Robust Rambles

Herne Bay to Hazelmere Robust Ramble

Section 12 (Return)

Badlesmere to Challock

Walk Details
Map Explorer 137 Ashford, Headcorn and Wye
Total Circular Distance 7 miles/4 hours
Start Parking at Red Lion by arrangement
Comment Open Access land to start then varied footpaths through quiet countryside. Careful wayfinding needed halfway.
Walk Instructions

From the entrance at the side of the Red Lion walk across the car park to a gap in the hedge and turn right on a byway lane. Walk away from the main road.

Continue down the lane passing houses. The lane turns right as a bridleway. Ignore this and keep straight on, over grass, and along the edge of the green (the Lees) with trees on your right.

Stay along this edge following it around to a wooden fieldgate. Go through into a large meadow with power lines beyond.

Turn left along the edge towards a pylon in the valley ahead.

Go downhill to a stile then on past the pylon and uphill. Emerge on to a road at the top. Turn left a few paces, then right, up a bank, onto a narrow mossy path through trees.

Exit over a stile, in to a pasture. Cross diagonally left to a stile at the far side.

Cross and bear right along the field edge with trees on your right. At a corner, bear diagonally left across a huge field well left of farm buildings ahead.

100metres left of a large barn, find a gap in the hedge. Go through and cross a farm road.

Path should go straight down along hedge on right to a waymark post, then diagonally left across huge field. Currently the path is reinstated directly diagonally left from the corner. Head diagonally across the field towards a roof in the valley in the distance.

Reach a road by Pontus. Cross to a path beyond, heading towards a church tower.

On nearing a hedge, DO NOT GO THROUGH, but turn sharp diagonally right, back across the field to the right of a farm (currently marked directly rather than the PROW route). Exit onto a road by wooden power poles.

Turn left on the road, past the farm to a junction. Bear left on the road a few paces, then turn right under metal field barriers into a field corner.

Go straight down the side of the field with the hedge on your right. At the bottom the field edge curves left  and the hedge disappears.

Here bear right, out of the field, up the bank into the field up ahead. Continue slightly left up the field edge with hedge and trees on your left (the PROW cuts across the corner of the field). Go up to the very top of the field.

Where the trees on the left end, go straight on across the open field to exit onto a road. Turn right.

Just before the first house, turn left over a stile into a paddock. Bear diagonally left on a grassy way between fences. Reach a stile into woods.

Cross and follow a feint path through the trees. Ignore a path in from the left and keep on gently rightwards through the woods.

Near the top of the rise, ignore a cross path. Exit the wood over a stile into a grass meadow with houses over on the left and new houses ahead.

Go straight up the field looking for a stile into a path enclosed between tall wooden fences.

At the end turn right through a car sales area to reach a main road.

Turn left to the roundabout at Challock crossroads. Cross with care to The Stag pub opposite and start of the section.