Golden Green and Barnes Street to A26 near Grove Farm and return

I don’t know Kent very well and I guess it is a county that most people pass through as quickly as possible, en route for the Channel ports and Tunnel. My image of the county was of one that’s busy, somewhat overpopulated and overpriced (being so close to London). Add to that the facts that that today’s walk was across relatively flat countryside, that we’d have to retrace our outward steps on the way back to the car and that the whole country was in the middle of a heatwave, and you’ll understand why I wasn’t much looking forward to it! How wrong you can be: It wasn’t the most exciting of walks, but it gave us a real insight into the slower side of Kent, “The Garden of England”.

As usual, we were en route from Norfolk to East Sussex, and we made good time to the same car-park that we’d used on our last visit, next to the recreation ground in the village of Golden Green (TQ639483). We set off on the walk just before 10am, initially walking back along the road to Barnes Street.

Just after passing the first of many oast houses and passing the place where we’d emerged onto the road on the previous leg, we turned left, back on the route of the Wealdway. The path took us around a field-edge then through the crop to a footbridge where a woman was waiting politely for us to pass, holding her dog on a short lead. As we said “hello” she also told us that a stall nearby sells the best cherries and strawberries in Kent.

We reached the River Bourne, just a small stream, but the wooded path alongside it was pretty. This brought us to Pierce Mill Lane, close to the old mill. We turned left along the lane and shortly afterwards we were passed by a pony and trap. We continued along Pierce Mill Lane for about a mile, turning right at Kent House Farm, a converted oast house, though it’s not immediately clear what it is now – it seems to have a huge number of windows for a single house!

When the road took another right-hand bend, we turned left onto a track, resuming our north-bound progress. One of the characteristics of today’s walk was the number of oast houses – a bit like churches in Norfolk, there always seemed to be at least a couple of oast houses in view round here and in this section we had lovely views to what we later discovered was Crowhurst Farm, in a wooded setting. There were also good views to St Michael’s Church near Roydon Hall, up on the Greensand Ridge we are heading towards (and should reach on the next leg).

We reached and walked through a commercial apple orchard – it was interesting to see the different varieties of English apples, growing on short stock. This is Crowhurst Farm, home of the oast house we’d seen in the distance earlier, and now there were good views through the orchard back to Kent House Farm. After passing Crowhurst Farm we reached a minor road and turned left, then right (signposted to Peckham Place) just before Pond Farm.

We had some difficulty finding the route around Peckham Place; there was a track to the left just before Peckham Place Farm which we didn’t initially think was the right way to go, so we went ploughing on past the farmhouse and the pond before realising that there was no other likely-looking route, and on checking the iPad we realised that the track we’d passed was the way we should have gone, so back we went.

A short distance down the dusty track brought us to a collection of polytunnels with strawberries growing at waist height, presumably easier for picking than having them at ground level. We resisted the temptation to steal strawberries and turned right, once again heading towards St Michael’s Church on the Greensand Ridge, but we then took a path to the left across a couple of fields which brought us to the A26. Not a particularly exciting end point to the walk, but we did discover a space that should be big enough for parking a car next time [though we didn't use it in the end]. Also, the boundary between the two fields we’d just crossed boasted a tree with shade, so we stopped here for an early lunch before retracing our steps to the car and driving on to Hartfield.

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