to Guildford
Stage 2 Guildford to the Mole Valley (A24)
Stage 3 Mole Valley to Merstham
Stage 4 Merstham to Westerham Hill
Stage 5 Westerham Hill to Wrotham
Stage 6 Wrotham to the Medway
Stage 7 The Medway to Detling
Stage 8 Detling to Harrietsham
Stage 9 Harrietsham to Boughton Lees
Stage 10 Boughton Lees to Etchinghill
Stage 11 Etchinghill to Dover
Stage 10a Boughton Lees to Canterbury
Stage 11a Canterbury to Shepherdswell
Stage 12a Shepherdswell to Dover
Appendix A Useful contacts
Appendix B Recommended reading
Appendix C Route summary table
Cobbs Hill gives a view down to Water Farm and Stowting (Stage 10)
INTRODUCTION
The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases… Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours’ march to dinner – and then to thinking!
William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
I'm one with Hazlitt, when it comes to long-distance walks. Except, perhaps, my preference would be for an eight or nine-hour march to dinner, rather than just three. Spread the day thinly, I say; set out soon after breakfast with a cheese roll and an apple in the rucksack, dismiss from mind any thought of the next night's rest – and simply wander. Let the trail ahead guide your feet, leaving each of the senses free to absorb whatever the countryside has in store.
Walking the North Downs Way provides ample scope for the liberty to think, feel, do just as you please. Mostly the trail is clear, waymarking adequate, the spacious Downs edging a far horizon as they make that long, generous arc round the low-lying Weald, so that there are few (if any) demands to check the map or compass, and you can free the mind to drift with the clouds. Others have done just that, for generations.
‘From the Straits of Dover to Farnham,’ said Hilaire Belloc, ‘Nature herself laid down the platform of a perfectly defined ridge, from which a man going west could hardly deviate, even if there were no path to guide him.’ And we, going east, could hardly disagree.
The North Downs have acted as a highway since before Neolithic times. Because the Wealden forest was too dense and tangled to allow easy access, the high and broad-backed downland gave an opportunity to hunt, to travel, or to drive livestock from one pasture to another, and (much later) from pasture to market. Drove roads gave way to green lanes, while some of the footpaths and trackways adopted by the North Downs Way in the 21st century may well have been stamped out long before the Romans came to these shores. Now there's food for thought…
Today the line of the downland scarp is traced here and there by motorways and a high speed railway, and nothing can better underscore the frenetic nature of modern living than to view in the distance the haste of wheeled traffic while you stroll across a rabbit-cropped meadow, birds singing from a nearby spinney, as you let the hours drift slowly by. Walking day after day for a hundred miles and more is the perfect antidote to the stresses of workaday life; it's the best of all exercises, a relaxation, and a means by which to get life in perspective. And along the North Downs Way you can discover something of our ancestry, learn from the past and balance those lessons with the present.
The North Downs Way
Exploring every aspect of the Surrey Hills and Kent Downs Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the North Downs Way (NDW) National Trail offers the walker a very different experience from that on the South Downs Way (SDW), for example, for while the SDW challenges with some steepish ascents and descents, the NDW is much more gentle with fewer climbs, and where these are made, the gradients are generally much less demanding. There's more habitation along the North Downs Way but, surprisingly in view of the proximity of major centres of commerce and industry, and large residential areas (especially between Farnham and Detling), you meet far fewer walkers, and most of those you do meet are locals out exercising their dogs, or enjoying a circular walk. Although it is claimed that around half a million people a year walk sections of the trail, even in mid-summer it's perfectly possible to wander the NDW for long periods in splendid isolation.
1 Cowslips are common on the downland chalk
2 Bugle (Aguja reptans) appears in open meadows
3 May is when hawthorn blossom fills the hedgerows
The North Downs are more heavily wooded than their counterpart on the south side of the Weald. Some of the loveliest are the mixed woods of beech, oak and ash, carpeted with wood anemones, bluebells or ramsons in spring and early summer. And when the trail emerges from the woods there's often a surprise view to stop you in your tracks, the revelation of patterned field and meadow, or orchard, vineyard or hop garden spread below as if to underline the fact that in parts of Kent the Downs form a backing to the ‘Garden of England’.
That garden is explored in detail on a spur to Canterbury, while the direct route to Dover excites with the famous white cliffs plunging to the surf hundreds of feet below the footpath.
There are many historic sites along the Way: Neolithic burial chambers, Roman roads and Norman churches, charming villages and tiny hamlets, England's premier cathedral city and its busiest ferry port. There are bold stone castles and country cottages trim with thatch. There are literary connections with Jane Austen, Dickens, Joseph Conrad, George Meredith and JM Barrie – among others.
There are streams and rivers, ponds and lakes that catch the sun and dazzle its light, that attract wildlife and a rich diversity of plantlife
