The road to Godmersham Hall

A brilliantly sunny, cold morning for our circular 8 mile walk starting from Chilham between Ashford and Canterbury. Chilham is an old world village, full of half timbered houses around the village square and is well known for its association with Jane Austen.

The walk took us past Chilham Castle and Godmersham Hall where Jane often used to stay with her brother Edward who was adopted by the Knight family (or so I understand). The local characters and local places can be recognised in her writing and this part of Kent certainly has some outstanding views.

We walked up one side of the Great Stour valley, crossing the A28 at the end of the drive in this shot. Godmersham Hall is now a training college for the Association of British Dispensing Opticians which must be a grand place to study.

The remainder of the walk was mostly along the Stour Valley Walk up and down the dry chalk valleys but was not quite so picturesque as the earlier part of the day. More woodland and the sun decided to play peekaboo behind high level clouds.

There was an interesting incident towards the end of the walk where we were passing by the back garden of a house which contained a very voluble dog who gave a very good impression of wanting to do some damage to your ankles if he could just get over the fence. A little further on we passed some people going the other way with a much bigger dog. Our dog in the garden was much more circumspect with the larger animal only deigning to bark loudly when the bigger beast was out of the way!

We were tempted by the tea room in Chilham but as we have a whole load of cake, biscuits and the like at home we thought it wiser to have our reward of tea and cake at home instead.