From mid-June to mid-August, lavender season is upon us, and not just in the south of France. There are amazingly purple lavender fields to be found in England as well. Last year we visited Mayfield Lavender in Sutton, South London. This year we opted for visiting Castle Lavender Farm in Kent.
If you’re following this blog, you’ll know that my husband and I love to explore the English countryside on foot during weekends. The visit to Castle Lavender Farm was no different. We planned a 8 kilometres walk taking in not only the lavender fields, but also The Mount Vineyard, Lullingstone Castle and Lullingstone Roman Villa. Needless to say, it was a busy and very unusual day with so many different things to see. Here is all you need to know if you too want to hit up the lavender fields!
Practicalities for the walk
Our 8 kilometres walk was a linear walk starting at Shoreham station. It follows off road tracks such as the Darent Way or small country roads. The end of the walk is at Eynsford station. Both train rides take around an hour from and to London. There are many variations of the route that you can find online, in pdf or gpx but you can use for example this one. We typically do longer walks, but after including a detour to the Shoreham village and exploring the winery and lavender fields, we covered close to 12 km.
The main purpose of the trip for us was to visit Castle Lavender Farm. Ironically, we only got to lavender farm later in the walk. It worked out fine and we had enough time to visit, but if you’re very keen on the lavender part, you may want to consider doing the walk in the opposite direction.
The Mount Vineyard
We typically get going early for our weekend walks and this one was no different. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that The Mount Vineyard only opens at noon! We spent some time exploring Shoreham village until the vineyard opened. We enjoyed a glass of wine and lunch on the lovely terrace.
Shoreham is a small village, but with a surprising amount of interesting things to fill an hour: narrow streets with cute houses, a nice church and the banks of the River Derwent.
Castle Lavender Farm (The Hop Shop)
Halfway through the walk, we finally saw what we had come for: purple fields looming on the hillside. After another kilometre, we reached Castle Lavender Farm. The “visitor centre” is know as The Hop Shop. Here you can buy tickets for visiting Castle Lavender Farm by guided tour as well as loads of lavender based products. Tour times are advertised on the Hop Shop website, but on busy day extra slots are sometimes added. We were lucky and could join a tour after barely 5 minutes waiting (£7 per person).
Granted, Castle Lavender Farm is fully geared up for visitors and pretty touristy. Not just Britons (or residents like us), but even Asian tourists had made their way to the farm. Despite the fact that Castle is a working farm with a commercial harvest, the owning family are quite happy with the visitors chasing the perfect purple photograph, so we were told by our guide Sophie. Indeed, the lavender business is very volatile and it is not unusual for the harvest to disappoint. Therefore, lavender farms are force to diversify their sources of income.
Our tour lasted for just over an hour. Afterwards, we enjoyed lavender ice cream in the Hop Shop and purchased a jar of lavender based honey (a great choice!).
By the way, here is a little secret! In reality, very few lavender is grown at Castle Lavender Farm (despite it being one of the larger English lavender farms). The majority of the plants are lavandin. The visual differences between both plants are very subtle, but their characteristics and appliances are distinctly different. Whilst lavender has got relaxing, sleep-inducing abilities, lavandin on the contrary is energising. So the products you’ll want to buy are very much dependent on what you want to use them for!
Lullingstone Castle & Roman Villa
After visiting Castle Lavender Farm, we walked around 10 minutes to reach the next attraction of the walk, the 15th century Lullingstone Castle. Its major attraction are the gardens, although the castle itself and the on-site former parish church can also be visited. We decided not to visit, since we were keen to leave enough time for the last point of interest, Lullingstone Roman Villa. The villa is located under a kilometre from Castle Lavender Farm.
I like Roman history in general, but having lived in England for years, I have developed a special interest for the Roman presence in the UK. As such, a visit to Lullingstone Roman Villa was exactly up my street. Visiting the villa takes about an hour. It is worth mentioning that it is a great all-weather activity since the excavations and accompanying exhibitions are covered. It was actually a pretty dreary day, so I was pleased to find some shelter from the breeze! I loved seeing the different building phases and learning more about Roman presence in the Darent Valley area.
After Lullingstone, we had another couple of kilometres left to walk until we reached Eynsford. We were just in time to catch the hourly train back to London, but there are a couple of pubs in the village in case you have a long wait ahead (or want to eat dinner).
