Reculver - Maponimoes, Marshes and a very Merry Christmas!

Reculver marked our second foray into Kent, although both myself and BAM (Best Aussie Mate) have walked on the Kent coast several times with our walking group 'The Odd Weekenders' and we're about to embark on a separate project to walk the Saxon Shore way, which runs 163 miles around the coast (well, mostly!) from Gravesend to Hastings.

I have a real soft spot for Kent, as it was the part of England I first stayed in, when I was working in the strawberry farms around Maidstone, many moons ago.  I always enjoy going back there, although the changing politics of the past few years has made Kent seem more isolated and further away from London than ever!

Lodging and victuals

But Kent isn't that far from London at all - at least when the trains are working!  I'm quite delayed in writing this blog post, so the walk itself took place just before Christmas, which meant my being accompanied on the train, late on a Friday evening, by a very glamorous BAM, who dropped into her work Christmas party, before hoofing it down to Kent with me.

Dilapidated house in the heart of Brexitland (not our hotel!)

There's very little at Reculver, by way of accommodation, so we decided to overnight in Herne Bay instead, staying at the Premier Inn Canterbury North.  BAM is quite fond of the Premier Inn and our Chester walks have seen her rising through the ranks of the Premier Inn's card-holding customers, so she gets all kinds of discounts and special treatments these days. She's like Premier Inn royalty now!

Not intimidated by Her Premier's royal presence, I enjoyed a couple of celebratory Christmas drinks at the hotel's on site restaurant, as we exchanged Christmas gifts and played maponimoes, spreading our European map and flag cards all over the table, in what could only be described as an act of open rebellion in that heart of Brexitland.

Premier Inn Canterbury North to Reculver (3.1 miles/5 kilometres)

We started out bright and early the next day, crossing over the railway line, before turning right onto the Reculver Road, leading all the way down to the coast.

It's an easy walk from Herne Bay to Reculver, along the cliff top at Reculver Country park, you get a wonderful view of Reculver's main attraction, the remains of St Mary's Church, its twin towers rising dramatically above the surrounding landscape, with the waves crashing on the seashore just below.

BAM walking towards Reculver

I feel that Reculver is pushing it a bit, as far as chesters go and it's fair to say that the chester connection is barely noticeable in the modern toponym that the village has carried into the 21st century.  But I can vouch for Reculver's chester credentials, as it was the site of a Roman castrum, which they called Regulbium, which became Raculfcaester and eventually, Reculver.

The twin towers of St Mary's, Reculver

Ruins of St Mary's at Reculver

The current ruins of St Mary's date back to the 12th century and the original Anglo-Saxon church on this site was built in the 7th century, being constructed from stone in the ruins of the Roman castrum. Reculver was an important place, once upon a time and I can't help wondering if it could have ended up being the capital of England, if history had dealt it different cards.

Map of the Kentish coast in Roman times

One of my favourite things at the site is a map which shows what Kent looked like in Roman times. Reculver was surrounded by the sea on several sides, being a port on the Wantsum Channel, an ancient body of water that separated the Isle of Thanet from the rest of England.  The land underneath the Wantsum Channel has now been reclaimed, which explains why the Saxon Shore way, which we were following for the first half of this walk, suddenly turns inland, as it follows the original shoreline, known to Romans and Saxons alike.

All of this got me thinking about the fact that there aren't many European capitals that are on the sea - London, Paris, Berlin, Rome - they're all a safe distance from invading armies!  Reculver would have been a seaside capital, in the tradition of Dublin, Venice, Barcelona and, as we gazed across the empty landscape towards Thanet, I tried to imagine a city of millions spread out in front of me - a kind of, London-by-the-Sea!

Reculver to Grays Farm (1.7 miles/2.8 kilometres)

So far, so familiar territory.  The real adventure was leaving the coast at Reculver and following the Saxon Shore way along the former Wantsum Channel, passing under the railway again and coming up to the road at Grays Farm.

Reclaimed land in the Wantsum Channel

The A299 hurtled beneath us, uninterested in the details of our journey, as these roads rarely are.  It's an impressive road, all the same, and was built in the 1930's as an unemployment relief project, easing the pressure on Canterbury, where previously, all traffic to the Isle of Thanet had to pass through.

The A299 aka The Thanet Way

Grays Farm to Boyden Gate (2.1 miles/3.3 kilometres)

It was a very beautiful walk from Grays Farm to Boyden Gate.  Although it's winter, you could still get a sense of Kent as the Garden of England and we passed through lots of orchards, some of which still had apples on the trees.  Like East Anglia, Kent is surprisingly depopulated and we really felt this in the lonely landscape around the Chislet Marshes, with no sign of human life at all, just the odd farmhouse and lonely trees in the middle of fields.

