Section 7 (Return)
Stelling Minnis to Kingston
Walk Details
Map | Explorer 150 Canterbury & the Isle of Thanet |
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Total Circular Distance | 9 miles/5 hours |
Start | From the Village shop in Stelling Minnis. Some on-road parking or at the Rose & Crown with permission. |
Comment | The start of the walk is across the splendid Stelling Minnis Common, alas such a rare feature, then a mixed walk with a great variety of country paths and excellent downland views, but some steep climbs. There are several short linking sections of road walking. The final stretch is on permissive paths through woodland into Kingston. Very pleasant walking. |
Walk Instructions
With Stelling Minnis shop on your left, walk up the road, past the Rose & Crown to a corner. Follow the road to the right a short way, then turn left up a drive. Immediately turn right on a footpath past a bench onto Stelling Minnis Common.
Keep going north, straight up the main path. Pass an information board in the heart of the common. About 100 metres beyond, turn right on a narrow path off diagonally right towards a road.
At a Y-fork keep right and emerge onto the road. Cross, to go up the gravel drive opposite (ignore a footpath signed down to the right).
Opposite the entrance to Bower Farmhouse, turn left on a hidden path in the hedge. Enter a field and go straight across, passing a pole on your right.
Go through the hedge at the top and bear left up the side of the next field with a hedge on your left.
Where the hedge ends go forward, up the field, parallel with the hedge down on the left. Emerge onto a road at the top.
Cross slightly left, to continue on a narrow path enclosed between holly hedge and a fence. Keep along to emerge onto a road in Bossingham.
Cross over to a drive opposite to Dene Farm. Pass new houses and soon join a path enclosed between hedges.
At the end turn left through a metal swing gate and immediately right up a track along the hedge on your right.
At the end of the field, follow the track slightly right, around to a metal swing gate beneath a large conifer tree. Enter a narrow enclosed path.
Emerge into a huge field and go straight up, parallel to the hedge over on the right.
Continue up the next field (no real division, just different crops) for 15 metres, then turn right over to a metal kissing gate in the hedge.
Go diagonally left across the field, past lone tree on the right. Reach a metal kissing gate at the top (ignore another one way over left) and drop down through woods to a sloping field.
Go down along the hedge on your left to a wooden fieldgate in the bottom corner with houses below. Turn left through the gate and along the top edge of a small pasture.
At a corner turn right down to a stile. Cross onto a drive and turn left down to a road at Lynsore Bottom. Turn right down the road.
Where the road turns right by a wooden fieldgate, go straight on up an enclosed path to emerge on a road at the top. Turn left.
Soon bear left onto a shady bridleway. After some way cross a house drive and continue to a wooden fieldgate. Ignore footpath ahead and turn right here on a bridleway going steeply uphill.
At the top of the rise go right and keep straight along past a house, then join the drive from Westwood Farm to reach a road.
Turn left along it ignoring the first turning off right. Continue past Reeds Mill on the right and then pass the entrance.
Reach a metal kissing gate on your right and turn down the side of a field with a hedge on your left. Halfway down go through a metal swing gate and soon bear left through the hedge, to continue down the edge of a wood.
Exit onto a road and turn left (ignore the bridleway opposite). Keep on the road for ¼ mile.
Just after the entrance to Marley Lodge on the left, turn right, over a stile and down the edge of a field with a hedge on the left.
Pass by stables and exit onto a narrow country road. Turn left for ½ mile. Ignore a bridleway off right to Duskin Farm also ignore the next footpath off left.
Just past Old Boundary Cottage on your left, turn right over a stile hidden in the hedge. Go steeply uphill by a fence on your right.
Join a bridleway at the top of the field and turn right through a metal fieldgate. Continue up on a path enclosed between hedge on the right and a fence.
Go through an equine fieldgate into woods. In 15 metres, turn left, off the bridleway, at a corner of the fence on your left, onto a path of beaten earth. This permissive path crosses through the wood for ½ mile.
On reaching a cross path, turn right, uphill, then soon left again.
After some way cross another cross path and keep forward through a narrow gap in a wooden fence.
At a junction, turn right. On reaching a vehicle drive, turn left down to a road. This is back on the Elham Valley Way and the route of the outward section.
Turn right on the road, back under the railway bridge to return to the Black Robin pub and the start of the section.
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