valley path, past the Donnington Arms Hotel, which sported some unexpected elephant sculptures and a very impressive Buddha backed with waterfall.

Darent Valley is a lovely place, typically English and gentle. Had there not been a concerted protest against the idea, the M25 would have been routed through it, which appeared today, in the lovely sunshine to be a tragedy very well averted. The path led through the outskirts of Otford village, a quiet and attractive place through which the Darent flows.

It has a lot of history, conveyed assiduously by many information boards. The Romans were there, Offa (of the famous path that I will do one day!) did some fighting there, Henry VIII had a palace that he didn’t use much there, Lutyens brother commissioned a church hall from him there. And the duck pond is said to be the only area of water in England designated as a listed building. It’s all been going on in Otford.

And brilliantly, it had my lunch. I’d seen a Google reference to a cafe, and had headed in that direction expecting maybe a sandwich. But instead I was drawn into Hilal, a Mediterranean restaurant that made excellent coffee, and to my delight, also a fantastic plate of hummus, beetroot and cacik with fresh pitta. What a meal. Very unexpected, and very welcome.

I was powered by dips and the garlic within them up Otford mount, quite a steep climb for half a mile or so. And then out onto the fields again, slipping and sliding, glad of the occasional steps to help me, and the odd clump of grass on which I could wipe the mud off my boots when it got to be as heavy as the boots themselves.

I greeted a sheep that looked more like a dog, that threw me by placing his hoof through the fence as if in reciprocal hello. There have been more animals today, a field of fortunately docile cows and at least 3 fields of horses, also quite peaceful. I guess that most of the animals are still in their winter housing, it’s certainly chilly enough.

I enjoyed the swathe of red, maybe cornus? in front of Otford manor above me, and then also enjoyed a brief interlude on a bench that unexpectedly came with a button to press, that led to the commencement of a recording talking about the North Downs Way.

And periodically there were the lovely Kentish buildings that make this county so special.

I’d planned to stop at a pub in Kemsing, a village that Cicerone is a bit snobby about: ‘commuter sprawl’. But because David was coming to pick me up from wherever I got to, I had more flexibility. Therefore I decided to walk on a bit, to make Day 6 (whenever I do it) a more manageable length. But I was getting tired. So I recommenced my book, which has gone from the graphic sex of yesterday down a very different turn.

It’s interesting, looking at the notes that I take for this blog. When I have nothing in my ears I’m much more attentive, jotting down the things that I’ve spotted, or thought about, for me to reflect on later. If I’m listening to something, the notes for this are much less. Having entertainment is a useful thing to be able to keep me going, but the blog notes for this period are a clear indicator of how my mind isn’t fully on the experience of walking.

However, there were times when I turned the story off, most particularly on an especially steep hill (which was a lot more perilous in real life than it appears in the following photo!).

I was so daunted by it, and so aware of how alone I had been today, and that if I had an accident there would be nobody about, that I decided to approach it like a black run (like I’ve done any of those!) and zig zag down the slope to minimise the incline. I’m sure I looked very stylish.

Then down a piece of blessedly gravelled path so that I could lose a bit more mud, and marvelled at the teapot left on a marker stone, perhaps by a fellow walker? If it was, then it knocks my thermos into a cocked hat. I should in future be walking with a teapot.

And then, through the wonders of WhatsApp location finder, David was at the B road that crossed the North Downs Way just before Wrotham, ready to pick me up to take us to see our old friends Gilly and Jono who live nearby. Gilly had made cake, for which she apologised that it was still warm. Warm cakes are the best cakes, and this was one of the best in the category of warm cakes. It was such a lovely interlude to spend time with them, before making the journey back to Hythe.

That’s it for the NDW for this week, as real life has to occur, but I hope to return soon, maybe as spring gets into full flow.

Stats

Distance travelled - 13.5 miles

Total ascent - 1,211 feet (according to Outdoor Active)

Calories burned - 1710

Video of the day

https://www.relive.cc/view/vE6JNKn1mg6