Lonely road along the edge of Chislet Marshes

Orchard near Boyden Gate

There wasn't much life in Boyden Gate either, but we'll always remember it as the place where we had possibly the most precarious lunch break ever, perched on a collapsed bench at the end of Chapel Lane!  I had a yummy sandwich with turkey and cranberry sauce - a bit extravagant, but in keeping with the Yuletide spirit.

Fallen apples

Bench at Church Lane, Boyden Gate

Boyden Gate to Grove Ferry (1.9 miles/3 kilometres)

From Boyden Gate, we crossed a field leading to the intriguingly named Chitty Lane and continued along the edge of the marshes, over Walmer's Hill, across Island Road and then downhill to the River Stour at Grove Ferry.

Lonely tree on Walmer's Hill

Riverside at Grove Ferry

Grove Ferry looked like a pleasant place, with an attractive riverside pub and we're familiar with the River Stour, having walked along it once before, from Tonbridge to Hever.  There is another Stour in Suffolk, which is where Constable painted the works around Dedham Vale - I've also been there and I can say that Kent's Stour is just as pretty, if not as well-known as its East Anglian cousin.

Swan boat at Grove Ferry

Grove Ferry to Stodmarsh (2.4 miles/3.8 kilometres)

At Grove Ferry we bade farewell to the Saxon Shore way and picked up the Stour Valley way, heading southwest towards the village of Stodmarsh.

This part of the walk was incredibly beautiful and wild - like being in another country really and so far-removed from civilisation.  Stodmarsh is the site of a well-looked after national nature reserve and the bird life was teeming around the marsh and lakes of the Stodmarsh valley.

Stodmarsh valley

Stodmarsh is an incredibly pretty village and there was some kind of service going on in St Mary's Church.  As we sat on a bench in the village green, we watched handsomely dressed young couples, taking their babies and young children for a walk and a break, no doubt, from the tedium of the service.

St Mary's at Stodmarsh

Stodmarsh village sign

Stodmarsh to Fordwich (2.6 miles/4.2 kilometres)

We followed the road from Stodmarsh, all the way to Elbridge Farm, where I bought some apples, depositing my coins in the honesty box.  The path dipped into a field full of cows, which BAM bravely faced, as I stuck to the road, embracing my bovinophobia!

The path through Trenleypark Wood

At Elbridge Farm, we left the road and followed the Stour Valley way through Trenleypark Wood, emerging at the river again, just outside Fordwich, yet another pretty little village.

We had a lovely meal at the George and Dragon in Fordwich, splashing out on mains, drinks and dessert (must have been the Christmas spirit!) before crossing the river to Sturry, where we picked up our early evening train back to London.

Access for Wheelchair users

Country road near Chislet

The way between Herne Bay and Reculver is pretty accessible and a lovely route to follow.  The former Wantsum Channel is pretty inaccessible, however the roads around Grays Farm, Boyden Gate and Chislet would make for very good wheelchairing.

The Stour valley path is pretty inaccessible to wheelchair users on the Grove Ferry side and the Stodmarsh Road is quite busy, so I wouldn't recommend it, although a visit to Stodmarsh would be worthwhile and the Stour Valley path from Stodmarsh is accessible to a certain point - it could make a nice round trip from the village.  

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me - please feel free to reuse them under the following Creative Commons license:

- Attribution (especially to this blog post)
- Share-alike

- Non-commercial

Chesterblade - Sheep, Steam Engines and Squaddies

Almost a month has passed since we set off on our weekend adventure to Somerset, in pursuit of yet another Chester, this time Chesterblade, a hamlet just a few miles south of Shepton Mallet, the main town in the Mendip hills.

This was our second trip to Somerset, having visited the more famous Roman settlement of Ilchester in April 2014.  As with our last trip to Somerset, it was more convenient to get the bus than the train, so we found ourselves at Hammersmith bus station, after work on Friday evening, queuing up eagerly for Berry's coaches and our great journey to the West!

We've become very fond of Berry's coaches - the staff are really friendly and the bus driver kept us entertained as we trundled through the dark and barren landscape of Salisbury Plain.  We arrived in Shepton Mallet around 9pm and then followed the High Street towards the busy Bath Road and our accommodation at Mendip Lodge campsite.

