Cowden Station and Trugger's Gill

Distance: 5.4 Miles (2h 40m)

OS Map: Explorer 147 (Start at grid reference TQ476417)

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Park at Cowden Station. Alternatively travel by train – there are services every day of the week.

From the end of station approach go up Blowers Hill. Take the first turn on the right (Wickens Lane, not named but there is a public footpath sign). Pass the drives to Rickwoods House and Rickwoods Farm; take the next turn on the left.

Go up the drive and, just before reaching the house ahead, go over a stile on the right and bear left diagonally across the field to a gate in the hedge. On the other side bear right to pass a concrete water trough. Continue in the same direction – there may be a couple of stiles over electric fences but these things come and go. Continue in the same direction over the brow of the hill and make for a stile into a wood. Turn left along path through the wood to emerge over a stile. Follow a path along a very long field. Just as the path starts to bear gently right, bear left to a stile and enter wood (you need to watch carefully for this – at a moderate walking speed you will be in the right place about seven minutes after the last stile). Cross a footbridge and bear left along a path that soon bears right to climb steeply through the wood. On joining a more level path, keep left and continue to a stile and gate into a field.
Follow the right hand edge of the field to a gate. Don’t go through the gate but through a kissing gate a few metres beyond it leading into a small section of woodland. Beyond the woodland follow the right hand edge of a field, passing a fine crop of blackberries in late summer, to reach a lane.

Cross the lane to take path opposite, uphill through some woodland. Cross a field to a copse. Turn left following a line of electricity wires and making for a gate immediately beneath the next pole. Keep left as you follow the path beyond the gate down to a lane.

Turn right for about 100 metres and take a path on the left descending to a footbridge. Follow the path between fences then along the right hand edge of a couple of fields until it enters Trugger’s Gill. Go over a footbridge and up the bank at the other side into a field. Follow the hedge on the right until it turns right, then bear half right across the field, going neither uphill nor downhill, to enter more woodland. At a T-junction, turn left. Follow a clear track through the wood then along a ridge, if in doubt taking the higher of alternative paths to ensure that you remain on the ridge until the path enters Newtye Hurst Wood. Follow track through wood to road.

Turn left and left again at a junction. At a footpath sign on the right, go down the driveway towards Malletts Barn. Just before the gate, go right along a path between a fence and a wall to a stile. Go straight across field to gate. In the next field is a pond surrounded by trees – pass to the right hand side of this and continue across the field, descending to gateway in the hedge. Immediately through the gateway, go through metal pedestrian gate on right and up the field for about 100 metres to pole, then bear left to a stile in the hedge that leads into Blowers Hill opposite a white house with hung tiles (The Old Bakehouse).

Turn left and soon right into Cow Lane. This climbs at first but just as it levels out take a path on the left that goes steeply down the right hand side of a field then over another stile and across the end of the garden of a large house. Another stile (with waymark) takes you into more woodland and soon you see on your left the brickwork at the entrance to a railway tunnel. At a T-junction turn left and keep between the railway on your left and the stream on your right until you reach the road. Turn left under the railway bridge and left back into the station approach.

Points of Interest

The Markbeech Riots

During the construction of the Markbeech railway tunnel between Hever and Cowden in 1866 riots broke out when about 500 French workers were brought in to undercut the wage rates paid to English Navvies.

In addition to the walking routes on our web site we have published two popular walking guides:

Guide to the Kent Coast Path: Part 1, Camber to Ramsgate

Guide to Three River Valley Walks in West Kent: Darent Valley Path, Eden Valley Walk and Medway Valley Walk

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