This route takes you from the DIY superstore in Canterbury to Fordwich and allows for a circular route around Fordwich before returning to Canterbury, if you wish to do the complete series (9km). Alternatively you could just stroll to Fordwich and back along the Stour Way Walk (5km).
This route is designed to be a fairly easy walk. The Canterbury to Fordwich part is a flat, paved walk and is accessable for all, but if going on to the Fordwich circle the terrain, as with most other woods, had its ups and downs and in places lined with Brambles and nettles.
The route was placed at the end of the summer and some paths in the woods were very wet but still passable, in some cases by following small paths just off the main track.
If you are completing the circular route around Fordwich, please take care on the first 100m, especially if you have children in your party. The path is at the top of a bank which is narrow and it slopes, in some places where the bank has been cut away it has a drop of 1.5 metres.
Along the walk there are a number of opportunities to hunt for signs of various woodland animals, whether looking for tracks, their homes or just opening your ears to listen for their rustling through the grass and leaves.
History of Fordwich
Fordwich is the smallest place in Britain with a town council, and it lies in Kent, on the River Stour, northeast of Canterbury.
Although it now lies many miles inland, it was the main port for Canterbury before the Wantsum Channel silted up. The channel once separated the Isle of Thanet from the rest of Kent.
The town grew in the Middle Ages as a port for boats on their way upriver to Canterbury. All of the Caen stone used by the Normans to rebuild Canterbury Cathedral in the 12th and 13th centuries was landed at Fordwich. It later became a limb of the Cinque Ports. It lost its status as a town in 1880 when it no longer had a Mayor and Corporation. However, in a reorganisation in 1972, Fordwich was again made a Town as much as anything because of its prior importance in what is now a rather sleepy corner of Kent. Fordwich Town Hall, supposedly the smallest in England, dates from the earlier period, having been rebuilt in 1555.
The ancient Church of St Mary the Virgin, now redundant but open to the public, and in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, contains part of a carved sarcophagus reputed to have contained the remains of St Augustine of Canterbury. The 16th-century building next the Town Hall, now known as Watergate House, was the family home of John and Gregory Blaxland, early 19th-century pioneers of Australia.
Fordwich History Source: Wikipedia.