Shepton Mallet High Street

Lodgings and victuals

I've stayed in yurts before, when I travelled to Mongolia in 2015, so I was quite excited to stay in a yurt again, but this time in England.  Mendip Lodge campsite was very quiet, because of the time of year, so there weren't actually any campers (quite cold to be in a tent).  We had some difficulty finding it in the dark, but the friendly owner, Maureen, guided us by phone until we found the entrance to the farm and our lodging for the night.

Candlelit lanterns at the yurt in Shepton Mallet

Maureen's husband Colin had prepared a fire in the yurt's stove, so it was very cosy when we arrived and the yurt looked absolutely magical in the flickering candle light.  We didn't have any victuals, as such, as we'd both eaten earlier, but we shared a bottle of wine and caught up on our respective lives, before preparing our beds and settling in for a good night's sleep.

Shepton Mallet inside the yurt

We absolutely loved the yurt, although it's by a busy road, so not as tranquil as we imagined it would be.  Yet, waking up in the morning, with late autumn sunlight streaming through the top 'window', then preparing breakfast in the nearby kitchen - it was a great adventure and brought us close to nature, whilst maintaining a level of comfort that is important at this time of the year!

Shepton Mallet yurt

Mendip Lodge campsite to Newman Street Farm (2.6 miles/4.2 kilometres)

We set out on our walk directly from the campsite - picking up a public footpath that brought us into a field which had some cows, lurking menacingly in the distance.  Rather than engage with the cows, we followed the footpath to Yellingmill Lane, then followed this lane way until it met up with Bolter's Lane.  We could see Beacon Hill and the Mendips, not far to the north, but we turned off Bolter's Lane at the curiously named Wagon and Horses Hill, before following the King's Road and then turning off on a track leading to Newman Street Farm.

Farmhouse near Shepton Mallet

Our path crossed the Fosse Way, a major Roman road from Exeter to Lincoln and one we've met, not only in Ilchester, but also in Leicester, when we walked there precisely four years ago.  The name fosse comes from the Roman word for ditch and it is little more than a track now, so it was barely noticeable, as we focused on the route I'd mapped out on my Ordnance Survey app.

Somerset countryside

As we walked, we talked about the recent visit of BAM (Best Aussie Mate)'s relatives from Australia and how wonderful it was to spend time with them.  Australia seemed like a very long way away, as we turned down the King's Road, with a picturesque corner of Somerset spread out in front of us and grey clouds scuttling overhead.

Sign post for East Mendip way

Newman Street Farm to Cranmore (3 miles/4.8 kilometres)

At Newman Street Farm we picked up the eastern part of the Mendip Way, a 50-mile walk from Weston-super-Mare to Frome.  We spoke briefly with a very friendly farmer at Temple House Farm, who pointed us in the right direction and we crossed a small lane and headed up along a slight incline in the direction of Cranmore Tower, a 19th-century folly, that was built on the site of a Roman settlement.

View towards Cranmore Tower

We didn't actually make it to the tower, as our path turned downhill again, along Dallimore Lane (more of a ditch really) to reach the houses at Dean, on the busy A361 road, the longest three-digit A road in the country.  As I have my fear of cows, so BAM has her fear of walking along busy roads, so it took a little bit of persuasion to get her to follow the A361 for 50 metres, until we picked up another public footpath on the far side of the road, which led us over a small hill, through a field, until we reached the village of Cranmore.

Walking towards Cranmore

Cranmore to Chesterblade (1.7 miles/2.7 kilometres)

We had a rather pleasant lunch in the churchyard of St Bartholomew's at Cranmore.  The name Cranmore means 'crane lake'.  We didn't see any cranes as we ate our lunch, but we could hear the huffing and puffing of the East Somerset steam railway, not far from the church.  By the time we'd finished our lunch and made it to Cranmore Station, the steam engine had vanished, like an illusion and we were left standing on the bridge, peering into the distance and wondering whether or not it had all been a figment of our imaginations, or a ghostly echo of times past.

St Bartholomew's Church in Cranmore

Cranmore railway station

From Cranmore, we followed the country lanes to Chesterblade and had another quick break in the churchyard of St Mary's Church, a very still and tranquil place that has a long history stretching back to the 12th century.

St Mary's Church in Chesterblade

Tree in churchyard of St Mary's Chesterblade

Chesterblade is one of the smallest Chesters we've ever visited and it seemed like a pleasant enough place, although there wasn't much going on there.

Commandment on Church wall in Chesterblade

Sign post for Evercreech

Chesterblade to Chelynch (3.2 miles/5.1 kilometres)

From St Mary's Church, we headed downhill along the Chesterblade Road, in the direction of Evercreech.  Less than a half a mile down the road, we reached the floor of a very small valley, where we looked for an ill-defined public footpath, taking us through some wildly overgrown fields until we reached Holcombe Farm and Holcombe Lane.

