Section 19
Gun Hill to Laughton
Walk Details
Walk Instructions
FOLKESTONE TO FARNHAM ROBUST RAMBLE
Section 19 Out
Gun Hill to Laughton
Map: OS Explorer 123 Eastbourne & Beachy Head
Distance/Time: 4 miles/2.5 hours
Start: The walk starts from The Gun Inn in Gun Hill. There is a large car park and prospective customers are welcome to park. The inn is open seven days a week with excellent food.
Comments: This is a walk of hills, woods and pasture. At the right time of year sunny woodland glades and at others spring lambs or bluebells. At wetter times there is much mud and walking is much slower. There are many stiles.
With the Gun Inn on your left, walk downhill on the road. Turn left down the first road on your left. Keep on along the road until reaching a lefthand bend. Here go straight ahead up the entrance drive to Rock Harbour Farm. Pass Malvern Farm on your left, then ponds at West Street Farm finally passing Rock Harbour Farm.
Ignore the Wealdway turning off left, instead keep forward on the main track for a good way. Just past a cottage on your right, as the drive goes downhill and reaches a lefthand bend, turn right on a footpath up a bank into a field.
Bear left across and down the middle of the field to a wooden kissing gate and footbridge in the hedge at the bottom. In the next field, go on up the edge passing farm buildings on your left. Over the top of the rise keep forward down a field edge with a hedge on your left (do not cross to the other side of the hedge as indicated on the OS map).
At the bottom corner of the field, ignore a footpath off right. Go forward to a metal swing gate. Through this bear left then right on a path between a fence on your left and a stream on the right. Reach a footbridge.
At the other side there are two paths. Take the righthand one which, basically, goes straight up the field ahead. Towards the top a fence line and trees come in from the right. The footpath meets these at the top corner of the fence.
Here turn right, over a stile, and continue, a good distance, along the top edge of a large field, with a hedge on your left. Eventually reach the far corner where there is a stile and footbridge.
Cross in to a further field. The woods on your right drop away downhill, then curve back up again at the far side of the field. Go straight across the field to meet the end of the curve of trees in the distance.
Just beyond, go through double metal fieldgates and on, uphill, with a hedge on your right.
Where the hedge swings right, bear left across the centre of the field, looking for a wide gap in the hedge at the far side. Go down to it. Pass through the gap and turn right on a hard farm track.
This is a bridle path. Follow it all the way past Pekes Farm, where it becomes an asphalt drive, out to a road. Turn left a few paces, up to a road junction, then carefully turn right on a side road called Rosemount, and signed to Muddles Green.
In 100 metres, just before buildings on your right, turn left over a footbridge and stile and go straight down a field edge with a hedge on your left. At the bottom exit through a gap and turn right, following a hedge then woodland on your right for some way.
At the bottom corner of the field, just before a metal fieldgate, turn right, by a holly bush, through a gap, into a boggy area at the foot of woods. Cross to a footbridge leading into a field.
Bear diagonally left and walk across the field to the far corner of woods at the other side. On reaching the corner of woods, turn right a few paces, then bear diagonally left, up the field, to a stile by a metal fieldgate, just right of a house.
Emerge onto a road. Turn left along the road for 100 metres looking for a footpath off right just before farm buildings. Cross a stile into a field. Bear slightly left, down the field, passing farm buildings on your left then on down the open field to a stile by a metal fieldgate in the bottom hedge.
Cross the stile and turn diagonally right up the centre of the field, parallel with a wood down on the right. In mid-field cross the Vanguard Way and continue to the corner of another wood at the far side. Here there is a stile by a metal fieldgate.
Cross the stile to go forward with the wood on your left and a reservoir on your right. At the end of the wood, go through a gateway, with stile at the side, into the top corner of a sloping field. Bear diagonally right across and down the field towards the far, bottom corner (if crops bar the way follow the field edge along and down).
Just to the left of the corner is a gap in the hedge. Leave the field through this gap and immediately turn left along a grassy path to a wire fence by an old rusty fieldgate. Turn right here and walk along with the fence on your left and a plantation on your right.
Soon pass a pond on your right and go through farm buildings to reach and go forward on a concrete drive. Follow this out to a road at Whitesmith. Turn left to soon reach a junction with the busy A22.
