Section 16
Brownbread Street to Bodle Street Green
Walk Details
Walk Instructions
FOLKESTONE TO FARNHAM ROBUST RAMBLE
Section 16 Out
Brownbread Street to Bodle Street Green
Map: OS Explorer 124 Hastings and Bexhill
Distance/Time: 4 miles/2 hours
Start: The walk starts from the Ash Tree Inn at Brownbread Street. Limited parking on road. Ask for permission to use the inn car park.
Comments: There is a tough start here with a muddy crossing into a cattle pasture which needs a footbridge. The cattle are currently Belted Galloways which is the only pleasant aspect of the situation. There are a lot of stiles on this section and several are currently in a poor state. The hills and valleys along the way create wet and boggy sections. Waymarking is patchy so keep your place on the map. Otherwise there are excellent views and this is quiet and attractive countryside. UNFORTUNATELY THE WHITE HORSE PUB AT BODLE STREET GREEN IS CURRENTLY CLOSED SO PLEASE TAKE PROVISIONS.
With the Ash Tree Inn on your left, walk on up the road past a row of six cottages in grey and red brick, called Longhouses. Look for a house on the right called ‘Suttons’.
Immediately past this look left for a stile into a field corner. Cross and go down by a wire fence on your right. At the bottom cross a very muddy stream (it may actually be a spring) into a steeply rising cattle pasture.
Turn left with care, to follow the treeline and stream down on your left. The pasture dips down to cross a deep ditch. Now bear left up the other side to a wire fence at the far side of the field. Look along to your left to find a stile in the fence in to the field ahead.
Cross and bear very slightly left over the field towards trees at the far side. Pass two telegraph poles on your left and continue to the very far corner of the field and a metal fieldgate. To the right is a stile. Cross into a wood and go on in the same direction as before through trees on a feint path. Go down to a footbridge.
Over the footbridge climb a bank on rough steps and cross two stiles into a field. Go up the field to the top right corner. Pass through a wide gap into a second field. Go along by the hedge on your left to a metal fieldgate ahead.
Go through this and on past a cottage on your left, to a driveway. Turn right uphill on the drive. In 75 metres look for a metal fieldgate on your left with an equestrian gate alongside (this is a byway, closed to vehicles in winter months; it’s not waymarked).
Go through into a narrow paddock. Go forward with the hedge on your right to another metal fieldgate. Through this go down between hedges. Keep downhill for some way to a footbridge.
Cross and go on uphill through trees on a wide leafy path. Emerge into an open pasture with excellent views. Keep ahead with a fence on your right. Pass through a gateway to the next field and continue to a metal fieldgate
In the next corner. Through the gate, bear right, to continue to follow the byway, gently uphill, for some way (ignore a path off left some way along). Eventually emerge onto a road.
Turn left along the road, downhill, a few paces. Turn right down a concrete drive to Watermill Farm (no waymarks on this section). Follow the drive down and over a bridge at the bottom of the hill.
The farmhouse is now up ahead. Turn immediately left, off the drive, onto the bottom edge of the house lawn. Follow this past the house on your right, with the stream down on your left. The grass narrows to pass between the stream on the left and a long pond on your right. At the end bear right to a broken stile in a barbed wire fence.
Cross in to a boggy field and turn left to follow the stream on your left, along the valley bottom. Eventually pass through a metal fieldgate into a final field and cross to another metal fieldgate leading out to a road.
Turn right, uphill, on the road. In a little distance look for a footpath going off to the right up a steep bank through trees. At the top of the rise bear right to a broken stile into the corner of a large rising field.
Bear left to cross the middle of the field, passing a lone tree and heading for a distinctive white house. This is actually a chapel. Exit onto a road through a gate at the left side of the chapel.
Turn left on the road for some way to reach the site of the White Horse Inn on the left at a crossroads and the end of the section.
FOLKESTONE TO FARNHAM ROBUST RAMBLE
Section 16 Return
Bodle Street Green to Brownbread Street
Map: OS Explorer 124 Hastings and Bexhill
Distance/Time: 4 miles/2 hours
Start: The walk starts from the former White Horse Inn (currently closed). There is parking in the village hall car park opposite.
Comments: Not a long walk, just right for a sunny winter’s day. Waymarking is not good so pay careful attention to the map. Several stiles and possibly a gate to climb. A substantial stretch on the road at the end but a not unpleasant country lane. Attractive rolling country.
With the front door of the former White Horse Inn behind, go forward to the cross roads. Immediately bear left up a narrow country road called Prinkle Lane.
Soon pass farm buildings on your left and Toll Lane on your right. Keep forward down Prinkle Lane. In 200 metres pass Prinkle Farm on the left. Pass buildings and cottages on the left. Just past the last one called Oak Ridge House, look for a fieldgate in the hedge on your right. Currently there is no waymark but a broken one is lying in the grass verge.
Go through into a sloping field. Keep forward down the middle of the field bearing slightly left to a metal fieldgate in the far left corner.
Through this, continue downhill with a hedge on your left, towards farm buildings. Well before the farm look for a stile in the hedge on your left.
Cross into the neighbouring field and continue downhill with the hedge now on your right. At the bottom fence do not cross but turn left to follow the fence to a stile in corner by trees.
Turn right over the stile to a pond. Bear right then left to follow the edge of the pond to a fieldgate. Go through this and on alongside the pond to another.
Cross into a field and turn right down the field edge with trees on your right. Keep on the field edge all the way down to the bottom and stay on the edge as it gently swings left to reach a metal fieldgate in the very bottom corner.
Go through this and drop down to a second metal fieldgate and out on to a concrete drive. Turn left up this until it meets a road.
Cross the road and go up the entrance to Tilley Farm. In 10 metres pass an old wooden fieldgate on your left. Just beyond turn left on a grassy track dropping down away from the drive. Follow this for a short distance by a ditch on your right.
The track soon stops. Here turn right over a small footbridge and go steeply up a bank into a field corner. Turn sharp left along the lower field edge with trees and a hedge on your left. Reach and cross a small metal gate and footbridge at the corner ahead.
Over this enter a steeply sloping field. Bear diagonally right up the open field.
At the top of the slope look across to the hedge at the far side of the field. There are two options here:
a. The public path bears right across to the far right corner where a treeline meets the end of the hedge. Here there is a broken stile leading into a ditch and out to a road. Turn left on this road and go along looking for an old wooden fieldgate on your right.
b. Or look left for a metal fieldgate in the hedge. Go to this and climb across to emerge onto a road. Cross to an old wooden fieldgate opposite.
Through this wooden fieldgate bear diagonally right down the field. Go through a gap in the hedge halfway down and continue down in the same direction past a reedy pond to the far bottom corner.
Exit the field under a fallen tree and via a very difficult squeeze stile onto a country road. Turn left up the road for a mile. This is part of a 1066 Walk. Halfway up reach a Y-fork. Here bear left to return to the Ash Tree Inn at Brownbread Street and the start of the section.
