When I last did this walk a few months ago, one of the end of walk refreshment places, the Cock Inn in Halstead, was closed, apparently permanently.

The Rose and Crown was open though and proved popular with real ale enthusiasts.

The best bluebells on this walk are in Newyears Wood in the afternoon. Follow the shortcut route to pass through this.

A small, but select group of5 walkers alighted from the train on a cool breezy and intermittently sunny day. Happily, there is still no sign of any housing development in the vicinity of the golf course. Long may that continue! The conditions underfoot were largely mud-free, apart from a short stretch immediately after Coolings Nurseries. The directions are generally easy to follow, helped by the fact that the author did the same walk less than a year ago. The one place, which still causes some confusion to walkers is the large field, at the bottom of which is some woodland with the remains of a tree, reportedly struck by lightning, visible on the ground. The path through the woodland is slightly to the right of said fallen tree, but is only visible from close by. It took a little under two hours to get to the George and Dragon in Downe. Three of the group had sandwiches, one had lunch at that ub, and the fifth walker, who had just arrived from far-flung places on a long-haul flight, dropped out at lunchtime and caught the 146 bus to Bromley. Incidentally, for those who want a gentler walk, the morning stretch followed by lunch in Downe makes for a very pleasant short excursion. The bluebells were out in force throughout the walk. The four remaining walkers stuck together after lunch. We stopped at Arthur's Coffee Shop for a refreshing break and comfortably made the 5.14 pm return train from Knockholt. A glorious day out!

6 walkers set off from Knockholt station on a largely warm and sunny late-August day. Half the walkers brought sandwiches and half chose to eat at the George and Dragon, where the pies are delicious and Sunday roast is available at a reasonable price. The going was easy underfoot and, although there were several climbs and descents before and after lunch, these were not too strenuous at this time of year. Perhaps the toughness score should be reduced to 5/10 in summer and 6/10 at other (muddier) times of year.

The directions given were very helpful, with just a couple of small changes required: there is no longer a cattle grid on the approach to Norsted Manor Farm and, concerning the fallen tree struck by lightning, the path through the wooded stretch is just to the right 9not left) of the fallen tree.

The. best bluebells of this walk are on the short cut through Newyears Wood. It and the next wood on the shortcut were a sea of blue on 23 April last year.

Nationwide alert test at 3pm may disable your phone till acknowledged. Just saying.

Q What’s long and slithery?

A This walk when it’s been raining.

7 hardy stalwarts gathered, undeterred by the gloomy forecast. There was light rain to start then dry then sun There was also up, down and a lot of stiles, some impossibly high. But strangely enjoyable. Scenic and that. The Queens Head was welcoming and people got proper scoff. And they had Rosie’s Cider, which was enough to keep Mr Tiger happy despite his muddy paws, one of which was getting a bit sore. Well, sort of happy.

The others sped on after lunch into the shortcut and left poor Mr Tiger behind. But, don’t worry readers, they caught him up again later. The cowslip field did not disappoint but it is a bit of a slog up the other slippery side. Plenty of bluebells on the walk especially through New Years Wood.. Perhaps not quite at their best. Probably looked at today’s weather and decided not to bother.

The trouble with this walk is it’s a long way to the station. You think you must be getting there, then there’s another bit, then another. And so on. They should do something about that. :(

We were too late for Coolings. There was talk of diverting to Halsted but I doubt it happened. The others had shot off again, hadn’t they?

5, I'm told

Could someone please update the notes for this walk which were last walk checked in 2017 and the print font is so small it’s unreadable without a magnifying glass. These walk notes are condensed onto 5 pages whilst other walks stretch to 17 pages windows far too much information. We need clear larger print please!!

28 on this walk. The group quickly split into two parts, one consisting of people who wanted to stop and enjoy the bluebells (me) and the other those who sailed through the bluebell woods with barely a sideways glance (everyone else).

The following paragraph will therefore be of interest to nobody, but the bluebells were in great form, fully out or nearly so. Several new bluebell woods seemed to have appeared since I last did the walk: it is certainly adequately supplied with them.

Every time I do a Knockholt walk, I am told one of the two pubs in Downe is absolutely to be preferred to the other. Last time it was the Queen’s Head. This time it was the George & Dragon. Its patio has been covered with a marquee, so as many of us as possible had to squeeze into the small remaining sunny section, where unfortunately one of the two tables was kaput. My food came almost as soon as I ordered it. Those who had arrived earlier waited longer. Well, I was happy.

