Section 14
Telham to Catsfield
Walk Details
Walk Instructions
FOLKESTONE TO FARNHAM ROBUST RAMBLE
Section 14 Out
Telham to Catsfield
Map: OS Explorer 124 Hastings and Bexhill
Distance/Time: 5.5 miles/ 3 hours
Start: The walk starts from the Black Horse in Telham. There is rough verge parking opposite and the pub has a car park for customers.
Comments: This is a walk with much contrast and some interesting features. Waymarking is not good and from the start follow the instructions carefully around a camp site. With few waymarks, look carefully for various landmarks. Keep checking the maps and make sure you always know where you are. A section of road walking on the final stage into Catsfield. A quiet lane but intermittent traffic so listen out. Pass two small campsites on the right as you go.
With the Black Horse pub on your right, walk down the main road towards Telham village in the direction of Battle. There is a pavement. Pass the red brick Telham church on your right and keep on, to the first side road on your left, just after the entrance to Crowhurst Park Holiday Centre. Cross the main road to turn down the side road.
A short distance along this road, turn left down a driveway to Brakes Coppice Farm and a cricket pitch. Just after the cricket pitch, where the drive swings right, turn left onto a clear footpath (there are no waymarks here). Enter a steeply sloping field with power cables ahead.
Bear right, downhill, to follow the righthand field edge and trees down to the very bottom. Here, hidden in the bushes, is a footbridge. Cross to the field ahead and bear diagonally right, uphill, to a gap in the top right corner.
Through the gap, by a large hole in the ground, bear right on a green track. This swings round to pass an isolated house on your right. Keep forward to join the rough access drive to this house and keep on in the same direction.
Stay on this drive, ignoring side tracks, as it climbs uphill, swinging gently to the left. At the top, meet trees and the entrance to a holiday site. Do not go on but turn right on a narrow grassy path going straight down to dense woodland.
Enter the woods and immediately cross a stile in a wire fence. Go forward and follow a woodland path until it emerges into a field.
Turn right along the edge of the wood (ignore a big gap on your right). Where the wood begins to swing away to the right, keep straight on across the open field, currently on a wide, rutted tractor track, heading down towards the end of a line of poplar trees.
Just beyond the trees is a meeting of four tracks (there is a house gateway on your left). Here turn right on a tractor track heading towards a clump of trees on the left.
Keep on in the same direction for some way, slightly downhill. Pass a wood on your right. At the bottom of the hill, enter a wood and cross an old stone bridge.
Bear left through the woods to an unusual metal lined subway under a railway.
At the far side keep straight on, under an old brick arch which carried an abandoned railway line to Bexhill. Go forward across the field, downhill, to a pond. Cross a stone bridge to a metal fieldgate and continue on a grassy farm track with a hedge on your right.
Keep on for some way. On reaching farm buildings, keep close to the fence on your right down to a concrete drive. Turn right to a kissing gate and on to a road. Turn left down to a T-junction below Crowhurst Church.
Cross the road and bear slightly left to a wooden fieldgate across the entrance to Crowhurst Manor. Walk up the drive, past the house on your left and the ruins of the manor, to a kissing gate into a field.
Go on across the field to a metal fieldgate. Go through and forward in the field beyond. Follow a grassy track going generally forward down the open pasture, roughly parallel to the rather bendy hedge on your right. Look for a lone tree near the top end of the field. There are pylons in the far distance.
Finally drop down towards the tree and go to a concrete bridge just left of it. Do not cross the bridge and ignore the path going over it. Continue, crossing two further footbridges as you go. Eventually reach a T-junction of paths at the edge of a wood.
Turn left here, over a long footbridge, then turn right, to follow the wood on your right, upto a large open field. Here leave the trees and turn left across the scrubland on the left. Keep on along the field edge, with the scrubland bushes on your left.
Keep along to the end of the field. Go through a wide gap in the hedge to a grassy space with a pond on the left.
Bear slightly right across the space and up a grassy track. Soon reach a Y-fork. Keep right up into a large sloping field.
Turn left along the bottom edge of this field, with trees and then ponds down on the left. Keep along for a good way to the far corner of the field.
Here, meet a broad, muddy bridleway. Turn left on this and follow it up and around (ignore a footpath off right and a track off left), until it meets a concrete track by farm buildings. There are no waymarks.
Turn right at this junction to go downhill through dilapidated buildings, to reach a gateway with two brick gateposts covered in ivy.
Turn left on a grassy path going up by a laurel hedge. Soon reach an open field on the left. Cross left into the field. Head up the steeply sloping field towards evergreen trees, just right of a pylon on the skyline.
On reaching the trees, go on up with the trees on your right, to a wire fence at the very top, just before the pylon. Cross a simple stile and go forward to another stile to the right of the pylon. Keep on down a sloping pasture to further stile with a farm beyond.
Cross the stile and go sharp left to follow the hedge on your left, to a fieldgate, just left of the farmhouse. Cross into a large pasture and head diagonally right across to the far opposite corner by cottages.
