3 Men on a walk 2017: Around Shipbourne and Oxen Hoath

Shipbourne to Oxen Hoath loop

A new walk popped up on the Fancy Free Walks site and it was right on our home patch so it had to be tested out. And very glad we were too because it was a very nice walk through a mixture of woodland and open countryside and the paths were good and not at all muddy. Even better, the weather was more like an August day than mid October with temperatures in the low 20's and a warm southerly breeze.

We parked up at Shipbourne and followed an anticlockwise loop into Hoad Common and then to the edge of Hadlow before turning north to Oxen Hoath.

Oxen Hoath is a very old house built around 1370 by Sir John Culpepper - see Oxen Hoath Wiki - and its ancient Deer Park grounds made for a very pretty walk. From Oxen Hoath we turned west through orchards to reach Dunks Green where the "Kentish Rifleman" another old establishment with a drinking history stretching back to 1552, provided us with lunch and beer. And after lunch we only had 1.5 miles to get back to the car.