So it begins.
The sweet torture that can be walking in the brilliant heat of summer. As the cooler days of spring vanish into the rear-view, these long sunny days bring with them a host of new challenges – sweating, stinging eyes, sunburn, glare, chaffing pants, dehydration, the overgrowth of nettles and brambles; all of these wonderful things can be found in abundance between the start of June and the end of August. And I just love it! For every drop of sun cream running into sore eyes, there are a thousand green leaves upon mighty trees and endless blue skies pouring forth sunshine to soak into your skin – it is of course, well worth it.
We began our summer season in the small Kentish village of Horsmonden, for a short five-miler around an area we had driven through a hundred times but never actually stopped to visit. Setting off just before 10am, we made our way out of the village into farmland and were about five to ten minutes in, when disaster struck – I realised that I had left my hat in the car. My hat is one of the most crucial bits of my inventory for summer walking. I have always suffered from over-sweating, which is obviously not pleasant. However, the hat helps reduce the issue by stopping the sun from hitting my forehead directly and making it worse, whilst simultaneously soaking up much of the baseline sweat (gross, I know, but that’s my reality!). It also helps reduce, if not eradicate completely, sun cream running into my eyes and burning, which usually happens at least once a walk when it’s hot, if not more. It also has the inconvenient side effect of dying my t-shirts orange, which is annoying apart from anything else. Last summer we experimented with a couple of sports sun creams that were meant to be sweat-proof, and whilst they did help a little, they certainly didn’t solve the problem. This summer, I am planning to try out ‘Glacier Cream’, which is much thicker. Now, if this were a longer walk and we didn’t have somewhere to be straight after, I may have considered going back to get my hat from the car. But it wasn’t, and we did, so, for better or worse, we pressed on. If nothing else, this would be an excellent test for the new cream!
The first portion of the route was simple enough, apart from one spot where the footpath had been redirected along the road, but Beth very calmly found the solution without panicking – kudos. This led us out through swathes of pretty meadows looking out over the weald, before returning us to the road. After turning right back onto footpath through a patch of woodland and back out into the farm beyond however, I really began to feel the heat, especially as for about a mile-long stretch we were having to regularly stop and check the instructions in the blazing sunlight. Just after passing a distant herd of cows, including what may have been a bull (no encounter necessary on this occasion!), my face began to drip and I became uncomfortable. However, the Glacier Cream itself seemed not to be running, as fortunately my eyes remained pain-free. Soon enough, we came out onto a quiet stretch of road walking, which provided plenty of shade and a light breeze to help bring be back to a more favourable temperature.
This emerged onto a curve of quite a busy, fast road. This lasted only a short distance and we did our best to be safe and respectful of the cars, however one did still have to break fairly firmly for us at one point. After only a minute or so we left the road once more, and made our way through a small collection of very nice cottages and Oast houses; in fact, we were so busy admiring them all, that we actually missed our footpath and had to double back to find it nestled between the gardens! We made our way through another, small meadow and found ourselves walking past a dog park where a husky meet-up was being held, and a few followed us along the fence line, which was cool. After crossing the river Tiese we emerged into a large, sloping vineyard, which was very scenic and gave great views, however was also a suntrap and we both began to feel the heat once again as we climbed uphill. Exiting the vineyard through an overgrown footpath (far from the first of the day!) we came out onto the farm buildings and made our way down the track through an orchard and past a large, impressive, wonky Tudor Manor house. Across the road was the day’s final stretch of farmland, which contained a couple of sheep and a lamb barely visible in the long grass. The footpath eventually ran between fields through a glowing green tunnel of trees, where we found a shrew enjoying a nibble and some very welcome shade. This ultimately led us back to the village, where we walked passed the school and across the green to where the car loyal waited for us, to whisk us away to a cake tasting a few miles down the road (for which I had brought a change of t-shirt on Beth’s suggestion).
Whilst this was a nice walk with lots of pretty little meadows, it is perhaps not one we would go out of our way to do every single year, as there was quite a lot of road walking for what is a fairly short route. Nonetheless, it was nice to fill in a gap in our local geography, and we still enjoyed ourselves! However, the big winner of the day was the Glacier Cream. I had sweated a lot with no hat to soak it away, and at times it had been dripping from my face. Not only had the cream kept me from burning, but it had not run into my eyes at all, and perhaps more impressively, had not changed the colour of my white t-shirt even slightly, despite me using it as a towel at times – this gives me great hope for the coming weeks and months!
The day’s route was provided by Explore Kent and is available with full instructions at https://explorekent.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/walks-in-west-kent-horsmonden.pdf
Matthew G. Huggins 