With the weather milder than it’s been in days and an unusually clear diary, we made a spur of the moment decision to head out of town for the day. Consulting an excellent local blog of walks near London, we settled on a circular walk from Shoreham in Kent – just 40 minutes on the train from home.

It was an ideal walk to do with the children – just 3.5 miles so not too far, and easy terrain for little legs.  Alex was able to follow the instructions himself and keep us on the right track!

The children made quite a moment of all the kissing gates along the way!

Alex took on the role of official photographer for the walk, and did a great job documenting our walk and the pretty countryside we past.  He took almost all the pictures in this post (with a bit of help from his daddy)!

We loved seeing so many oast houses along the way.

The highlight of the day for Sophie was meeting some horses who were only to pleased to stop for a stroke!

We all enjoyed getting away from the roads and onto the peaceful footpaths. For such a short walk, I loved how much the scenery changed, from woodlands…

…to river side…

..to open fields (and steep hills!)

We were all grateful for the bench at the top of the hill where we caught our breath and took in the far-reaching views!

The final portion of the walk before we headed back into the village was along a ridge where we enjoyed more views and the children enjoyed sword fighting with sticks.

Sophie attempted to make fire with her sticks, but didn’t get very far!

Love this picture that Alex took of us pausing at one of the view points.

And walking down through the fields back to Shoreham village.

Alex relinquished the camera for a minute so we could get a shot of all of us (thanks to a conveniently high fence post and the camera timer!)

The village was a welcome sight as we were all rather hungry, so we stopped for the most enormous – and absolutely delicious – roast lunch at The Crown.  The perfect end to our perfect walk.