Sunday was a bright day, so we decided to try a short walk. Where we walked was dependent on a good pub to start from. We went to Toys Hill, where the Fox and Hounds has a good reputation, but the bar food was very minimal, it is really a traditional drinkers' pub, so we went back to Chiddingstone. The Castle Inn does good food and beer and is very comfortable, with a relaxed atmosphere. It was first mentioned in records in 1420 as Waterslip Cottage, but became a pub around 1730.

The present landlord has been there 35 years and tries to discourage the hooligan element. There are no chips on the menu.

I was still not feeling too good so we decided to do a short walk. We took the guide book, but I have to confess either the meal was too satisfying, or my faculties are still below par. Whatever, I paid little attention to the book and we started off in the opposite direction to that intended. After rectifying that, I managed to ignore the book again at a junction and followed my own inclinations.

We didn't get lost, but we weren't where we should have been, when the already freezing wind drove a thick flurry of snow before it. Louise's ears started to hurt, so she hurridly put up her hood and my chest felt bad breathing in the frozen air. I decided to cut across country off the beaten track, this time using dead reckoning. We wandered over a thick forestry plantation down to a stream with high banks. I managed to slide down and jump to a shingle bank in the middle of the stream without landing in the water.

Louise did well, supporting her balance with a hazel sapling and joining me on the shingle. After that, we had to cross a heavily ploughed field.

The last time we were here on the 10th January, we would have had a ton of mud on our boots, but this time the mud was half-frozen and easy to traverse. After that we had to leap over a ditch and slip between two strands of barbed wire fence before we were back on the track to Chiddingstone. The Castle very wisely was open for cream tea. Although there are only three or four buildings in Chiddingstone, of which only the pub and church were open, there were about 50 cars parked in the street. I can only imagine many of the drivers were walkers like us, because there were few in the pub.