I had to get up at 4 am to be able to leave home for 5 am and drive to Lenham station. I planned to take the train from there to Yalding via Maidstone East and Maidstone Barracks to begin the walk. An hour or so of preparation the previous evening had everything ready to go and so after an hour’s drive, and a short train ride, I found myself sitting on Maidstone Barracks platform at a quarter past seven in the morning, just as it was getting light. I’m finding driving in the dark increasingly stressful these days!
Mask wearing seems to have gone mostly out of fashion! Whether on a train or a platform, it’s like the pandemic is over. It’s not! I guess time will tell how things work out.
Yalding is a pretty village with lots of character and many old and expensive buildings. It has quite a villagey feel. Once you leave the village, you are quite soon into the middle of Kent countryside with its gentle rolling hills, fields and small patches of woodland. You’re never very far from a road or church or some kind of house farm. Kent is not at all remote!
From the dried patches of leaves under the horse chestnuts, it seems like conker season has just finished but also, it seems chestnut season is only just beginning.
One of the things that I really don’t like about walking in Kent is that it is hilly and the land boundaries are so tortuous that you end up walking up and down hills just to get around somebody’s land. It’s up-and-down, up-and-down, up-and-down instead of a straight line. It’s tiring and frustrating. It was the same on the North Downs Way, which is why I don’t think I want that ever walk that again. Parts of the Greensand Way are like that too.
There are many, many orchards along this section of the path which means that at this time of year, you can help yourself. Endless apples! Naughty, but how many are you really going to eat?
Maybe it’s just the weather, which today is very still, grey and slightly misty, but this section of the walk is ever so quiet. I mean really quiet. If you sit still for a moment you can hear almost nothing apart from the birds and maybe a very distant aeroplane. There is a meditative stillness about the place. I hadn’t quite expected that. I’m tired today anyway, but since it seems I’ve got time on my side it’s lovely to just take a slow contemplative walk and imagine there’s nobody here; not even me.
I wonder now, looking at these fields full of apples whether Brxit might be a reason the apples are still on the trees even though they’re ripe. Several of the fields have toilets, Port-a-Potties, in the corners but nobody is working in the fields to use them and the apples are still here! In many of the fields it seems the apples have been left to fall and not collected at all. So I wonder.
I’m pretty sure that the earlier calm was the calm before the storm because it started to drizzle and it got cold. Fortunately, I came across a handy but rather high, bridge over a road very deeply cut into the hillside and totally canopied with trees. So, sitting on the steps was a good place to have lunch and rest a while as rain passed.
At about 18 km I’m finding my feet and legs are starting to get tired and sore and it would be kind of cool if the car was just here.
At 20 to 23 km it’s definitely starting to get tough even though it’s been a fairly flat day. It’s just far enough to be honest. I’m surprised because only a few weeks ago I walked further in the blazing sun over might rough ground with a heavy pack on my back. I guess I must just have been tired before I started.
The walk from the Greensand Way at Liverton Street back to the station that Lenham was a pain! Largely because I was tired but also because there’s quite a lot of traffic on it. It’s very narrow and there is no pavement to walk on so walking there is actually really dangerous. I’d advise against making a return trip that way when picking up a trail next time. It’s worth remembering that there is a cab company right next to the car park entrance at Lenham station, so it might be possible to use them to get a ride to the start of the path.
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