Section 2
Horne Street to Saltwood
Walk Details
Walk Instructions
FOLKESTONE TO FARNHAM ROBUST RAMBLE
Section 2 Out
Horne Street to Saltwood
Map: OS Explorer 138 Dover, Folkestone & Hythe
Distance/Time: 3 miles/2 hours
Start: The walk starts from the Britannia pub in Horn Street. Difficult parking except at the pub.
Comments: A varied hilly walk featuring Saltwood Castle. Some great views. Some stiles and occasional muddy patches. A small amount of road walking. The hotel at Saltwood actually operates like a pub. This is a short section for a winter’s day.
From the Britannia pub, walk back, past the car park on your right. Cross the road to a bus stop by a seat and post box. Turn left up the driveway in front of brick cottages.
At the top of the rise, cross a poor stile(no foot boards) by a rusty fieldgate. Go on, uphill, quite sharply, diagonally left, to the top corner of a large field.
Cross a stile and keep on uphill in woods. Bear right, uphill, on the main path, ignoring informal woodland paths.
At the top, on the edge of the woods, cross a stile into open grassland. Here is a junction of paths. Do not go straight ahead, but bear left, down onto a narrow footpath by the side of a wire fence on your left. Keep forward for some distance between gorse bushes. This is quite rough going but the path is evident.
At a more open spot, where bushes on your right end, climb up onto higher ground. Keep on in the same direction aiming for the righthand end of woods ahead (not the conifer plantation way over on your right). On nearing the wood, ignore a path coming up from the left.
Having gained the end of the wood, keep forward with the wood on your left. Look for a gate on your left at the end of the wood.
Go through the gate onto a bridle way; part of the Elham Valley Way. This broad wooded track emerges at buildings at Sene Farm. Here turn right on a gravel entrance drive and walk out to a T-junction with a public road by a triangle of grass.
Turn left on the road and walk uphill with care; do stop when cars approach and use what verges there are. Soon pass the entrance to a golf club. Almost immediately reach a stile in the fence on your right.
Cross into a field and walk away from the road with a hedge over on your left, towards a distant wood.
Soon cross a stile and keep on along the field edge, looking for a stile on the left in the hedge. Cross, possibly a prickly business, into the adjoining field. Turn right to follow the hedge again, this time on your right.
At the end of the hedge, just before a wood and a wooden fieldgate in the hedge, turn left and go steeply downhill. At the bottom, cross a stream and go on to a metal gate.
Through this bear diagonally right across the field, then on, up the field edge with a hedge on your right. Keep on for some way, mostly uphill, to emerge dramatically at Saltwood Castle.
Turn right along the perimeter of the castle and soon reach a public road. Turn right for a few metres, looking for a farm entrance on your left. Go up, past a cattle shed.
In a short distance, pass a row of conifer trees on your right (there is a redundant stile in the middle of them) and go on up between farm buildings to a metal fieldgate. Through this, cross the field ahead to enter a churchyard. Walk past the church (well worth a visit) and continue through to a road.
Turn left along the road. Continue down to the end and a junction of several roads. Cross to the Castle Hotel and the end of the section.
FOLKESTONE TO FARNHAM ROBUST RAMBLE
Section 2 Return
Saltwood to Horne Street
Map: OS Explorer 138 Dover, Folkestone & Hythe
Distance/Time: 3 miles/2 hours
Start: The walk starts from the Castle Hotel
Comments: A short but varied walk with lots of interest, from quiet residential byways to golf courses, fields, woods and the occasional muddy patches. There is a steep climb.
With The Castle Hotel behind, turn right a few paces to a road junction. Cross a road off right (Old Saltwood Lane, a no-through-road) to the next set of roads off right. Cross the first one to turn down Brockhill Gardens.
In 50 metres, where the road swings right, go straight ahead on a tarmac footpath. Where the path widens go right, between high fences.
Eventually emerge onto a residential road called Castle Avenue. Turn left a few paces to a T-junction. Cross straight over to a narrow footpath between hedges.
The path soon opens out, passing a footpath off left and allotments. Go straight across a nature reserve and playing field.
At a T-junction, at the rear of houses, turn right and soon reach Deedes Close. Turn left along it to shortly reach Tanners Hill Gardens, above a steep grassy bank, with a main road below.
Turn left along the top road. In about 50 metres, look for steps going down the bank on your right, to the road below (take care you emerge directly onto the road).
Cross the road to a stile and footpath going down between fields to a very wet and boggy patch in the bottom corner; find a footbridge in the hedge ahead. Cross and go diagonally right, steeply up the field ahead to the top right corner.
Here cross a stile and go straight ahead up a drive to reach a main road by an old railway bridge. Turn left uphill, then first right into Cliff Road.
In a little way, look for a red post box on your left and, just past this, turn left up Sene Park. Where this road turns left, keep on uphill, on a private drive. Where this drive ends, go on even more steeply, uphill, on a woodland track to emerge onto a golf course.
As usual the way is not obvious for the next mile. Go forward onto the golf course, keeping on in the same direction, gently downhill, following a gulley which probably marks an old cart track. This aims down towards a house.
On reaching the house, bear right between a tall concrete wall on your left and a raised green on your right. Reach a junction of paths.
Turn left, along by a stone wall. At the end of this wall, by a gravel car park, turn sharp right on a path into the golf course again. Go straight down to a gravel path at the bottom. Go right along it a short distance to reach a wooden bench seat by greens.
Here turn left, out of the golf course, to cross a footbridge, then a stile into a wet field corner. Turn right to follow the field edge and a fence on your right.
Follow the field edge for a good distance around and down to the very bottom far corner. Here leave the field over a stile by a wooden fieldgate and drop downhill on a leafy track through woods.
Keep on this for ½ mile, bearing left at two Y-forks. Eventually go steeply uphill. At the top, bear left a few paces, then right, down a sunken track to two stiles.
Cross the stile on your right and go down an enclosed path with a wire fence on your left.
Reach a junction with a concrete path. Turn left on this and follow it as it winds down through a grassy park. Finally emerge on a track to turn right and immediately reach the Britannia pub across the road ahead, and the start of the section.