The weather, I should mention was windy sun and cloud : chilly in the wind or cloud, warmish in the sun. After lunch I went off piste to have a look at the Downe Bank nature reserve, and later took a short cut through Newyears Wood (awash with bluebells) and Birch Grove (an absolute sea of them - one of the best bluebell woods have seen). Beyond the latter I rejoined the walk route and found the group toiling up a hill. I told them of the wondrous floral spectacle just a few hundred metres away and was met with blank stares. (Incidentally, for balance, it later turned out I had missed a floral spectacle too: a field between Downe and Cudham that was thick with cowslips.)

I now realised it was touch and go if we would get to Coolings Nursery tea room before it shut at 4.30pm. I shared my concern with others in the group, and was met with shrugs. One said “I can’t get excited about tea and cake”. So I sped up, picking up one fellow enthusiast on the way. We got to the tea room at about 4.15. Curiously about ten others in the group then also turned up, including the not bothered one. A couple of them did not get tea because they arrived too late.

After tea we rushed for a particular train, only to slow down when we realised we would miss it, only to then arrive at the station not long after it had left so that we had a 20 minute wait for the next one. They are building new houses nearby. Let’s hope they also build a pub.

This walk hillier than I remember with lots and lots of stiles. But there were baby goats

This walk was hilly all day at least 6 out 10 and had a large number of dodgy stiles. The food service was very slow but the skate wings excellent when they arrived at the Queens Head where most of us sat in the sunny garden. Inside tables were scruffy and designed to watch the sports on TV. There is a restaurant section where tables can be booked and a cake shop next door. Only Mr Tiger could read the walk instructions as he had judiciously kept a pre 2017 copy in a larger font. Please arrange for printing in at least size 10 font without the italics otherwise no one is going to use our walk directions which is such a shame after all the hard work that goes into producing them. Nobody wants to wear reading glasses unnecessarily as you cannot see the wood for the trees and is a recipe for tripping over!!

Oh yes, I forgot the baby goats. Lots of baby sheep too. And a Spitfire flying parallel to another plane that was presumably filming it.

I don’t want to have to print out 17 pages but perhaps a different page format would help. There’s an awful lot of unused margin there.

As for below comment:

"Could someone please update the notes for this walk which were last walk checked in 2017 and the print font is so small it’s unreadable without a magnifying glass. These walk notes are condensed onto 5 pages whilst other walks stretch to 17 pages windows far too much information. We need clear larger print please!!"

There are 483 Day Walks on the website, the very most of them fully written up. Many of those have various options, so that they are basically several walks in one. There are also 53 Short Walks and 6 City Walks, mostly also fully written up. That's more than 500 text pdf's.

Way more than 90% of those walks are maintained by just 6 people, 2 of which are also holding down day jobs 'on the side' to pay the bills; 5 of those 6 are also providing the majority of the walk posts every week.

If any one of the other hundreds of people that consider themselves members of this club think that any of the SWC offerings is sub-par, can they please join the very orderly queue of people volunteering to do some of the work? Feel free to register your interest at saturdaywalkers at yahoo dot co dot uk at any time...

Failing that, edits to texts can always be submitted as comments to the walk's webpage. That is what many of the non-club walkers do when they have walked our routes independently of the group walks. The walk author will then feed them into the text.

And no: there is no need for double exclamation marks, Marion

or in other words: this club, like any others entirely living by and off the contributions of unpaid volunteers, is only as good as the contributions of those unpaid volunteers.

not happy with the level of 'service' you are getting from the club? get involved!

Many thanks to Mike A for rejiging the font of this walk as requested. Now that the walk notes are readable and only stretch to 7 pages this is most helpful to those that like to read text and not rely on satnav running out of battery power.

Hello. If most of se England is now Tier 3, any reason why we shouldn't walk in bubbles in other Tier 3 territory? Just asking, not criticising. Cheers.

On the Ramblers site the rule for England is stated as follows:

"Whether you're organising your own walk with friends and family, or joining a Ramblers group walk, the travel restrictions are the same: you should not travel to or from Tier 3 (Very High Alert) areas, including neighbouring Tier 3 areas, either to start your walk or as part of your walk."

Assuming that's correct, Londoners should stick to walks inside the London boundary.

Understand. Cheers.

I don't know why the Ramblers say that. There's no law (as opposed to "guidance") preventing travel (assuming you haven't got Covid-19) and Tier 3 is one area.

Is anyone going on the Haslemere round walk today? And is travel from London’s to Haslemere allowed?

As it turned out, the last day before Tier Four. If you are reading this in the far future and don’t know what tier four is, lucky you... I did count how many came on this walk but forgot to write it down: around 20. I was soon in a group of three and stayed with it all day, until around dusk we met two others. So social distancing complied with.

A nice walk in pleasant scenery. Despite rain on the train down and the train home, it was fairly sunny and always dry while we were walking. Picnic lunch, natch. Coolings tea kiosk was shut by the time our little threesome got there: did others have better luck? Back in London, three of us joined the youth in cheerful Christmasy Hays Galleria and cracked a bottle of wine or two. One more defiant gesture against the gloom of this tiresome winter.

