Sevenoaks and knole Park

Whitsun bank holiday
31st May 2010
Sevenoaks and Knole Park
Photos and commentary of my walk to Knole Park

This was one of my shorter walks, but with a discounted* train fare of only £4.25 return I felt I didn't have to push myself to get value for money. I only walked 3.4 miles, but with having to climb some very fierce hills it sometimes felt a lot further. The effort required to get up those hills (and also the control needed to walk down the other side) meant that though the walk was relatively short I still burnt 522 calories to do it.

* Approx 1/3 rd discount using a Network railcard.

Sevenoaks is only a small town on the main road between London and Hastings (now bypassed by the Sevenoaks Bypass). Although the outskirts are modern, the inner parts still have a slightly olde world feeling to them. The top centre of this war memorial is not exactly ancient, but it does commemorate those who fell in World War 2.

The area immediately around the war memorial features these old style lamp posts. I presume they are now electric, but they give the impression they should be gas lit.

After walking through the Sevenoaks Eco park this was my first view of Knole Park. The path from the bottom right of the picture goes down reasonably steeply to the centre of the picture, and then goes up very steeply. It is hard to appreciate the steepness in this picture, but a later picture does give some clue as to the difference in heights between the top and the bottom of this U shaped valley that was originally gouged out by a glacier if my schoolboy geology lessons are remembered correctly.

Knole Park is home to many fallen trees. Many were felled by storms, but this one appears, to my untrained eye, to have been felled by lightning. As is the current eco trend, most of the fallen trees have been left in situ for the benefit of assorted wildlife. On the far right of this picture. about a quarter up from the botton, can be seen the path I came up. It gives some sort of impression as to the height I had to climb to photograph this tree, and I was still not at the top when I took this picture !

One of the things that attracted me to Knole Park was that it is home to wild deer. I can't recall the circumstances, but I had been there once before, and although I cannot recall going any futher than the entrance, I do recall seeing some deer before. This time I was not sure that they would be easy to find, but it turns out that assumption was very wrong. I had only walked for some 10 or 15 minutes before I came across the first, and there were loads of them in very clear view almost everywhere else I looked on my short walk in the park.

People, trees and deer.

The deer in Knole Park are not tame, but they are so used to visitors that it is possible to approach them quite closely if you are careful. Many appered to be quite young despite already having small velvet covered anttlers. This one, like many others, seems to have the shrivelled remains of the umbilical cord still dangling from it's belly.

deer

Here's another view of the same animal with the remains of the umbilcal cord more easily visible.

Adjacent to the park itself is a field with a horse in it.........

........and a Shetland pony

On the way home again I walked through the centre of Sevenoaks.The inner part of the town retains many heritage features including this ornate signpost.

This is the view of the signpost looking toward the south with one of the arms pointing back towards London just 24 miles away.

Looking south along London Road, the main road between London and Hastings in times gone by.
The elaborate signpost in the previous picture is just on the brow of the hill, but obscured by the buildings.

Another hundred feet toward London from the previous picture stands what was once an old school.

It's probably a sign of the times that the old school building now has new occupants.
Half the building is used for offices, and the other half for a Mexican restauarant.