Great Buckland to Gravesend on circuit from Camer Park

We were en route to Richard's parents' house in Sussex for a weekend of labelling furniture etc., prior to a busy Monday morning with auctioneers and removal companies visiting to quote for the removal of furniture in different directions. Our minds had been concentrated by a sudden flurry of activity from the people buying the house; there is still a lot that might go wrong, but they are clearly planning to buy the place, and soon. At the same time, our offer on a flat in the village of Simpson, near to my work in Milton Keynes, has been accepted and that is all progressing too. We never intended to buy at the same time as the Sussex house was selling; yikes!

However, our Friday was free and the weather forecast was for a sunny day, after the mist had cleared. All we had to do was to get organised in Norfolk, drive to Camer Park which appeared to have a convenient car park, walk back from there to Great Buckland then follow the Wealdway to its end in Gravesend, catch a train to Rochester then another one to Sole Street and walk back to the car...before the car park closed at 6pm...It was somewhat later than we'd hoped when we left Norfolk and the iPhone directed us a different (and not recommended) route across the fens, then there were some delays on the M25. However it was nothing like as bad as the warning signs on the M11 had implied and we were parked at Camer Park (TQ649669) and walking before 10.45.

Camer Park looks like a nice place, with lots of dog walkers, but we walked away from the Park, turning left out of the car park onto a minor road after photographing the view to Nurstead Church in the opposite direction. We continued along minor roads, turning left at a T junction, to Foxendown. The roads were very narrow, so it was just as well that there weren't many cars above - when one came past us where was not a lot of space. Just after a substantial house with outbuildings, which looked as if it might be stables, with several barking dogs, we turned left onto a by-way (track) through Brimstone Wood. When the track veered round to the right, we followed cheerfully, as this is what we'd expected from the map, but it wasn't until things started looking NOT to be what we'd expected from the map that we realised we'd gone too far around to the right; back we went!

The correct route took us across Dane Road then close to Dane Manor. It was lovely undulating North Downs countryside and we walked across a sheep field then through Dilmer Wood before emerging between two beautiful old buildings, both with yappy dogs, at Coomb Hill Farm. From here we followed the road down the 25% hill at Lockyers Hill to Great Buckland. We passed the place where we had emerged onto the road last time we were here, then passed Great Buckland Farm (complete with its round former kilns) again and stopped for lunch at the bench neatly positioned where today's route diverged from last time's.

We turned to the north and soon left the road, taking a path across ploughed fields across "Bowling Alley", rightly described in the guidebook as a "spectacular dry valley which sweeps along magnificently for about a mile ... the Wealdway crosses it diagonally, affording superb views of this natural feature." Apparently it was destined to become part of a firing range but was saved by the intervention of conservation groups. We watched a tractor ploughing to our right; it looked tiny, which reminded us of the large area covered by Bowling Alley.

We turned slightly to the left, crossing a stile commemorating the diamond jubilee of a local Ramblers' group, back in 1992. From here there were good views to the delightful hamlet of Luddesdown. We followed the approach to Luddesdown exactly as shown on the map, which was also the route implied by the signposting on the ground. However from what I'll call place "A", this involved us crossing a stile to walk along the edge of a ploughed field (not easy walking) then climbing back over another stile, and then realising that there was a perfectly decent grass-covered route direct from A. Apart from this irritation, Luddesdown is a lovely place in a glorious location, which is reflected by its inclusion on several circular walking routes from Camer Park; yes we were getting back to close to our starting point!

The route out of Luddesdown was also a little complicated, though we found it without difficulty. After passing the Church, which has 13th Century origins, though most of the current structure dates to the 19th Century, we turned left across a field, with the churchyard initially still on our left. After an apparently arbitrary distance, we took a 90 degree turn to the right and crossed the field to a road, which we crossed. This is the road that comes directly from Luddesdown; it might have been easier just to walk along it for a few hundred metres! To the north of the road, we climbed quite steeply, then dog-legged left and right, uphill again, onto Henley Down. There were lovely views back down to Luddesdown and the rolling downs beyond.

We continued past Henley Wood and were soon walking along the edge of Camer Park. However we did not return to the car at this stage, instead we turned right onto a road away from Camer Park and crossed the railway at Sole Street Station (to which we would return later). We'd expected the first half of today's walk, to this point to be very good walking, and it had been. However, we were distinctly unsure about the second part, from here to Gravesend. In fact the next mile or so was pleasant enough, initially on paths around the back of the desirable houses of Sole Street, then on a circuitous route via Nash Street which passed through several woods and across sheep fields, with views to Nurstead Church.

A clue for what was to come lay in the fact that when taking photos of Nurstead Church, there was a pylon behind it...and in fact pylons appeared in many of the views for the whole day. However, as we emerged onto open ground close to Ifield Court, the dominant feature was suddenly three power lines running parallel i.e. pylons everywhere!

We were walking straight towards the Thames Estuary, but took a very slight diversion to the left into the churchyard of St George's Church, where there is a statue commemorating Pocohontas, who died in Gravesend of unknown causes when she and her husband were about to set sail for Virginia, and is buried nearby. I was pleased to have seen the statue and also interested to hear that the architect of the rebuilt church was one Charles Sloane, since I had misremembered my family links with architects by the name of Sloane. In fact it is Sir John Sloane who taught my distant relative John Tarring, and I suspect there is no connection at all!

We continued north to the Town Pier and Pontoon and continued along the River Thames for a short distance, to enable us to watch and photograph the activity. That's the end of the Wealdway, and a lovely walk it had been (though at the time of writing we'd only walked the northern part of it).

To get back to the car we caught a train to Rochester then one back to Sole Street, and from here we had a lovely walk through Camer Park in the late afternoon sunshine. The drive on to Hartfield by way of a Tesco on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells was nothing like as bad as it might have been for a Friday evening.