North Downs Way – Cuxton to Wrotham

NORTH DOWNS WAY

SOUTH EAST

WALK

North Downs Way – Cuxton to Wrotham

Sunday 31 March 2019

Not long after my previous adventure on the North Downs Way, I had the opportunity to do another section while everyone else was out for the day.

Better still, they were heading in the direction of my intended starting point, Cuxton so could drop me off on their way and they would be heading back along the M20 later in the day so could pick me up at the finishing point of Wrotham. No bribes, black magic or voodoo. Just luck!

Cuxton is the closest part of the North Downs Way to where we live and I have walked part of this path before on another local walk and I could see from the map that it would meet the Weald Way in Trosley Country Park which is where Susan and I ended the first section of the Weald Way in 2014.

I was dropped off just passed the round-a-bout on the A228 which meant that I didn’t have to walk from the centre of Cuxton, a section I have walked before, and which saved me a mile.

I crossed the busy A road and into a small car park before heading through a gate to Ranscombe Farm Nature Reserve and before long I was in the countryside. I could still hear the traffic on the busy M20 motorway but it seemed distant and much further away than the 500 metres that it actually was.

I passed a Bee Hotel, which I think is the first one I have ever seen, but it was not very ‘buzzy’ (sorry!) so I continued on the path, leaving Cuxton, and on to Upper Bush. Apart from a few dog walkers just outside of Cuxton I had not seen another soul.

Upper Bush is a tiny hamlet of just eight houses or so of which two are Grade II listed timber framed hall houses from the fifteenth century. The settlement is not mentioned in the Domesday book but sits right on the North Downs Way which, at the time, was an established trade route.

From Upper Bush, I proceeded on to Wingate Wood. The last time I had walked here the wood was carpeted with Bluebells. They were everywhere and looked fantastic. This time I was a little early and they had not yet started to flower.

I don’t know much about flowers but I do know that you should not step on them because, unlike many other plants in the woods, bluebells can take years to recover if you crush them because their leaves cannot photosynthesise.

As I walked through the woods it suddenly dawned on me that I was yet to encounter any mud. To date, I have never been on a walk in Kent that did not involve ridiculous amounts of sticky, clumpy mud. The kind that transforms your walking boots into bumper cars and yet, so far today, I had walked through several miles of ploughed fields and woodland and my boots were still clean. All-in-all I was having a very lucky day.

I walked through Pastead Wood, Ten Acre Wood and Greatpark Wood and started to head towards Holly Hill-Wood when I decided it was time for lunch and coffee. A quick look at View Ranger showed a trig point at Holly Hill which was just off the North Downs Way and not far from my position so I headed towards it hoping that it would be a good place for lunch and high enough for a view.

As luck would have it, there was an ‘official’ viewpoint at Holly Hill but the hazy cloud covered sky made it impossible to see much and I had a feeling that maybe I had been here before. I wondered if my lucky streak had just run out but as I turned to walk away from the viewpoint I noticed a solitary picnic table next to the trig point. The perfect place to sit and have lunch and make a cup of coffee.

After lunch, the path rejoined the Pilgrims Way trackway below the North Downs Ridge and above Birling. Just before the track crossed the Weald Way I came across what I thought was Pill Box. I have seen dozens in the South East and simply assumed that this was just another one. I took a look inside and was surprised to see what looked like a giant boiler. Having never seen a pillbox with a boiler before I made a mental note to research this on the internet and continue on my way. I had already decided to make a little detour to Coldrum Long Barrow and was keen not to be late for my lift.

Having now had the chance to do some research I have discovered that the small village of Vigo, which lay just north of the track with the pillbox, was once the purpose-built Pre-Officer Cadet Training Unit at Wrotham Camp and before that was simply woodland. The OCTU operated from 1942 to 1946 and at one point had ten thousand cadets stationed there for the eight-week training programme.

The pillbox was, in fact, a water pumping station and one of several remains of the camp that can be found in the wood.

Shortly after the pumping station I took a detour to Coldrum Long Barrow. I had wanted to visit this site for a while having stopped, just short of it, back in 2014.

Coldrum is an instresting place. It is now described as a Long Barrow and is considered one of the medway megaliths but it was not so long ago, in relative terms, that it had been suggested that it was a henge or stone circle or that it marked a processional route to nearby Kits Coty. Even its present-day name is shrouded in mystery with some suggesting that ‘Coldrum’ is a corruption of ‘Galdrum’ which is the Cornish word for ‘place of enchantment’.

When I arrived at Coldrum from the north end the first thing I noticed were ribbons and such hanging from the trees. Known as ‘clooties’ such ribbons are usually associated with wells or springs and are places of pilgrimage. Pilgrims would tie strips of cloth or rag to a nearby tree as part of a healing ritual. Such practices existed in pre-Christian times so I would assume that this has nothing to do with the Pilgrims making their way to Canterbury or further into Europe by way of Dover.

In fact Coldrum Long Barrow is dated to 3985 – 3855 BC making it one of the earliest prehistoric monuments in Britain, pre-dating Stonehenge by more than 1000 years.

I returned to the Pilgrim’s Way and back on to the North Downs Way through Trosley Country Park. For the first time since I had started the walk, I began to pass a few people out walking their dogs.

As I made my way towards Wrotham I passed some large gates in Hognore Wood that did not seem to belong to anything that I could see on the map. Having done some research since I suspect that this may have been linked to Trosley Towers which, as far as I can tell, was a mansion built by the Waterlow family in1887 and demolished in 1936.

I emerged from the wood on to a tarmac lane and back on to the Pilgrim’s Way and followed this until I eventually reach and then crossed the busy M20 motorway before crossing the A20 and dropping into the village of Wrotham.

I barely had time to take a few photos before my lift arrived.

I went to remove my walking boots before climbing into the back of the car but they were still clean.

The car park on the A228 for Ranscombe Farm Reserve.

Ranscombe Farm. You can just see the oast houses (hop kilns).

Bee Hotel at Ranscombe. I could not find this on Booking.com!

Ranscombe Farm Nature Reserve. Busy cross road.

First muddy field? Just before Lower Bush

Bluebells in Wingate Wood. A bit early to see them at their best.

The viewpoint. Apparently, you can see the Shard, Canary Wharf and the Dartford Crossing.

Holly Hill Trig Point. A perfect lunch spot.

The water pumping station at Wrotham OCTU

Two sarsen stones mark the entrance. They were probably capped by a third.

The gates to the Trosley Towers Mansion?

###The Route

Distance : 12 Miles

On the day, I was lucky enough to get a lift to Cuxton and then be picked up from Wrotham but I had been planning to return to Cuxton by train. This involved walking from Wrotham to Borough Green to catch the train to Maidstone East and from there, walking to Maidstone Barracks to catch the train to Cuxton where I planned to leave my car in Station Road. The route is a mixture of woodland walking and fields and, perhaps unusually for the area, was not very muddy but I suspect I was lucky and that normally, the thick, chalky Kent mud should be expected.

Click HERE for a GPX file of the route.

David Welch – View Profile

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