Another beautiful day and so we decided on a trip to Westerham with Dad to enjoy the bluebells. We parked at Chartwell, Winston Churchill's home and then set off up the steep hill towards French Street. Halfway up we headed off through the woods and then after getting a bit lost on the trails in the woods and finding a few geocaches we finally emerged on Hosey Hill lane and crossed the A25 into more woodland. We were very grateful of the shade today as it was so warm. We followed a forestry trail past a derelict tower which was so covered with ivy that at first we thought it was a large tree and then emerged onto a large grassy bank which we climbed to get good views across Westerham and the Downs.
Having walked through the very pretty town of Westerham, we stopped to have an ice-cream. We were surprised that among all the tea-shops and Antique shops there were no nice icecream parlours, so we had to make do with an ice-cream from the newsagents. We left westerham by walking up Mill lane, where we passed a lady who was cooling herself with the waters from the clear stream we were walking beside. There was a choice of footpaths here, a nice flat one beside the stream, or a steep uphill section. Our route followed the steep section! We climbed through the grounds of Squerryes Court but could not see the house as it was behind the trees.
As we walked through the woodland of Goodley Stock we were treated to carpets of bluebells with amazing scent.
We emerged onto the A25 but only had to walk a short distance before taking another footpath back into the woods. The woods were criss-crossed with footpaths and it was quite difficult to work out which path we needed but after a bit of back tracking we emerged at the top of the hill leading down towards Chartwell. We had been finding caches throughout and started to hunt for the last one when thunder started to rumble around. So as the cache was appearing elusive we decided to head back to the car before we got soaked.
We enjoyed a welcome cup of tea in the NT teashop ad then headed back home to dad's. As we left Westerham the rain started and was very heavy for a while, but as we got towards Maidstone the skies cleared and there was no sign of rain, so it had just been an isolated heavy shower.
Westerham and Chartwell circular walk
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