Countryside near Chesterblade

As we followed Holcombe Lane, across Brottens Road and under the railway bridge along Merryfield Lane, I told BAM all about my latest writing project.  We paused all conversation, as we carefully crossed the A361 again and made our way to Chelynch village.

Chelynch to Shepton Mallet (2.4 miles/3.9 kilometres)

At Chelynch, we picked up the Mendip Way again and followed this all the way back to Shepton Mallet, over Ingsdons Hill, where we could see Glastonbury Tor in the distance.  Not surprisingly, given its name, Shepton Mallet was famous for its wool industry, although we didn't see any sheep on our walk, just another herd of cows, who huddled in the corner of their field and looked at us wearily, as the rain came on.

View towards Glastonbury Tor

By the time we got to the railway viaduct at Shepton Mallet, it was raining heavily and we were keen to get back to our yurt and into some dry clothes before heading out for dinner. Someone stopped us in the street in Shepton Mallet to have a chat about life, travel and Northern Ireland, which would have been lovely, except for the fact he was quite drunk and it was raining heavily.

BAM walking towards Shepton Mallet

We also saw three rather drunken squaddies, getting soaked, as they were wearing only T-Shirts, but happily singing their way through a damp late afternoon, as they queued at the Co-op ATM, getting more money out to continue their revelry.

Myself and BAM had a rather less raucous, but arguably more pleasant evening, stuffing ourselves at Blostin's - a slightly expensive, but endearing restaurant on Waterloo Road.

115 miles to London

Access for wheelchair users

Sign post for Batcombe

The country roads and lanes around Shepton Mallet are fairly traffic-free, but this walk, in its entirety, would not be practical for a wheelchair user.  Probably the most interesting route for a wheelchair user would be from Chesterblade to Evercreech, then along Holcombe Lane and Merryfield Lane to Chelynch, although crossing the A361 might be a bit of a challenge.  

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me - please feel free to reuse them under the following Creative Commons license:

Attribution (especially to this blog post)
Share-alike
Non-commercial

Grantchester - Academics, Apples and sore Ankles

As Cambridgeshire is so close to London, we decided to do our Grantchester walk as a day trip, travelling from Liverpool Street station to Cambridge early on Saturday morning, returning from Great Shelford station later in the evening.

I'd been in Cambridge quite a few times before, always work-related and it's a place I struggle to understand - a completely different world from the one I live in. A world of academia and bicycles, college dons and big ideas.

I guess it's only the privileged few who get to study in Cambridge, it was never really an option that presented itself to me when I was a young buck, growing up in a working-class community in Donegal.

The allure of this other world has certainly worked its magic, judging by the hoards of tourists that were clogging up the city on the Saturday morning in August (last month) when we did this walk.  I found it quite overwhelming actually, as myself and BAM (Best Aussie mate) used our walking poles as weapons, to carve our path through the crowded streets.

Cambridge station to Scudamore's Mill (2.6 miles/4.3 kilometres)

We set off along Station Road, then turned right along Hills Road, our initial destination being a diamond-shaped park called Parker's Piece.  It's a curious name for a park and the land that the park is on once belonged to Trinity College, Cambridge but was sold to a man called Parker, which is where the name comes from.  It's the place where the rules for Association football (the Cambridge rules) were formulated in the late 19th century.

From Parker's Piece, we made our way past Christ's College and along Market Street to Market Hill, where the Guildhall is, as well as Great St Mary's Church. We then made our way to King's Parade, past the impressive buildings of King's College and we ducked into King's Lane, which was a lot quieter than the main streets and followed Queen's Lane until we came to Scudamore's Mill and the punting station, where we were met again by crowds of people.

Scudamore's Mill to Grantchester (1.6 miles/2.7 kilometres)

I must admit, there is something very romantic about punting and I can see the attraction, although I'm not as fond of the water as BAM is, and I feel more comfortable walking along the river bank than punting down the river.  We were following a really well-trodden route at this point and it's been a bit of a fashion, since the days of Rupert Brooke, to hire a punt at Cambridge and make your way down the river for a lazy picnic at Grantchester.

I became a bit obsessed with Rupert Brooke when I first discovered his poetry at university - he was such a handsome man - and I once knew his poem The Soldier pretty much by heart.  An unusual thing for an Irishman, admittedly, but I think my obsession with English literature, the poems of Rupert Brooke and the novels of Thomas Hardy, with their magnificent descriptions of the English countryside, were a kind of rebellion to my Irish nationalist upbringing!