Cross with care to a side road opposite. Start along this road, almost immediately turning right on a narrower side road. Keep up this. The asphalt stops but go on to pass a bungalow on your right at the end. Keep straight forward on the track, a byway, into woods for a mile, to reach a road. Cross and continue for half a mile further to find a byway track off left. Turn down this for half a mile. At the bottom end it becomes a road passing the village shop and meeting the main road in Laughton.
Turn right a few paces to reach The Roebuck Inn in Laughton and the end of the section.
FOLKESTONE TO FARNHAM ROBUST RAMBLE
Section 19 Return
Laughton to Gun Hill
Map: OS Explorer 123 Eastbourne & Beachy Head
Distance/Time: 4 miles/2.5 hours
Start: The walk starts from The Roebuck Inn in Laughton. The inn has a small car park and there is some on street parking in the road opposite.
Comments: This is a walk of hills and woods. There are long stretches of woodland walking, as ever with stiles. After heavy rain some sections of paths become extremely waterlogged. Chiddingly Church is in a very attractive setting.
With The Roebuck Inn on your left, walk a short distance along the main road, past the village shop, and turn left up Pound Lane.
At the top of the lane, as the asphalt runs out, reach a crossing of ways. Do not go ahead between posts but turn right, to cross a stile by a metal fieldgate into a field corner.
Immediately turn left along the field edge with a hedge on your left. Follow the edge of the field around to the far opposite corner and a stile. Cross this to a meeting of paths.
Do not enter the wood, but bear right, along a field edge, with the edge of the wood on your left. Keep on for some way.
At farm buildings, go through an old swing gate into an enclosed path. This continues, very narrow, between a fence and stream, eventually passing a house on your left and a pond in the garden.
The path appears to reach a dead end, but actually turns sharp left down a bank. Here the path divides. Ignore the path off right. Instead bear left and go through a swing gate with the pond still on your left.
Go uphill through two more swing gates, crossing a drive as you go. At the top of the rise go through yet another swing gate and turn right along to a stile onto a road.
Cross the road to an enclosed path between woods and factory units. This path can be very wet. Finally emerge onto a vehicle track. Turn left along it. Where it ends bear left between logs to a well-defined footpath between a wood on your left and a stand of birch trees.
Keep uphill for half a mile. On reaching a junction with another wide path, turn left a few paces, then right, back onto the original path again.
Where the land begins to level at the top of the hill, cross a footpath and keep forward. Soon cross a wide, grassy track and shortly go up steps onto a forest road. Again, cross this, to go into woods on the footpath opposite.
Keep on this clear path through the woods, bearing gently right. Eventually the path emerges into the open by a garden fence. Go along to exit onto a wide vehicle track. Turn left along it.
The track soon becomes a road. Keep straight ahead to reach a main road (A22) at Whitesmith. Cross with care to a minor road opposite and bear left up it.
Just past the last house on your right, turn right along the concrete entrance drive to Borchetts Farm. In a short distance look for a rusty fieldgate on your left and a wide gateway.
Turn left through this gap and go diagonally left across a large field, passing a pond on the far left, to reach the far left corner. Here go through a gap to go on in the same direction, basically following the hedge on the left for a mile to Chiddingly Church.
After a long stretch come to a crossing of paths at a very boggy place. Cross straight ahead to a stile (now on the Vanguard Way). Over this, bear left across to a metal fieldgate into another field.
Go diagonally up the field towards the church spire. Cross a stile at the far side, just right of a brick house, out onto a road.
Bear left across the road to a stile by a fieldgate into a cricket pitch. Turn immediately left up to the church, passing a pavilion. Enter the churchyard and bear left around the tower down to a driveway (for the Six Bells pub turn left).
Turn right on the drive (now the Wealdway), a few paces and soon cross a stile on your left into a field. Two paths leave from here. Take the lefthand one across the field on the Wealdway. Cross a stile in mid-field. Keep diagonally left, downhill, to a stile in the far bottom corner. Enter a pleasant enclosed path.
Go on to cross a footbridge, then steeply up to a stile into a field. Cross to the far left corner and emerge onto a road. Go left a few paces then right through a swing gate by a metal fieldgate, onto a broad track.
Keep forward with a hedge on your left, then downhill to a gap and on, to an open level pasture at the bottom. Go straight on along the edge to a footbridge in the bottom corner.
Cross and bear left following the path along then round and up a steep wooded bank. At the top emerge into a large field.
Bear left around the edge of the field with trees on your left, to a stile in to a further field. Go diagonally left across the field to emerge onto a road.
Turn left, uphill, to soon reach the Gun Inn at Gun Hill and the start of the section.
