We had the makings of a beautiful as we left Maidstone Park in 2 cars and drove to Martinborough. We had a short break in Martinborough where Mark checked under my car to try and find out why my car had been making an odd noise coming down the hill. He surmised there must have been a stone caught somewhere. Of to the start of the walk we went to Shooting Butts Road about five minutes out of town and parked up. We climbed over the first stile and walked along the paddock fence line to the next stile. This is where things went a bit wrong. The paddock I had walked through last time was fence off with no stiles and locked gates.

Confused, we went back out onto a long farm drive and called at the closest house. The residents there had been away, so didn’t know what had been going on but gave us directions to walk down the farm track and follow this around through the paddocks to lead us up the hill. It was a bit of climb, but once you head out over the ridgeline the views are very worth the bit off effort.

As we had spent 90 minutes getting to this point and it was after 11.30, we needed to get back to the cars. It only took 30 minutes to walk back out. This had us at Margraine Vineyard in plenty of time for our 12.30 lunch booking. It was so pleasant sitting in the shade outside overlooking the fields of grapevines. Lunch was very enjoyable and we all took our time enjoying a leisurely meal.

Some of us went into Martinborough to take a look at Martinborough Wine Merchants to check them out.

It was a lovely day out and just a bit different to our normal walks.

Trip Leader: Judith O’Leary

Walkers: Christine Clouston, Mark & Helen Bassett, Lorraine Shindler, Lynda Mountfort, and Veronica Hannah