Section 30
Kirdford to Northchapel
Walk Details
Walk Instructions
FOLKESTONE TO FARNHAM ROBUST RAMBLE
Section 30 Out
Kirdford to Northchapel
Map: OS Explorer 134 Crawley & Horsham, 133 Haslemere & Petersfield
Distance/Time: 5.5 miles/2.5m hours
Start: The Half Moon Inn in Kirdford
Comments: Farms and fields with plenty of stiles. This is a wet and boggy area with many twists and turns. Keep a close eye on map and instructions.
With the Half Moon inn on your left and the church behind, walk back up to the road junction. Turn left and walk down the road for some way, passing the village stores on your left and then the Foresters Arms over on your right.
Look for Heron Close on your right. Turn up here, and then immediately left, by a brick wall, into a path between fence and trees.
Cross a footbridge and bear left, parallel with power lines on your right, to a corner. The path then turns right, up a muddy, narrow path between a wire fence and bushes.
At the end, pass through a belt of trees, onto a football pitch. Go straight across.
Enter a wood at the far side, and go immediately left, through woods, on a very feint path leading to a road (the traffic noise will guide you).
Cross the road to a path going diagonally right, through woods (check that the hedges of gardens can be seen along the road to the right).
Keep through trees, past a wet hollow and a fallen tree, to cross a footbridge. Stay on the path in trees, with fields over on your left. Ignore paths leaving the wood, and keep on, until reaching a stile.
Cross into a paddock and turn left, up a grassy way, by trees on your left, to the top left corner.
Turn left over a stile and footbridge, into a field, and turn right along the edge, with a hedge on your right.
At a corner, bear left, still in the field, by the hedge. Soon reach a stile on the right, and turn into woods, to cross a footbridge.
The footbridge sets the direction of walk for ½ mile. Keep through woods, which become quite a narrow strip. The path then goes into a main woodland (with a little open pasture over on your right).
This wood is very wet with dank ponds. The path is actually raised. It eventually enters a clearing and goes up to a junction with a vehicle track. Turn right here, towards a house.
Before the house, the track bears left, up to meet another track. Cross this and go into woods on a much rougher track (you should now be going directly away from the house). The top edge of the wood and a field can be seen ahead.
Near the fence at the top, turn right on a sunken, forest tract, for ½ mile.
Ignore side tracks and keep with the sunken track – a very wet area.
Pass through an old, metal fieldgate and keep on uphill.
Eventually, a track comes in from the left, by a ‘graveyard’ of tree stumps (everywhere, including the fields, is incredibly wet – deforestation ?).
Keep forward on a ghastly, muddy track (it has had a grey coating of lime or cement, which has turned into an awful porridge). It might be possible to drop down into the field on your left; there is an exit at the top.
The track enters a woodland. Keep forward, to a Y-fork. Here go diagonally left, over a footbridge, into woods.
Pass a pond, on your left, then enter a pine forest. Keep in this direction for nearly a mile.
Eventually, the path bears slightly left, down a broad, grassy way (basically keep on the same track).
Near the end of the forest, before a steep drop into a dell, Bear left. Go gently downhill, to cross a stream at the bottom. Then, bear right, uphill.
At the top, before a corrugated iron shed, turn right, down to a field and footbridge.
Go forward through a rusty fieldgate, into a further field.
Bear right, uphill, aiming to the right of a house and buildings ahead. The path joins the boundary fence on your left and follows it around, to leave the field via a rusty fieldgate, just before a white bungalow. Meet a gravel track. Turn right on this.
Soon go forward on a grassy track and enter a large, reedy field. Go on with hedge and trees on your right, to the far end.
Cross a dilapidated stile and an old swing gate, and go forward, across a field, towards farm buildings.
On reaching a new wooden fieldgate, turn left along the field edge, to pass the farm buildings. At the end, cross into a field, and go diagonally across, to a green metal fieldgate, in the far opposite corner, at the end of a hedge.
Go through to a drive and turn left. Follow this drive down to a road. Ignore a path off right, and go forward, on the road, for ¼ mile.
Pass a wood on your left, and drop down, to cross a brick bridge and a stream. 20 metres further on, opposite a farm entrance, turn left up a bank, to a stile and a gate.
Cross into a field. Go forward, across the centre of the field, to a hedge at the far side.
Go through a gap, and turn immediately right, to follow the hedge on your right, for ¼ mile; go through a gap into a second field. Ignore a cross path.
Keep on, by the hedge, to eventually reach a metal fieldgate, and exit onto a road. Turn left along the road. Stay on the road, past Peacock’s Farm and a cross track, to a righthand bend at Horton’s Farm on your left.
Go a few paces into the bend then turn left onto a footpath going across the corner of a field. At the far side continue with a hedge on your right.
At the end of the field go into a churchyard and on to a main road and the Half Moon pub in Northchapel.
FOLKESTONE TO FARNHAM ROBUST RAMBLE
Section 30 Return
Northchapel to Kirdford
Map: OS Explorer 134 Crawley & Horsham, 133 Haslemere & Petersfield
Distance/Time: 5.5 miles/2.5m hours
Start: The Half Moon inn in Northchapel (a popular pub name !)
Comments: Bracken – check for ticks. Farms, fields and forests with plenty of stiles. Wet and boggy areas and paths not always easy to find. Allow plenty of time.
With the Half Moon pub behind, turn right down the main road for 150 metres. Pass a side road off left and eventually reach the village shop on your right, in an unusual terrace with, possibly, an industrial past.