Cross a stile in the corner and turn left to a road. Turn right on the road for half a mile. Pass Potman’s Lane on the left, and keep on downhill, eventually passing Catsfield Parish Church up on the right.
Immediately past the church look for an entrance drive to kennels going off left. In the corner is a stile into a field. Cross the field diagonally left to a stile in the far opposite corner.
Over this go along the top edge of a field passing a garden and buildings on your right. Soon pass between buildings to reach a gravel track. Turn left a few paces then right, to continue forward in the same direction as before to reach a stile in the hedge ahead.
Cross into a large field. Continue across the field bearing very slightly left to a stile (broken) by a fieldgate at the far side.
Cross and go down to a busy road. Turn right along the pavement into Catsfield village. Pass the village shop to reach the White Hart pub and the end of the section.
FOLKESTONE TO FARNHAM ROBUST RAMBLE
Section 14 Return
Catsfield to Telham
Map: OS Explorer 124 Hastings and Bexhill
Distance/Time: 4.5 miles/ 3 hours
Start: The walk starts from the White Hart in Catsfield. The pub has a car park for customers. Down the road opposite, is the village hall on the left and a public car park.
Comments: This is a walk with varied countryside and rolling terrain and some steep climbs. Fisheries just outside Catsfield do not encourage walkers so careful navigation is needed. Unfortunately, the lack of paths means some road walking, with a mile along Telham Lane. A not unpleasant road with light traffic but still, greater vigilance needed than on a footpath.
With the ‘White Hart’ pub behind, cross the main road and go straight ahead, down Church Road. Keep on, to pass a former church with a tall, elegant spire on your left, then on, past a school on your right.
Just past the school, look for an old wooden fieldgate on your left. Go through, then immediately left through a wooden swing gate, to bear left, uphill, on a grassy track, across the centre of a rising field.
At the top of the field, go through another swing gate, and on, by a fence, to a third.
Enter a field to a division of paths. Bear right, downhill, to a post by a corner of woodland. Follow the edge of the field around to a further corner. Here, look down and across the pasture, to a bungalow. Continue down aiming just right of the bungalow.
Go through a wooden fieldgate onto a road. Turn right on the road, with care, passing buildings on your right.
Immediately past these buildings come to a corner of woodland by a ditch. There is a new diverted path here. Bear slightly left into the woods, then forward keeping parallel with the ditch and an old fence on your right, at the edge of the wood.
Soon emerge onto a wide tarmac driveway leading to Wyland Farm Fisheries. Turn right along it for some way. Pass between lakes and eventually uphill to a T-junction.
Turn left onto a brick and earth road and head towards woodland. Follow the track around to the right, along the edge of the wood and down towards another lake on your right.
At the end of the wood on your left, just before reaching the lake on your right, turn left, into a wide entrance, into two field corners. Bear right into the lower field and turn left, downhill, along the top edge of the field with a hedge on your left.
At the end of the hedge, go over a stile into a reedy wood and on, down a woodland path, by more fishing lakes (and litter). Reach and cross a footbridge and go through a metal swing gate into a field.
Turn immediately left, along the field edge, with a wood on your left. Reach a metal fieldgate just past the end of the wood. Turn left through this on a farm track going uphill. Just before farm buildings, cross a stile on your right and soon reach a metal swing gate into a small paddock. Cross into a large field.
Turn left to walk past farm buildings on your left. At a corner a farmhouse appears on your left. Ignore a footpath off left into the buildings and keep straight on across the field, passing the farmhouse on your left. At the far side of the field find a stile in the hedge.
Cross and turn right downhill with a hedge on your right, to a wide bridge at the bottom of the field. Across the bridge go forward on a raised path by the hedge on the right, to a stile onto a tarmac lane.
Turn right on the lane and soon reach the first house on your left, Peppering Eye Farmhouse. Immediately past this building, turn left, up a parking area, to a wicket gate. Go on up a grassy path and over a low stile (currently broken) to a steep field.
Continue straight up this field, aiming for the highest point. Over the top look for a small stile in a gap in the hedge ahead, just right of the corner (excellent views).
In the next field bear slightly right, still uphill, to a stile by a metal fieldgate in the far hedge. Emerge onto a country road.
Turn right on the road for a mile. Half way along cross a railway, then go on steadily uphill. Drop down past buildings on your right then on up again. Eventually, near the top, where the woodland on your left ends, find a set of steps up the bank on your right (ignore a stile on the left, opposite).
Go up the steps and cross a stile into a field. Go ahead across the field to a stile by a fieldgate. Cross to a road and turn right downhill.
Follow the road under power cables and past a lane going off right. As the road swings left, look for a stile up a bank on the left, just left of a fieldgate. Cross into a field.
Go up this large field with trees on your right. Near the top of the field go through a wooden kissing gate into a woodland path. Follow this out to a road.
Turn right on the road for some way (there is a grassy verge) to eventually reach a T-junction with a busy road. Turn right, uphill, back along the pavement to the Black Horse pub in Telham and the start of the section.
