Medium difficulty. Distance 2.8 miles (4.6 km)
This trail takes you past features associated with water, from streams to minor seepages. Nearly all the plants and animals mentioned on this walk depend on water.
Mill House Farm at the crossroads is one of four old mills on this little stream. The source lies about 800m upstream. Despite this short distance, it provided enough water to power the mills. You may see Moorhens on the ponds of Mill House Farm. Before setting off, go to the upstream road bridge (road sign to Burridge). Just a few metres into the wood you can make out the dam of a mill’s old pond which the stream has now cut through at the left-hand end. The stones in the stream are mainly chert derived from the Upper Greensand which is the underlying rock of the very steep valley sides in the whole parish. There are also a few flints in the stream, all that’s left from the chalk that has now been almost entirely eroded away in the parish.
The trees by the stream are grey willow (sallow) with their dull green leaves, and tall straight alders whose roots dangle in the water. The attractive North American dames violet is taking over the whole stream bank, making striking show of purple in May. Water gushes out at Hook Springs, providing one of the parish’s important water sources. Soggy ground is covered with opposite-leaved golden-saxifrage whose lime-coloured flowers are conspicuous in early spring. You will see this little sprawling plant in shaded permanently wet patches on the rest of the walk, along with many other wetland plants along the wet lane verges.
By the fenced water-works building, a permanent trickle runs under the road. Fool’s watercress is the lush plant growing here. It’s an umbellifer, like hogweed – its flowers form an umbrella-shaped top. It’s another plant you will see in all the wet trickles. Turn left at the road fork, down the steep hill signed to Farway. Pendulous sedge grows out from the shaded wet margins down this lane to the River Kit. Stop at the road bridge over the River Kit. Under the shaded upstream copse is ramsons or wild garlic (smelly in spring when in flower!) which is a good indication of lime-rich conditions, despite the steep slope you’ve just walked down being acid greensand. If you’re lucky, in June you may see brook lamprey spawning just below the bridge – pale brown pencil-sized fish which use the fine gravel here to make their ‘nest’. Otters use the stream – their young (kits) may be the origin of its name – but you’d be most fortunate to see one.
In the field across the stream (downstream of the bridge), you can just see a very flowery wet patch with lots of flag iris and hemlock water-dropwort in flower in early summer. There are few such undrained fields left. From the gate 50m further on, you can see the remnant of Farway Marsh, now just an under-drained rushy field.
The road ditch on the uphill side near South Riding bungalow has the flat plates of liverwort growing near water level where they stay permanently moist. These ancient plants are closely related to mosses. At the gateway uphill of this bungalow is a permanent trickle with watercress – the real thing this time. It’s in the cabbages family with flowers in a loose spike. But don’t be fooled – fool’s watercress is abundant here too. Turn off the road at Myrtle Farm through their driveway; ignore the next footpath sign to the right and go left downhill. Note the deep gully by the track – erosion is fast on the soft greensand.
Go through two gates by sheds and cross two paddocks. At the stile in the first proper hedge, the ditch dug to provide soil for the bank is dry, but the ditch at the next hedge is a proper stream. The stones are all chert; both fool’s watercress and real watercress are growing here. The footpath runs alongside an old leat – a sign that a mill must be ahead. The Kit is now considerably larger than when you crossed it a mere 900m upstream. Above the bridge, the reddish roots of alder are quite happy sopping up water directly from the stream. Below the bridge water crowfoot – an aquatic buttercup – waves about in the current. Trout and grey wagtails can be seen here and, if you are lucky, kingfisher and dipper. In midsummer the vivid blue demoiselle damselflies, whose larvae live in running water, fly here, while on the water surface rafts of water skaters row against the current.
Take the footpath alongside the stream going downstream. Linger at the footbridge. The stream is less powerful here than on the upper slopes so there are deposits of shingle on some banks, rather than the big stones at the start of the walk. You may have had to pick your way across a boggy patch to get to the footbridge. These constant seepages from the greensand provide scarce homes for wetland plants such as brooklime. Don’t cross the bridge but walk diagonally uphill towards the village. You are crossing one of the most herb-rich County Wildlife Sites in the parish, with abundant leaf rosettes and lots of flowers in summer – delicate pignut, uncommon corky-fruited water-dropwort and the purple flowers of betony. The lumpy ground is probably caused by waterlogging leading to minor landslips.
Go through the gappy hedge at the top over a trickle, skirt the uphill hedge on your left. Look back across the valley to see alders lining the River Kit. Go through the gate in the field corner, across the next field, past the conifers, between the stone walls, across the churchyard and out to the main street which you cross directly and down to the end of the lane opposite, into pasture and follow the path along the contours. Look across the valley to see a natural ‘ridge and furrow’ landscape moulded by little streams arising where the greensand sits on the impervious Jurassic clay or mudstone. At the bungalow below Stockstyle Farm, go through three gates in quick succession, then steeply downhill across the middle of the field to the bridge over the stream. At the footbridge, the stream has cut into soft clay, which form lenses in the greensand, and is visible when the rank summer vegetation has died down.
Continue uphill to the lane and retrace your steps to Hook crossroads.
