DAY 2 Sunday
21st September 2014
ROUTE Chilham
to Charing
DISTANCE 13.4 miles
CUMULATIVE MILEAGE 23.4 miles
CUMULATIVE MILEAGE 23.4 miles
START POINT Chilham (end of Mountain
Street) - TR 063 519
FINISH POINT Charing
(Highbourne Park) - TQ 921 522
WEATHER Bright,
sunny and dry all day with breezy intervals
WALKERS Cally
Charman, Rod Boreham and Graham Palmer
SUPPORT DRIVER Fiona Ford
SUFFER SCORE 3
(On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being easy and 10 being unbearable!)
(On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being easy and 10 being unbearable!)
CTOG AWARD Fiona Ford
Awarded for 2 days as our support driver, lots of positive
encouragement and most importantly the amazing array of
snacks she procured on Sunday afternoon to set us up for the
entire week ahead!
We all woke remarkably refreshed at the start of Day 2. A good breakfast at the B&B set us up for what would be a glorious walk through the Garden of England. Returning to the picturesque village of Chilham where we had finished the previous evening, the peace of a sunny autumn morning was immediately shattered by the sound of about 20 motorbikes and quad bikes that were heading along our route into the 1500-acre Kings Wood which lies to the south-east of the village. We saw Police Notices along this section of the route advising walkers that the route would used next Sunday (28th) for a motorsport event so we were very pleased that we had chosen this weekend for CTOG14. We hope to be a long way from Chilham next Sunday…….in Guildford for our return to the Cathedral!
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| Clench! |
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| Not a gravestone erected in memory of a pilgrim but a milestone to encourage us! |
Our route for Day 2 would take us from
Chilham to Charing, a walk of approximately 13 miles. We met up with the bikers in the middle of
Kings Wood and then left them behind as we headed towards the hamlet of
Boughton Aluph and onwards to Boughton Lees and our lunch stop at The Flying
Horse Inn on the village green.
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| Lots of fields.... |
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| The church at Boughton Aluf |
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| Heading west.... |
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| Sated after a good coffee at The Flying Horse and a slice of Trudy's excellent cake! |
Our route after lunch started by taking us
through the grounds of the magnificent Eastwell Manor hotel and spa. No time for a round of golf as we walked
through the grounds and on to the open farmland that dominated our walk in
the afternoon.
The sunny conditions continued and it became quite hot with the open ground offering little shelter. The route along the North Downs Way coincided for a lot of the day with the original Pilgrims Way and our next rendezvous with Fiona in the van was at Charing Hill where she greeted us with an amazing array of chocolate and snack bars which we could not resist! There was also fruit but it was the sugar rush that we were looking for to give us the energy to complete the rest of the day’s walk.
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| No-one warned us that the route to Guildford went via Europe! |
The sunny conditions continued and it became quite hot with the open ground offering little shelter. The route along the North Downs Way coincided for a lot of the day with the original Pilgrims Way and our next rendezvous with Fiona in the van was at Charing Hill where she greeted us with an amazing array of chocolate and snack bars which we could not resist! There was also fruit but it was the sugar rush that we were looking for to give us the energy to complete the rest of the day’s walk.
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| Cally is in heaven after her chocolate fix courtesy of Fiona! |
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| And yet another field! |
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| Back on the Pilgrim's Way! |
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| View across sunny Kent |
We headed away from Charing with the aim
of knocking off a couple more miles before stopping for the day. Fiona was once again there at Highbourne Park
to greet us with the van at the end of the day.
We had completed another 13 miles today bringing our total up to 22
miles……only 88 to go!!
Back at the B&B we said fond
farewells to Fiona who headed back to Surrey to hand over the van to Jim
Rice who would be our support driver during the coming week. Our van drivers are a vital part of the
CTOG14 team and we are really grateful to Fiona for her important contribution.
Our route today had been fairly easy
across the rolling countryside of East Kent but as we move further west we know
the ascents and descents will become that much steeper and the profile of our
route for Day 3 warns us that we have a tougher day ahead of us. The need to protect our knees on the steep
descents will be crucial if we are all to make it to Guildford next weekend.
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