Day 5: Stage 4: Tatsfield - Wrotham: 23 kms, Sunny, 27°J

A Bit Of An Odd Day!

Some days just don’t work out the way you think they will. Today started like any normal day on this particular walk with a typical English breakfast full of sausages, mushrooms, eggs, beans and ham. Nothing like I’d ever eat at home. Pure protein! 

After breakfast we said goodbye to our host and headed off across a couple of golf courses and a field with horses. In Britain walkers can go just about anywhere and cross private land within reasonably limited corridors. 

We ended up walking along some quiet trails and through some countryside estates. Almost every home regardless of size has its own name such as the one below which is called Mole End. I figured Saiorse would love this one!

We crossed lots of pastureland today. Much of it already cut and bailed or in fallow Beautiful sweeping vistas!
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I was surprised to find some late season poppies, very surprised! By rights they should be long gone.

Many of the trails we cross are quite rugged, obviously without a lot of foot traffic. A wonderful experience after many of the high traffic northern Spanish and Portuguese Caminos. I understand that much of the Via Francigena is like this until Lucca where more people are walking closer to Rome. Guess I’ll find out!

This brings to mind the matter of navigation along this route. After walking approximately106 km in the last four days we have a pretty good idea how this looks. Basically, the way marking is average at best and often poor. Last winter as I identified the N. Downs Way as a route that might appeal to us, I read that it was strongly encouraged to use GPX tracks in order to navigate. I’m so happy that I took the time to figure out how to do this! We think we might’ve been lost at least a dozen times in the first three stages, probably more. Today the way was better marked. 

There were more flowers today. True, many are weeds, but still the colours lift the spirits during a long day. 



There are loads of country estates in this part of England. Some of them are quite impressive, but must be quite a lot of work to maintain.



There are some impressive old houses. 



Town centre Otford.

Then there’s the train station. After a couple of long difficult days we decided to treat ourselves to a short seven minute train ride. And air conditioning train coach for seven minutes must be equivalent to two ice cold drinks for half an hour. Anyway it was pretty nice.

After we got off the train we found a small co-op grocery store and picked up some food for tomorrow’s walk as there’s no place to eat along the way. We also picked up a some chips and cold drinks that Annemarie carried for the rest of the day. 



After leaving the train station we mapped out a route through several fields to find our way to the nights accommodation, the Holiday Inn. However, I had miss-plotted the location of the hotel on my app and we ended up about 20 minutes west on a very busy highway.

This guy was taking no prisoners! We’ve also seen signs suggesting that while the law permits you to cross the owners land no picnics or wandering around is allowed. I guess there’s been issues!

Look closely Dad and you’ll see his personalized golf course, a nine hole short course on a field usually occupied by sheep! 

Having messed up our route it took us a while to walk 2 kms against traffic all the way back to our hotel. We had to cross the busy highway at least four times because the sidewalks kept disappearing into the bush. It was a bit mad, but we managed it. And the Pringles survived!

A very cool cottage from 1550! North America wasn’t even on the map yet! At least as far as European colonists were concerned. 

And there she blows! The brilliant but simple Holiday Inn, full of families on vacation. We’ve enjoyed chatting with little kids. Never shy and always entertaining! Nothing seems to quite work in our room and to help those who might follow we have given the front desk a list all the fixes required. I’m sure they will be happy to see us leave😂

It’s now 20:00 and time to file this report and have a few quiet moments. A short stage tomorrow as we will at some point leave the route to visit a small city that I had planned on visiting in 2020. I’ll leave that story for tomorrow. Yah, I know Rob, it’s not British beer. They didn’t have any good ones and I wanted to taste this beer from Prague. As good as it was, it won’t happen again!😂