Exploring the pubs of Samuel Palmer's "Valley of Vision"

I'm going to Shoreham for the day this Saturday, I told Mrs PBT's, little thinking that my good lady wife was thinking that I meant the seaside town of Shoreham, in West Sussex. I quickly put her right, and explained that I was off to the much smaller and much less well-known Kentish settlement of Shoreham, a delightful village in the idyllic setting of the Darent Valley, which runs in a northerly direction, through the chalk hills of the North Downs, from just north of Sevenoaks to the Dartford Creek Barrier, the point at which the Darent flows into the River Thames. The reason for my visit was a short ramble, along the Darent Valley, towards Shoreham in the company of members of West Kent CAMRA, naturally taking in a few local pubs along the way. The journey, by rail, from Tonbridge involves a change of train at Sevenoaks , and then a short ride up the valley towards Shoreham. There was a dozen or so of us who left the train, except it was the larger settlement of Otford, where we…