Section 14 (Return)
Doddington to Stalisfield Green
Walk Details
| Map | Explorer 137 Ashford, Headcorn and Wye |
|---|---|
| Total Circular Distance | 9 miles/6 hours |
| Start | Parking at the Chequers Inn by arrangement or on road. The Inn is currently open every day. |
| Comment | A varied walk with some steep climbs. Good views, a little woodland and a long grassy pasture. This balanced with large arable fields, very flinty underfoot, and needing careful navigation. The final mile is on the outward route to avoid more road walking. |
Walk Instructions
With the Chequers Inn behind, walk back down the main road to the butcher’s shop. Turn left up the side road for ¼ mile.
Ignore the first footpath off on the right and climb up and over the hill then on down. Notice the start of a wood on your right.
At the bottom of the hill (at a waymark pole) turn right, into the wood on a feint path.
Soon reach a forest tractor track. Turn right along it. After some distance reach a Y-fork with a rather ambiguous waymark disc. Either fork will do. I kept to the right on the tractor track and soon emerged at a field corner.
Here turn left up the field edge. At the top of the rise a post indicates where the official path comes up through the wood from the Y-fork.
At this point turn right to cross the large open field. Aim between pylons towards the left side of an isolated house at the far side.
On reaching the grounds of the house continue down the side passing the house on your right.
Join the house drive and turn left along it. At a T-junction with a road, turn right a few paces then left into another huge field.
Head down towards a wood below. 150 metres before reaching it turn diagonally left and continue down and across the field to the far bottom corner (this was where two paths diverged on the outward route).
Find the gap in the hedge and emerge on a road. Turn left along the road. In 100 metres turn right along a byway signed to ‘The Barn’. Follow this for ½ mile.
Halfway along the drive turns into a house on the right. Continue straight on along the edge of the field ahead.
After a time the path becomes a more defined track and winds down and up between fields (ignore a cross path).
Eventually pass a stable block and emerge onto Frith Road. Turn right along the road (ignore a side turning Wyebanks Road off right).
Round a sharp right bend, turn right through the buildings of Snoad Farm. At the end of the vehicle drive, go ahead through a metal fieldgate into a long pasture.
Go all the way down it. Halfway down meet a fence on your right around a cultivated plot. Keep on to reach a metal kissing gate by a metal fieldgate at the very end. This is back on the outward route.
Turn left on the drive past Otterden Place on your left. Go through white gates to cross a road and on down a rough concrete roadway to a T-junction at the bottom.
Ignore the first turning on the right and cross to the second one, Rigshill Road. Keep steeply up here for ¼ mile.
At the top turn left into the gravel bridleway passing Hall’s Place. At the end continue up the road a short way. Pass double metal fieldgates on your left to reach a rusty fieldgate just beyond.
Turn in here and follow the field edge with a hedge on your left. Soon the track bears left through the hedge and continues on with the hedge on your right.
Go steeply down I to another field at the bottom and on up the field beyond. The path continues up but enclosed between hedges to emerge by the Plough Inn in Stalisfield Green and the start of the section.
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