Day 28 Merstham to Westerham: A Slug-ish Day

In Marden Wood

For an OS map of today's walk click here.

After a rather frantic start with trying to buy our lunch and train tickets before the train departed, we got off on the 8:27 train from Tonbridge to Merstham, where we needed to resume our walk from where we left off the night before. Despite a good night's sleep, we both felt really tired. Because of the recent rain, the path had a larger number of slugs on it, and they seemed emblematic of our state of being. Of course we began by walking uphill, through two fields. The view was worth it, and we had a nice level walk for a couple of miles.

They Didn't Beware...

On the way we passed an old horse with grey whiskers. The sign on his stable door said "Alfie," so we said hello to Alfie.

At Caterham viewpoint we sat on a bench and enjoyed the view spread below us, though it was dominated by the huge Motorway running through the landscape.

 While we were eating lunch, a woman who was clearly walking the North Downs Way passed us. We would see her about four more times during the day's walk. She had the same guidebook as we did, but she seemed to want to walk quietly on her own, and we didn't really do more than exchange greetings with her.

Our experience of the trail after lunch wasn't so pleasant. Ken had a partial slip while going downhill. The path became very rubbishy near a factory, and even a vineyard we passed had vines that looked rather wizzly. It became sunny and hot. There was one section of beautiful forest near Marden Hall, however, and at one point Ken said "you've got to take a picture of that tree!" And so I did.

Marden Wood Tree

After that, further challenges awaited us. We had to walk downhill on steps that were too big to go down normally if you didn't have very long legs—you had to climb down one at a time. We passed through long fields, including one that had a sign posted saying that there was a bull in the field. It turns out there wasn't, but we moved pretty quickly through that one. We decided together to avoid going up another hill, choosing a lower level path called the Vanguard Way. It wasn't well traveled. We passed through another field warning of a bull, but it just had cows that ran away from us. After going through more fields, we then forged our own way through a rye field to a bridge to cross the M5. Ken looked at his map and saw some roads marked through a woods that would take us very close to our motel. I was game to try it. It turned out that the roads were tracks that had become almost completely overgrown. I actually really enjoyed hacking our way through the woods—an adventure that I knew would turn out okay. The wood wasn't that big after all. We ended up crawling through a gap in a fence to get out of the woods and quickly down to the motorway that led us to the motel. I joked that all of the CCTV cameras probably showed two disheveled people emerging from the trees. [If I had thought of it I might have taken a picture of the overgrown trails that we took, but then again, perhaps it was a good idea not to document it visually, as we were trespassing! I'm not particularly proud of that, the second and final trespass of our walk. I'm also not particularly proud of not informing Sara of our lawbreaking!—Ken] [Ken did tell me that we would likely be trespassing, so I am not proud that I said to go ahead anyway!--Sara]

After arriving at our motel (we were actually staying at a chain motel at a motorway services place), we had dinner at a fast-food noodle place in a mall-like place across from the motel. The man who served us was really pleasant, and the noodles made a fun change from pub fare, which we enjoy but can sometimes have too much of.

29,974 steps, 22.48 km, 895.4 cal
OS getamap measured distance: 11.03 mi (17.75 km)