Silver Hill & Rother Valley Circular

Rother Valley Circular

With Richard away trying out his new car and Trevor back from babysitting duties, it was left to Trevor and myself to uphold the Monday Walks.

The walk selected from an old book dated 1994 called “100 walks in East Sussex” was the Silver Hill and Rother valley, a circular walk starting from Silver Hill (Hurst Green) on the A21 start point 737261 which takes you through farmland, woods and the banks of the River Rother.

The start of the day was frosty but SUNNY a far cry from the snow last week, the forecast even gave us a UV rating and we decided to do the walk clockwise in order to be at Robertsbridge  for a pub lunch.

Considering the walk was printed in 1994 the route was signposted well at the start with the going underfoot good most of the time with views over the Weald.  

Having followed the footpath for a couple of miles and then up through a gulley which appeared to be an old cart track we came across this house called Great Wigsell. The footpath then turned to the right past all the outbuilding and up the hill on the far side of the house.

 Looking back over the valley and countryside with Great Wigsell chimneys just visible in the trees.

Friend on route.

First sighting of the River Rother with one of the old Rother steam railway bridges in the background.

Looks like a blast from the past. Hops, this barn was part of a large hop farm, only poles at the moment but has got to be worth a revisit in the summer.

Seven Stars Inn our planned lunch stop, a couple of real ale pints and then, yes it happened again, NO FOOD ON MONDAYS. http://www.seven7stars.co.uk. But salvation was over the road, so pints consumed it was a quick dash over the road to a Bakers shop for fresh sandwiches, Cornish pasties, homemade treacle tart and coffee. Lunch complete.

Robertsbridge High street  http://robertsbridge.east-sussex.co.uk

The route continued through the factory yard of Gray- Nicolls                                    

  http://www.gray-nicolls.co.uk/history   The footpath was not signposted but staff on site pointed us in the right direction.

Having joked about how this walk was not to my standard as there were no hills we now paid the price! Once we past under the Rother Steam railway and then the Mainline railway it was uphill all the way to our start finish point at Silver Hill.

A good walk, Richard we missed you.

Stats:      avg speed 2.83mph.      calories 1291.     Distance 12.83

Knole Park

Another quick circuit of Knole Park, Sevenoaks

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Knole+Park,+Sevenoaks,+Sevenoaks+District&hl=en&sll=52.8382,-2.327815&sspn=6.851167,19.753418&oq=knole+park&hq=Knole+Park,+Sevenoaks,+Sevenoaks+District&t=m&z=14

It must sound like a stuck record, all this complaining about our Local weather forecasting, but really in this day and age of high power computing, you would think they could do better. OK, they forecast the snow OK on Sunday night but they also said that by Monday morning it would be dry, if a little snowy under-foot. At 9-00am Monday it was still snowing hard "Dry whilst the local weather forecaster was saying "Dry with a little sunshine later".  The Internet hour by hour forecast was also saying "Dry" whilst the snow flakes were getting bigger and bigger. After a few phone calls Ivan and I decided we would chance it but that the wetness underfoot would be very bad so we needed somewhere solid for the walk. Knole park, the good old stalwart came to mind because the paths are asphalt - assuming you can see them under the snow!

It was very pretty out and mostly the snow died away by lunchtime.

 
 

A walk across the park is about 2.5 miles so we started from the south edge and walked into Sevenoaks town for lunch. Today we drunk a very nice drop of "Tribune" a Cornish Ale which complemented the Chicken Pie very well.

The walk back to the car was mostly uphill - never a good situation after lunch but we were rewarded with some lovely views of Knole House.

 

Stats for the walk were ...

Date	Steps	Distance (mi)	Time (min)	Calories	Av Speed (mph)	Elevation gain (feet)	Elevation lost (feet)	Max speed (mph)
11/02/2013	8589	4.95	136	531	3.2	557	509	4.4

Crowborough Circular

Crowborough 10 mile circular

We spotted this walk and decided to give it a go on a nice bright winters day. We had walked sections of it on other occasions and one of the attractions was that it took us to Withyham and "The Dorset Arms" where on a previous outing we had engaged a decent lunch and pint.

Being a circular walk  we could have started anywhere but the suggested start on the edge of the Ashdown Forest suited us just fine because it meant the lunch stop was about three-quarters the way round which would suit us just fine as a raging thirst would have been worked up by then.

As always with Crowborough based walks there was no shortage of hills and good long pulls to get the heart pumping.

One of the looming hills as we left the car park and headed for Crowborough.

Deep in the valley of the photo above there are the remains of what must have been a substantial water wheel. The pictures below show the sluice overflow and the water height built up behind the dam (now missing) produced a decent head of water for driving the wheel, the foundations of which can still be seen. However, we have no idea what the wheel was driving - some accounts say it was corn grinding and others an iron works.

 

 

The path took us around the edge of Crowborough town and through some very nice Wealdway countryside. In places it was muddy under foot but generally the path was well defined and reasonably dry.

 

We passed this original Oast house which was pretty much unchanged from its working days. Its unusual to see them in this original state now as many are turned into homes.

After 8 miles of hard walking the Dorset Arms came into view and as it was now well past opening time we scurried up to the door.

C A L A M I T Y

The Pub was closed! Hell .....

No other watering hole close by so we sat outside the Pub and ate our emergency rations - 2 x chocolate Penguin bars and a Cereal bar!

The long pull up the last 2 miles to the car was very dismal indeed. But the bottle of "Doombar" in the fridge went down a treat!

Stats for the day were...

Date	Steps	Distance (mi)	Time (min)	Calories	Average speed (mph)	Elevation gain (feet)	Elevation lost (feet)	Max speed (mph)
04/02/2013	19,750	10.4	248	1,244	2.5	1783	1758	5.3