The First Walk

Last weekend my husband and I went to visit some friends in York. These are the health conscious friends who don't eat pasta with cheese and cream (we had to eat their portions - or we would have if they hadn't binned them), don't take buses and do spend as much of their free time as possible walking. Within the city on workdays and in the Yorkshire Dales on their days off.

They offered to take us along for a walk - an easy one they said and one where we could sit and have a rest any time we wanted. They promised my husband great views to photograph and they promised me cake if I managed to keep up. They forgot to mention that great views involve steep hills and that their concept of easy is not quite the same as mine.

The walk was mostly uphill and very hard for the two of us. Still, we managed it, and sitting on a bench thoughtfully placed halfway up the hill, drinking our tea and munching our cake, we realised we were hooked. This walking thing was actually quite fun and since we live in green, flattish Kent, not steep, craggy Yorkshire, possibly quite doable as a hobby.

Cut to today - our first solo walk. Well, without the expert friends anyway. I spent Friday evening appropriating work stationery in printing off all the walks from the Explore Kent website that were a) within an hours drive from home and b) round about the 5 mile length. We figured we must have walked about that much in Yorkshire and this was all flat so we could do it easily.

After much discussion, we settled on a walk in Harrietsham, which promised excellent views, 21 stiles and 'some' steep slopes. Fortunately, my friend Claire wanted to come with us but needed to be home by 3pm. So we had to abandon Harrietsham which was an hour's drive away. We decided on the less challenging walk near the village of Meopham - 4.7 miles (7.5 km) with no slopes mentioned. Easy peasy.

Having stocked up on water, coffee, energy bars, crisps and cake, we set off at 10 am. Parking in the Camer County Park visitor centre, we set off full of enthusiasm. The walk started with a flat, gentle walk past fields, through kissing gates and skirting wooded areas.

The first field

Look mom - horsies!

Walking past the woods

We took a break on some tree stumps about 1.5 miles in and were feeling quite pleased with ourselves. Despite our collective dismal levels of fitness, we weren't tired and we'd already completed and third of the walk. Even though we got slightly lost immediately afterwards, our spirits weren't dampened and we celebrated finding the right track with a little picnic. Another group of walkers passed us joking about the purpose of the exercise being to walk not eat but we ignored them.

Moving on, we found some lovely views.

Another kissing gate later, and we got a bit of a shock - a steep slope that we really had to struggle up. And this one wasn't even mentioned as being steep in the directions - thank god we hadn't gone to Harrietsham. More worryingly, a stretch later on in our walk was described as 'slightly steep' - if the one we'd climbed wasn't called steep in the directions, how steep was the one which was?! Claire and I were worried, though my husband seemed to be alarmingly free of aching legs.

The non steep hill - Arup at the top; Claire and me halfway up

Non-steep hill climbed, we found a field with knee high wheat stalks. Or at least that's what they looked like to my city-bred eyes. The path went straight through the middle and it was great fun walking through it - to begin with. Then we realised that this was the field-without-end and that you couldn't stop for a rest because the lane was too narrow to sit down in. We later realised the field was almost a mile long. It was hard going but looking back, it was my favourite bit of the walk -the sensation of standing in the middle of a field with nothing but wheat all around you as far as the eyes can see, the only sound being the rustle of the wind through the stalks - it was something special.

Entrance to the wheat field

Is that wheat?

When we got to the end of the field, we were confronted with the steep hill, which thankfully was no steeper than the previous one and a somewhat shorter distance uphill. Still, we voted for another rest halfway up and had a very nice 15 minutes, sitting among the wild flowers and butterflies, listening to the sounds of nature.

Steep hill

We had to move on though and arrived gasping at the top of the hill. A nice walk through a wooded area followed.

Makes you think of Robert Frost doesn't it?

Then we walked through the garden of a lovely house (public right of way) and were into the village of Meopham. By this time, Clarie and I were really flagging so we grabbed the opportunity to visit the Meopham Vineyard Shop. Yes, they make wine in Meopham and lovely wine it is too! A bottle each of Rose and Medium White tucked into our backpacks, we walked through the very posh residential streets of Meopham, finding a bench just at the moment our legs were about to give up. God bless whoever put that bench there! The group who had passed us earlier passed us again telling us we should have gone to the pub as they had. Grrrr.

Back into the fields we went and after another walk through wheat stalks (fortunately a shorter one), found ourselves back near the car park. It took us about 3 hours (including breaks) to complete the walk and though our legs and feet are SORE, it feels great that we actually managed to finish the walk. It was challenging but also fun and we definitely want to do it again. Watch this space.