Hi Guys I did this walk back in January and yes the golf course has been sold for housing development. The lovely chest nut trees are gone. Fences everywhere but there is a path but rather restricted path. It was extremely muddy in winter due to the extensive digging etc. Still a very good walk for Boundary 6 with fair bit of hills to challenge you. Should have some good bluebell patches as I recall about 5 years when I did it in blue bell season. Did the Holmwood to Gomshall with Leith rhododenrous extension. Flowers still got a week to go before full bloom. Sorry Marcus I skip your Tring walk. Enjoy the Knockholt walk as I did.

Monica.

P/S Walker saw 2 types of violet common dog violet and wood violet.

I belatedly realised that the best ticket for this walk would have been a six zone travelcard purchased with a Network Card - £8.60 or so: a big discount on the £12.80 daily cap for zone 1 to 6 on Oyster. Oh well...

14 assembled on the platform for this walk and one late starter caught us at lunch, so 15 in all. Odd spots of rain early on and a teensy bit of brightness in the early afternoon apart, the weather was cool grey cloud . A bit disappointing. Only one inert butterfly seen and birdsong was very muted: a big contrast to last weekend.

The fenced bit across the now abandoned (yippee!) golf course was just a line of fence posts, which helpfully indicated the path. If there are indeed plans to build housing here, there is no sign of any progress being made. In truth more housing might cheer the rather nothing-y area around the station up. Any chance that the development could include a cafe open to 7pm, do you think?

In Downe the George & Dragon had five frowning locals: the Queen’s Head was much more inviting and served nice food cheerfully. Its most famous regular (a former leader of UKIP) has not been seen for a while, apparently.

Thus far we had had some nice-ish patches of bluebells and an encounter with three cheerful goats, plus two dogs who had a trick of throwing their toy over the fence for passers-by to throw back. But as the walk poster I worried that we might not get any big-hitting bluebell woods. But mid afternoon we came upon a stunner - just by Let’s Green. Two walkers did a short cut at this point.

For the rest of us - well, OK, mainly for me - the big anxiety after this was whether we would get to tea in time, but we did, arriving at 4pm and managing to penetrate the vast and extravagantly well- stocked labyrinth that is Coolings Garden Centre to find its lovely self-service tea room. Nice cakes, big pots of tea. Then down to the station to get whatever train we got. Perhaps they could also add a pub to that housing development so the walking day does not have to end so abruptly.

Thank you for the ticket advice, will be useful for future walks.

Ok thanks Mr M Tiger for your message. Just wondering since there's no booking system etc I may change my mind and do the Knockhold Circular. Are you doing this walk too?

Pleas let me know as soon as you can, sorry this is SO late

Yes, and as often as you like!

Our walk's don't have leaders, so the walk poster doesn't necessarily do the walk. As we don't do prior reservations, its pot luck how many turn up.

Saturday's walks has 14, 16, 30 (a holiday) & 10

My extensive network of spies has notified me there were 9 (+ 1 woofer) on this walk. Some, apparently, were refugees from the hot and sunny conditions expected on the Deal-Dover walk.

8 attended. Cloudy most of the day, sunny late afternoon.

8 cloudy most of the day sunny late afternoon

20 on this walk including one late starter and one who parked somewhere and was with us at lunch and for a while after. There was a brief flicker of sun as we got off the train, but alas, it was not to be. Instead we had drizzle with increasing showers , the latter after lunch. On the plus side it was mild and really nothing like as muddy as it ought to have been.

Springlike signs were there for the sharp-eyed and eared. I was almost certainly the only person to be excited by seeing dog's mercury shoots in the woods but a large flock of bleating and very pregnant ewes being led to the lambing shed promised happier times to come. Larks also sang along with song thrushes and one blackbird.

The George and Dragon in Downe was surprised to get a dozen of us for lunch - "All I served yesterday was one cheese sandwich" the landlady was heard to say. But the kitchen still produced tasty food with decent despatch and at rock bottom prices. Some also tried the Queen's Head, though if its most famous local (one N Farage Esq) was there, I do not know.

In the afternoon I got left behind and so took a short cut to tea. Five or six others penetrated the many zones of Cooling's Nursery to join me in its very nice cafe. Later some tried both the Cock Inn and the Rose and Crown in Halstead. Both are locals pubs, though not unfriendly. The R&C is a 1970s time warp but had good beer, the cognoscenti tell me. A nun at the next table seemed to be enjoying it too. The four of us who sampled its wares walked in the dark across the golf course to get the 18.43 train, the extraordinary glow of London on the horizon producing an effect a little like pale moonlight.