Opposite is a private drive to a house called The Courtyard. A waymark post indicates a path down here.
Go up the drive, past buildings, and through trees to a field.
Turn left up the field edge a short way to a corner, then right, along the top of the field with a hedge on your left, to the far end.
Go through a gap into a wood. Immediately come to a crossing of tracks. Go forward, over a bridlepath,
….the map does not seem to fit with the instructions here, as it seems necessary to turn right down the bridlepath then left in 100 metres onto a footpath…..
to go downhill, on a footpath, through pine trees.
Keep on this path, downhill, to the very bottom (ignoring a gate on your left into a field).
At the foot of the hill, branch left, on a track towards the edge of the wood (the main track goes straight on, but there is a ‘PRIVATE’ sign fixed to a tree).
Follow the leftward track, to the edge of the wood and emerge into a field, by an old swing gate.
Go forward to a ditch. Cross this, to the field on your right. Bear left, down to a hedge, and follow the hedge on your left all the way down to the foot of the slope. Bear round towards woods.
On reaching the corner of woods and a pond, find a stile, by a fieldgate on your left. Cross into a field and bear right, along by woods on your right, for a good distance.
Reach, and cross, a farm road, and keep on again to a stile. Cross into the next field, and continue in the same direction, uphill.
At the top of the rise, look for a holly bush on the right.
Here, turn left, to cross the field, towards trees at the far side.
Over the brow of the hill, look for a stile by a dead tree, which is easily seen.
Cross this stile and go down a bank, to a footbridge in a dell. Cross and go forward to a clearing, then go steeply uphill, through bracken.
As soon as the land levels at the top (by a very large holly tree and a massive tree, dead ahead), turn right, on a leafy path, down through woods.
Continue down, through the woods, to emerge onto a common at Ebernoe. Go forward to a road.
Turn right on this road for ¼ mile. Pass a house on your left, as the road bends left (ignore footpaths off right). Keep along the road, with a large field on your left.
At the end of this field, by the start of woods, there is a wooden fieldgate and barrier.
Turn sharp left here, into the wood, taking the path on the left, which keeps close to the edge of the wood and the field on your left.
Just before the end of the field on the left, by tree stumps, turn right, into the heart of the wood, directly away from the field.
Keep on, directly downhill, for a good way, eventually reaching two footbridges in a boggy dene. Cross these and go up a steep bank to a stile into a field. Go on, along the hedge on your right.
Reach two new gates. Go through into a wood. Soon reach a wide track. Turn left on this for 10 metres, looking for a damp and grassy clearing on your right, with mossy stumps. Turn right, here, through wooden posts.
The path is not evident, but turn diagonally right, across the clearing, and keep forward, on a leafy way, for ½ mile.
(This section of the walk is wet and without an obvious path)
As you go, reach a clearing with lots of tree stumps, pass a cross track, under cables, and go across a wide soggy area. Eventually reach a clearing with a field and a building on your left.
Go ahead through a swing gate and over a footbridge between ponds. Continue into woods, to eventually emerge onto a rough vehicle track.
Turn right on this for nearly a mile (ignore paths off right), to eventually reach a road.
Turn left up this road for ¼ mile, uphill, past a farm entrance.
As the road descends, turn right on a footpath upto a gate. Go on, across a rough field, to a further gate, at the far side, and on, into a wood.
Go down through the wood, keeping directly downhill all the time, and soon emerge at a corner of wire fencing.
Bear right here, on a path diverging from the line of the fence, and soon reach a stile in a wooden barrier.
Cross into a field and go straight ahead, with hedge and bushes on your left.
At the end of the field, drop down left, to new gates and a new footbridge. Cross into a meadow. Bear right, across the field, towards power lines.
Continue along the meadow, which becomes narrow and enclosed between hedges. Keep parallel to the power lines on your left.
At the end, pass through a gap into a further meadow. Cross this, following the power lines, to a gate and footbridge into woods at the far side.
Keep through the woods. Pass a rusty fieldgate, up on your right. Keep on in the woods, a few more paces, looking for a stile, also up on your right.
Cross into a field, and follow the hedge on your left, for ¼ mile, to a stile and footbridge, onto a road.
Turn right along the road, passing a farm entrance on your left. A short way on is another farm entrance, on your left, turn along this drive.
Pass the house on your left and reach a pond. Go around the pond, keeping it on your left, to a stile, hidden at the back.
Cross this and the driver beyond. Go through a panel fence, into a field, and follow the hedge on your right, into a second field. Go on by the hedge, into a third, passing a wood on your right.
Reach a gateway with two metal gates and enter a very large pasture. Bear slightly left, across the centre of this field, aiming towards a gap between distant large wood copses (do not go uphill).
At the far side, cross 2 stiles and a farm road. Keep on, across a further field, to a corner of hedge. Find a concealed stile, and cross into an enclosed field.
Keep forward, along the hedge on your left, to the far corner, before woods.
Ignore a path on your left, and go over the stile into the wood. Go forward, through the wood, and emerge over a stile into a field.
Keep forward, by the hedge on your right, to a stile at the end, onto a rough path going along a wire fence, on your right.
At the end, emerge into a large, neglected field, with houses across the far side and Kirdford church tower ahead.
Go diagonally left, across the field, to a wooden barrier leading onto a road. Turn right along the road. At the end keep forward, through a swing gate, and into the garden of the Half Moon.
Keep forward, to emerge onto the road at the start of the section.
