Robust Rambles

Herne Bay to Hazelmere Robust Ramble

Section 9 (Out)

Hastingleigh to Wye

Walk Details
Map Explorer 137 Ashford, Headcorn and Wye
Total Circular Distance 8 miles/4 hours
Start Very limited on-road parking in Hastingleigh by the village pond.
Comment A mixed walk with a great variety of country paths and excellent views in very quiet country. Hilly country so expect steep climbs. Several stiles to negotiate but mostly kissing gates. Long decline into Wye.
Walk Instructions

From the north side of the pond in Hastingleigh turn right on the road heading out of the village past a gothick style house called Southview.

A short distance up the road, turn first left up a gravel farm track passing houses over on your right.

Pass the entrance to a playing field also on the right. In 10 metres further, leave the track, which continues straight ahead, and turn left into a field entrance.

Follow down the edge of the field with a wood on your right. Where the trees finish, continue steeply uphill on a grassy track.

Go forward into a further field at the top, with a hedge on your right. Keep on, past woods on the right, until the path finally bears right into the trees and soon emerges at a road junction.

Ignore the ‘no through road’ down to the right and go forward on the main road, past a house on the right.

At a T-junction. Go straight across to a path by a metal barrier. Go forward along the field edge with trees on the right.

Where trees end, continue across an open pasture to meet a lane, designated a byway.

Turn left along the lane. Pass down the edge of a field on your right. Just past the field corner ahead, turn right on a gravel drive, past a wooden fieldgate. Where the drive soon swings left, go through a metal kissing gate and on, slightly left, across scrub, to a second metal kissing gate.

Follow a grassy path to a stile. Drop down, slightly diagonally left, to a stile by a metal fieldgate.

Continue downhill on a wide grassy way with a wire fence on your left. Go through a metal fieldgate and on down.

Over the next stile, turn sharp left, down by a fence on your left, to a wooden swing gate, then on across the valley.

Continue up the far side, then gradually right, around the bottom edge of a wood, for some distance.

Eventually cross a drive and go forward, again skirting the bottom side of a second wood, with a field on your right.

At a corner, leave the field edge and go straight up on a steep path through woods. Reach a metal kissing gate at the top with a field ahead.

Go straight across the field to a metal kissing gate in the fence at the far side. Join the North Downs Way and turn right along it.

Keep straight along the top of the downs to a black kissing gate. Continue forward over Wye Crown with splendid views.

Over the brow and having passed a memorial to Queen Elizabeth II, reach a metal kissing gate at a junction of paths on the edge of a wood.

Leave the NDW and go straight ahead through the kissing gate and into the wood (this is a well-used path but not a PROW).

Gradually drop down through the wood to rejoin the NDW at the far side. Bear left on it, to go very steeply downhill.

Eventually leave the wood and continue downhill along a field edge. Reach a road. Cross and continue in the same direction.

Nearing the bottom pass by abandoned business units to finally reach a road.

Cross and go straight ahead (leave the NDW which goes off left down into the centre of Wye) down a broad drive between wide grass verges.

Just before a barn at the bottom turn left through a metal fieldgate in the fence on the left and go straight across a field.

Go through two wooden kissing gates at the far side and on, down a concrete drive. Follow it left, at houses on the right, onto a road with a green space ahead.

Turn immediately right down a road called Abbots Walk. At the bottom turn right again onto Churchfield Way.

When this meets a main road, turn right to immediately reach the Tickled Trout pub with Great Stour River and railway station just beyond. This is the end of the section into Wye.