Edenbridge, Haxted Mill, Starborough Castle and Marsh Green

The first section of the walk takes you on a twisting route through a residential part of the town. At Crouch House Green, which is on the fringe of Edenbridge, a building resembling a prefab turns out to be a chapel, and soon after that, away to your right, you can see a converted oast-house. You pass huge tree-girt ponds, then a wind pump and a house with a little white bell-tower rise among the roofs of the secluded settlement of Skeynes, beyond which Kent Brook marks the boundary as you cross from Kent into Surrey.

Nothing much seems to happen in the sleepy hamlet of Haxted, but a little further on beside the Mill Stream, which is the infant River Eden, you can imagine the activity that kept local people supplied with flour at the weather-boarded Haxted Mill. Built around 1680, it now houses a watermill museum with working machinery and displays on the iron industry, which flourished here in previous centuries.

For about a mile from Haxted Mill, you follow the Vanguard Way, which runs from Croydon to the Sussex coast. On this stretch, you cross the River Eden, which rises from a multitude of springs in the Greensand Hills to the north, then flows for some 18 miles to join the River Medway at Penshurst.

You leave the Vanguard Way at Starborough Castle, about which little seems to have been recorded. Your first glimpse is of a substantial, comparatively modern residence and its garden. Yet when you approach the iron gates at the back, a great surprise is in store. For there comes into view a boating lake.

The lake at Starborough Castle was once the moat and the island held the keep. The original castle was built in Norman times and a later one, about 1342, by the first Lord Cobham. Its name then was simply Sterburgh, meaning Sterr's Castle, after Richard Sterr, a local squire.

Back in Kent, Marsh Green is a place through which people rush on their way into, or from, Edenbridge. The old Church House and St John's Church, however, provide some architectural interest. The village parkland is a place of beauty too, with a fine row of mature trees.

Edenbridge must have been a lovely village until the arrival of two railways brought a mass of commuters and some industry. Now it is a sprawling place, but the High Street tries hard to return a village atmosphere, despite the traffic charging through what was once a Roman road from London to the Sussex coast.

The High Street has quite a few old buildings of pleasing appearance, including quite a few with timber frames and red-tiled mansard roofs. Of special note are the white painted Mill Hill College, Wicken Cottage, and Church House, behind which is a lovely, old tithe barn called Doggett's Barn.

You passed the Priest House on the way to the church of St Peter and St Paul, which lies back a little from the High Street. Dating from the 13th century and built mainly of sandstone, its rather squat appearance is due to the addition of some massive buttresses. One of the stained glass windows was designed by the pre-Raphaelite artist, Sir Edward Burne-Jones.

Most of the inns in Edenbridge are of interest, especially the Ye Olde Crown. It was the headquarters of a gang of smugglers who fed duty free liquor by pipes leading from the bedrooms to the bar, on which note you may have feel inclined to refresh yourself before returning to the station or car park.