Water and lunch on the North Downs Way, mile by mile

The North Downs Way is never far from a village or a town, and villages and towns have shops and pubs. Lunch is rarely a problem. Water is a different matter: the taps on the map are nearly all at the Surrey end, and for most of Kent the path has none of its own.

Everything below is counted from OpenStreetMap, read 29 September 2026: every food shop, café and pub within a kilometre of the path, and every drinking-water tap within 400 metres. A place on the map is not a promise it is open, and anything further off the path is not counted.

Food shops within 1 km

93

with 92 cafés and 91 pubs

Longest stretch without a tap

44 mi

71 km, Reigate Hill to Kit's Coty House

Next longest

33 mi

52 km, Hollingbourne to Folkestone

Water

OpenStreetMap has thirteen drinking-water taps within 400 metres of the Way, four of them on the path itself. Ten are in the first 32 miles, from Seale to Reigate Hill, three of them on St Martha's Hill.

After Reigate Hill there is no tap on the map until Kit's Coty House, at mile 76: 44 miles. Then one at Hollingbourne, at mile 87, and none again until Folkestone, at mile 119. The last six miles to Dover have none either, though Dover is a town.

None of this is dry country. The path passes Merstham, Otford, Wye and plenty of other villages, and the map has cafés and pubs along the way. But the water is in the villages, not beside the path: fill up where you stop, and carry enough for the stretches between.

Food

The longest stretch without a food shop is 13.4 miles, from Wye to Sandgate. The next longest are two of about 8.5 miles, from Puttenham to Albury and from Detling to Ringlestone. The longest stretch with no shop, café or pub at all is five miles, from Whitehill Tower to Oxted.

Day by day

In the planner's nine-day split, walking west to east:

• Day 1, Farnham to Albury. Seven taps and 21 food shops.
• Day 2, Albury to Betchworth. Three taps; six shops, the last at the day's end.
• Day 3, Betchworth to Caterham Valley. The last tap for 44 miles, on Reigate Hill; eight shops, the last 4.9 miles before the end.
• Day 4, Caterham Valley to Riverhead. No tap; three shops, the last at the day's end.
• Day 5, Riverhead to Cuxton. No tap on the longest day of the walk, 17.2 miles; thirteen shops, the last at the day's end.
• Day 6, Cuxton to Thurnham Castle. One tap, at Kit's Coty House; ten shops.
• Day 7, Thurnham Castle to Charing. One tap, at Hollingbourne; eight shops, the last at the day's end.
• Day 8, Charing to Stowting. No tap; six shops, the last at Wye, 6.7 miles before the end.
• Day 9, Stowting to Dover. One tap, at Folkestone; 27 shops, the most of any day.

So days 4, 5 and 8 want water carried from the night before, and day 8 wants lunch bought in Wye. The planner's day cards give the last shop before each night for any split you choose.

Build your walkNorth Downs Way in 9 days126 mi · about 14 miles a dayOpen the planner →