My older self reads The Soldier with a great deal of scepticism - I find it hard to enjoy the patriotism in the poem, the colonial heartbeat of the theme and the glorification of dying for your country.  I don't believe any of that, although I do still find Rupert Brooke interesting and I'd love to learn more about his life.

His grave, that piece of foreign land that is forever England, is on the Greek island of Skyros, not far from Evia, where I once spent a holiday.  As we walked along the River Cam, on our way to Grantchester, I thought that Rupert Brooke must be turning in his grave to know that the elegant tradition of punting has been taken over by raucous groups of privileged youth, destroying the tranquillity of the countryside by shouting and screaming with laughter, getting rat-arsed in the afternoon sun!

Like Puritans from a bygone era, myself and BAM had lunch on the river bank near Grantchester, tutting and shaking our heads in disbelief, as groups of lager louts punted by, in increasingly dangerous zig-zags, as they tried to navigate the narrow bends in the river.  

Grantchester to Haslingfield (2.7 miles/4 kilometres)

We had another stop at the Orchard tea room in Grantchester, a wonderful place to sit and enjoy a mid-afternoon cup of tea or a snack.  Rupert Brooke once lived at Orchard House and started a trend that was followed by notable writers like Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, as well as philosophers like Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.  Not to mention the familiar hoards of tourists, who somehow managed to transport themselves from Cambridge in the morning to Grantchester in the afternoon.

This was the first Chester walk where we abandoned my paper map and did the whole thing solely through the Ordnance Survey app.  BAM bought me a year's subscription to Ordnance Survey a few years ago, but the technology was difficult to use back then and not very accessible on a mobile platform.  Since then, they've really upped their game.  I have used the app on many walks recently, including trickier ones in the New Forest and it's been very reliable.

Not that it was difficult to find our way out of Grantchester and it was a very straight forward couple of miles along a walking path crossing the M11 and then following the curiously named 'Cantelupe Road' leading to the village of Haslingfield.

The M11 is quite a short motorway, just 56 miles from London to an obscure point near St Neot's, a place we've also visited on our Chester series.  We don't believe that Cantelupe Road was named after the melon, but it's possibly named after the Viscounts Cantelupe (later Earls of De La Warr), Vita Sackville-West's ancestors, who seem to have an historic link to Cambridge.

There is also an English saint called Thomas de Cantilupe, so perhaps the road is named after him? Interestingly, St Thomas de Cantilupe died in the Papal States in Italy, not far from the village of Cantalupo in Sabina, which is where the melon takes its name from, although this melon species originates in Armenia.  Cantaloupe means 'song of the wolf', but we didn't hear any wolves singing in Cambridgeshire, a long way from the hills of Lazio or Armenia!

Haslingfield to Great Shelford (4.2 miles/6.8 kilometres)

It was also quite a straight forward walk from Halsingfield to St Edmund's Church in Hauxton, however, as well as switching to new digital technologies, I've also been breaking in a new pair of walking boots and, by the time we stopped for a break at St Edmund's Church, my poor ankles were throbbing and I was in a bit of pain!

I always hate changing walking boots and my new pair are the third pair that I've had.  My first ever pair of walking boots literally fell of my feet on the coastal path in Cornwall and my second pair seemed to be going to the same way, until BAM and other concerned friends staged an 'intervention' and convinced me to give them up finally.

From Hauxton we walked past a rather eerie abandoned mill, which used to be a traditional water mill, but lost its wheel a few years back. It would be a beautiful building, if it was refurbished and it definitely presents a good opportunity for creating a living or office space. It's a shame to see such a lovely building fall to wrack and ruin and I hope that someone does something with it before it falls down altogether.

After Hauxton Mill, we entered private land, which used to require written permission from the landowner, to cross his fields towards Great Shelford.  He must have got fed up with responding to letters from walkers, as he's now set up a permissive path through his land and I hobbled onwards, each step more painful than the last until we reached St Mary's Church in Great Shelford.

Great Shelford is more like St Neot's than Cambridge and our eating options were pretty limited, but we had decent enough fare at The Plough, amusing ourselves by watching a rather overweight cat dodge the traffic, as he crossed the High Street. It was a short hobble from The Plough to the train station, where we caught our train back to London.

Access for Wheelchair users:

There are plenty of accessible routes around Cambridge and, if you can deal with the crowds in summer, it would be a pleasant place to have a wheelchair accessible holiday.  The path from Cambridge to Grantchester and over the M11 is completely inaccessible.  

Cantelupe Road is a pleasant and accessible lane way, but it's very short. Unfortunately the rest of the walk, from Haslingfield to Great Shelford is also completely inaccessible for wheelchair users.