Robust Rambles

Section 13 (Out)

Staplehurst to Marden

Walk Details

Walk Instructions

With the King’s Head behind, turn right uphill to the first twurning right, Bell Lane. Turn right along this past a car park on the right. Keep along to a junction with South Bank road. Turn left down here, passing a green on the left. At the bottom of the hill (where the slope levels, not the end of the road), look for a footpath going right between houses.

Soon cross a stile into a field and bear left across to a further stile and footbridge by a lone tree. Keep up the field with a wire fence on the left. At the top leave the field and keep forward along a stony farm track towards mobile phone masts. Pass the masts and keep on to the end of the track at a corner. Here find a stile by boulders.

Cross the field ahead aiming to the right hand end of a line of trees and bushes. Keep on across the field and continue with a hedge on the right. At the end of the hedge, bear right with a fence on the right into a new woodland. At the end of the wood, take the path descending swiftly to a tight copse of trees in midfield.

Continue beyond to a gap in a hedge and a footbridge. In the field beyond, bear left, towards distant houses on the skyline. Pass through a hedge and over a footbridge to a road (if refreshment needed turn right then left for ¼ mile for the Wild Duck pub and return here afterwards).

Otherwise, turn left along this road and eventually approach a junction. Just before this turn right along the entrance drive to ‘The Laurels’. Just before the house itself, by an iron gatepost, go to the left through a gap and follow an enclosed path to a metal kissing gate then on by an extensive garden. Here is a fieldgate. Go through and uphill, under power lines, to a metal kissing gate.

Through this, bear left to a further kissing gate in the middle of a hedge. Through this, go straight across to another kissing gate and on, between young trees and a wire fence, to a small metal gate onto a road. Cross the road, slightly right, to a fingerpost.

Cross two stiles into an old orchard. Turn diagonally right up through the orchard to a stile by a horse sand school. Continue diagonally right through the trees to a stile at the far opposite corner leading to a farm road.

Turn right up the roadway past a brick outbuilding and continue up a short way with a hedge on the your left. Soon reach a wide tractor gap in the hedge. Turn left through the gap and go straight ahead through the fruit trees and through a gap at the far side into a small field. Follow the fence line ahead. Enter a large sloping field with a hedge on your right. At the far end, go through an old gateway into an orchard and keep on with a hedge on your right. At the end of the hedge reach a gravel farm track. Keep forward through fruit trees. In a short distance reach a pond.

Turn left up the side of the pond, then right along the top side of the pond. Pass the pond and keep forward to a hedge ahead with and old shed in the corner. Turn left here for 20 metres to a stile in the hedge on the right. Cross into a field. Cross the field to the corner of a hedge and trees ahead then keep straight on down, with the hedge and trees, past a pond, on the right, to a corner.

Here turn right over a footbridge. In 20 metres go left between trees, by an iron hut. Bear diagonally right across the field, away from the hedge, up an avenue between two lines of young trees to emerge onto a road at the top.

Cross straight over the road to a path going along the edge of a field with a hedge on your right. At the top corner go through a gap into the field ahead and turn sharp right across the open field to a gap in a beech hedge at the foot of gardens.

Follow an enclosed path out to a road. Turn left on the road and keep on past a petrol station to a further junction in the village centre.

Bear left to the Unicorn public house and the end of the section.