Aba's Place: Walks

Mereworth & West Peckham, Kent

Mereworth, a pretty Kent village about 5 miles from Maidstone isn't a place I'd heard of previously. But it's within about 1½ hours' drive, so an easy day out from London.

This 6 mile walk was one of the prettiest we'd done. Perhaps because of the time of year.

Starting at Mereworth Church, the walk takes you through woodland, open farm land and orchards.

In a couple of places you end up walking along roads for a short distance but mostly you're just walking in beautiful countryside.

After leaving Mereworth Church and finding the path by the Torrington Pub (with a little help from the locals), we eventually found ourselves in Hurst Wood.

The wood was almost completely carpeted in Bluebells and looked just stunning.

Apart from bluebells and other spring flowers there was lots of other wildlife. We even spotted a small brown snake (no idea what make / model it was but I haven't seen any snakes in the wild in England since childhood).

We continued up through Hurst Wood and eventually descended down Gover Hill (part of National Trust owned Mereworth Woods) and into West Peckham just as we were starting to get peckish.

Fortunately we'd pre booked a table for our Sunday Lunch at the Swan Pub on the pretty West Peckham Green.

The food was good (and so was the beer I'm reliably informed -- I can only speak for the Cider which was very nice -- and strong just how I like it).

The service was a bit dodgy at times but to be fair, they were having a very busy afternoon.

Suitably revived, we continued on our journey past beautiful views of the surrounding countryside including hop fields and lots of pretty orchards with rows and rows of fruit bushes covered in pretty blossom.

Eventually we ended up back at Mereworth's magnificent (to look at anyway) St Lawrence Church which was built in the early 1700's.