Greensand Way

OS Explorer Map : OL33, 145, 146, 147, 148, 136, 137, 125,

The 108 miles long Greensand Way (GW) is the best of the long distance walks in southeast of England. Its starts in Farham, and passes through lesser visited parts of the Surrey Hills, to the south of the North Downs. It then enters Kent, and passes through the Chart hills to Sevenoaks and Knole Park, with good views for much of the way. At this point its character changes entirely, and it becomes a lowland walk. It continues to Ham Street, south of Ashford.

Parts of its route feature on many of our walks - its route seems to have been chosen for quality as much as simply following the Greensand ridge. The walk originaly ended at the Surrey border, but was later extended into Kent. The first part of the extension, through the Chart hills to Sevenoakes and Yalding is a worthy addition, and indeed a highlight of the walk, but the lowland end of the walk, past Ashford to Hamstreet is of quite a different nature - mainly agricultural lowlands. Several unoffical spurs have been added to the route, at least as marked on OS maps - the longest one being the alternate start from Farnham at the start.

The practicalities of doing the walk as a series of day trips aren't easy - long stretches of it don't come close to railway lines, meaning that rare buses must be used. The walk has been spilt up into 10m/15km stages, and travel by bus or train details are given to the start and finish of each leg. Some stages are done in reverse for logistical reasons - its much nicer to have regular transport at the end, and a nice pub to wait in! There are other possible start and finish points for each stage - I've marked bus stop, and alternate train stations on the maps.

The walk is maintained by Surrey and Kent Councils, and well waymarked, especially in Surrey (although still not well enough to follow it without a map). In April 2012, Surrey CC and The Ramblers finished a project to survey and update the waymarking of the Surrey section of the GW.

The Greensand Way has been split into a series of day walks. The OS map and GPX links above are to give you an overview of the entire walk.

If you plan to do the entire walk in one go, you should be able to complete it in 7 or 8 days (as you wont have to travel to the start of the walk each day). If you can do 2 stages over a weekend, the 'bus' stages 2,3 and 8,9 would be good to combine.

The best most enjoyable stages are of course subjective, but 2, 3, and 7 stand out as especially enjoyable

• Surrey Council have several leaflets of the Surrey (west) part of the route with OS mapping and directions (but not accomodation or public transport information) available from their website
• Kent Council also have leaflets of the Surrey section, but not, oddly, of the Kent section [Aug-23]
• The original guidebook to the walk is long out of print and hard to get. It did have OS mapping (with the contours removed!). In any case, the route has had many small changes in the meantime.

After the walk, please leave a comment, it really helps. Thanks!

You can also upload photos to the SWC Group on Flickr (upload your photos) and videos to Youtube. This walk's tags are:

National Rail: 03457 48 49 50 • Traveline (bus times): 0871 200 22 33 (12p/min) • TFL (London) : 0343 222 1234

Jan-19