Luddesdowne and Vineyards

A lovely trip down memory lane for Susan and me for different reasons. We were looking for different walks in Kent and came across a figure of eight walk from Sole Street near Gravesend to Luddesdowne.

It’s been years since I’ve been this way, maybe over 30 years since I was at a school in Gravesend and we used to come to the Cock Inn at Luddesdowne and also cycle around the area.

Susan and her family were regular visitors to Sole Street from Scotland in the mid to late 1970s as her father’s sister and her husband (Susan’s aunt and uncle of course) lived there and she came to visit with her mum and dad for holidays in the years before they moved to Kent in 1977.

This all ended in 1979 when her auntie died. She’s not been back to the road or seen the house from that day to this. So we started our walk on that road, passing along footpaths and past a pub they used to frequent.

This is a fine part of Kent, largely unspoilt despite being near to the A2 and Gravesend and the Thames Estuary with superb views which open out in front of you as in today’s blip. I say unspoilt, an enormous area of land has been given over to vineyards which stretched as far as the eye can see. It seems that the whole of North Kent is one huge vineyard.