Day 36 Boughton Lees to Chilham: Get Her to Godmersham

Godmersham House—after the Rain!

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

Today was a relatively short walk from Boughton Lees to Chilham (less than 10 miles), which we planned in order to leave time for us to visit another literary site. While en route to Chilham I was going to visit the Godmersham Heritage Center, which I had prearranged to have opened for me—an opportunity for which I was grateful. Godmersham Park was the estate that Jane Austen's brother Edward owned, and Jane visited there often.

It was raining and our kind hosts offered us their conservatory to sit in and chat with them until the rain abated a bit. It would have been nice to do so, but we felt we needed to get going in order to arrive at Godmersham shortly after noon as we had arranged. We were already a bit late because Ken was still feeling slow from his cold. So we left around ten, walking into a blustery drizzle which was mostly at our backs. We had good paths to Bourton Aluph. Evidently there is going to be a village fète here later in the day as there was a marquee (empty at the moment) outside the church, but as has happened so many times recently, the church was locked. It was cold, rainy, and frustrating. 

We soon recovered good cheer at the thought of getting to Godmersham, however, and walked up our main ascent of the day to King's Wood quite quickly. As we walked the quite good and well-marked forest path, Ken told me his motto for the day was, "Get her to Godmersham." I had told the curator that we would be there at noon or a little later, so we did have to hustle. It was a fairly long but easy walk through the wood, and as a bonus we were quite well sheltered from the rain, which came and went with varying intensity for much of the morning.

A Classic Kent Lanscape: Oasthouses after Godmersham

As we finally exited the main part of King's Wood and were descending down the hill towards Godmersham, Ken got the shimmery vision in his left visual field that accompanies a migraine, so we had to go a bit slower because he wasn't seeing the path well. Ken said that it felt like as he was getting nearer the spiritual end of the walk—that is, Canterbury—he was being challenged: first by his cold and now by a migraine. (Fortunately, when he gets migraines he only experiences the visual field disruption and a mild headache; he is very thankful for that, as he has family and friends who suffer debilitating migraines.) We left the woods and turned south-westwards into Godmersham Park, and just as the house came into view, the wind and rain picked up, blowing directly in our faces. It really soaked us. We hastened on, knowing that the visitor center was past the house a ways and near the church. We got there at 12:45 p.m., only to find a note on the door saying that the director couldn't find someone to open the centre after all. I can understand that someone might not want to wait around on a Saturday for walkers to show up, but it was disappointing—especially since we had turned down our B & B hosts' kind invitation to chat and wait out the rain solely because we needed to make our appointment at the centre. Sigh. [I admit, I did actually shed tears of disappointment, which is something more akin to being a Bronte heroine than an Austen one--or is it? To do the centre justice, the director had sent an email the day before, but I hadn't been able to check email and didn't receive it until it was too late.--Sara]

On the other hand, amazingly, Godmersham church was open! It had a good feel. We prayed, sang, looked at the Austen (Knight) family monuments and then went outside and ate our lunch on a bench that was surprisingly dry as the sun had come out. Now the wind and sun were drying things off as fast as they had soaked us earlier. We set off around 2:00 p.m. and retraced our steps to rejoin the North Downs Way. It was no longer raining, so we were able to take some photos of Godmersham House and the beautiful Kent countryside.

No wonder Chilham has been used as a movie set...

A short time later we arrived at the beautiful village of Chilham—itself an interesting study in pre- Industrial Revolution social structure: the village is on the top of a hill, with the gates of the manor house fronting on one side of the village square, the church sitting almost directly opposite at the other end, mostly half-timbered buildings forming the boundaries of the square and small lanes radiating away from the centre in several directions. (One can easily see why Chilham has often been used a set for television and movie productions, for example, a recent adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger.)  It was also a very busy village, particularly today as it is a weekend and there was a large wedding going on at the manor house, with many expensive-looking cars parked in the square [and many expensive-looking people coming from and going to the house!—Ken].

Smiles in Chilham

After taking in the whole scene, we stopped at Shelly's tea room, where we decided against yet another cream tea. (Ken figured that the further away from Devon and Somerset one goes, the less reliably delectable and generous the teas get! Although the teas at Shelly's looked okay.) Instead of a cream tea, I had delicious fresh strawberry ice cream and Ken had a milkshake with the longest bendy straw we had ever seen. Ken chatted with a friendly couple at the next table, and found that the husband had cycled the St. James of Compostella pilgrimage route in Spain five times, which is quite an accomplishment indeed.

Bagham Farmhouse Entry

They took a fun picture of us laughing in the village square which was nice, as most of the time on this trip we have been alone and consequently don't actually have many pictures of us together.

We went to the village church and . . . it was locked. At this point frustration was turning into resignation.

Eventually we walked down the hill to our B & B, Bagham Farmhouse, and looked at the antiques store next door—actually part of the same property—just before it closed. It was a sign of things to come. We checked into our B & B, a fifteenth-century house packed to the gills with lots of interesting antiques, including a suit of armour near the entry. Our day concluded with a short walk to the Woolpack Inn for dinner, and then back home to relax and get a good night's sleep. Despite the disappointment at Godmersham it had really turned into a very nice day.

27,264 steps, 20.448 km, 858.8 cal
OS getamap measured distance: 9.36 mi (15.06 km)

Beautiful Chilham