Day 4 - 16 April

Modest Corner to Kings Standing

 Yet another glorious day. We can't believe that we have had four consecutive great walking days with no waterproofs during March and April.

We met up at 9-00am and it was a frosty start. Heavily undulating path through light woodland mostly until we reached Speldhurst.

Speldhurst Church on the site of a very old church but this one was re-built after a fire so not exactly what it seems from the outside.

From Speldhurst we walked through some great UK countryside full of rolling hills and wonderful meadows. Some amazing houses and cottages too but this one was clearly not amongst them and seemed to house a gnome of some sort!



 The path loops behind Burrswood and reaches the upper reaches of the Medway river which we followed for several miles.

Looking across to the Medway just outside of Balls Green.

We could see the church Spire of Hartfield Church so knew we were getting close to Withyham and sure enough right on lunchtime we made it to the Dorset Arms Pub in Withyham for a deserved drink and a bite to eat. The pedometer said we had walked 7.5 miles in three hours and burnt up 1,200 calories so we didn't feel guilty about taking on liquids. This also marked the fact that we were now over half-way to Eastbourne and that had to be celebrated.

Withyham Church nestled amongst the wonderful Manor House next door.

Ivan had warned that from here on it was all uphill and we reckoned on at least 2.5 hours of walking for the remaining 5 miles. Indeed most of it was uphill but at a gradual slope and so it wasn't as hard on the legs as walking up Bidborough Ridge on the previous leg. Again we had some wonderful views.

This leg took us through 100 Acre wood but as Trevor said, we saw plenty of "Poo" but not a single "Bear" in sight. We did see some Deer though and tried to pretend they were Eeyore's offspring!

Eventually we emerged from the woods onto the edge of the Ashdown Forest and it was amazing how in a few yards we went from trees to gorse bushes and scrub. Because of the climb up the views were great.

The view as we emerged from 100 Acre Wood looking across towards East Grinstead.

The climb continued until Ivan declared that we had reached the highest point on the entire walk. So we had to have a picture to mark the occasion.

From here it was just a few minutes walk to Kings Standing where we were to meet our Taxi Driver - the good old Mrs Knight! We'll have to drink a toast to her on the next leg.

Stats for the day were...

 

Date	Steps	Distance (mi)	Time (min)	Calories	Average speed (mph)	Average pace (min/mi)	Average Calorie using rate (Cal/min)	Average step rate (steps/min)	Elevation gain (feet)	Elevation loss (feet)
16/04/2012	24640	12.9	301	1573	2.6	23.4	5.2	82	1966	1607