insideKENT Magazine Issue 55 - October 2016 | Page 136

MOTORS

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

The QX30 is ideal for
any pleasure drive

A DRIVE OF

Discovery
AN INSPIRING JOURNEY THROUGH THE WEALD OF KENT AND EAST SUSSEX
PROVIDES STUNNING SCENERY, AMAZING ARCHITECTURE AND AN EXCITING
OPPORTUNITY TO PUT THE NEW INFINITI QX30 CROSSOVER THROUGH
ITS PACES. BY MARTIN GURDON
It’s easy to take where you live for granted. My
home is in the Weald of Kent and, I’ve tended to
whistle down its lanes and byways without giving
them the attention they deserve.

Marden has a
real village feel

Some are great driving roads, and I began to
pleasantly pipe dream about using familiar byways to make a journey for pleasure rather than
necessity. I’d take a circular route that would be
For this to work I needed an interesting car. So
lend me a British-made and engineered QX30,
with four-wheel-drive, seven-speed transmission
and a willing 2.0 diesel engine, I’d found my car,
and a dream became a reality.
Sussex coastal town of Rye, and I decided to
begin and end the end the journey in the pretty
village of West Farleigh. To reach it, I climbed
out of Maidstone on the A26 Tonbridge Road.
upward curve. About four miles later I swung left

onto the B2163 and headed for the 14th-Century
Teston Bridge, a single-lane stone structure.
I then passed Teston Country Park, a lovely
public space of grassland and meadows. The
road wriggled through dense trees as I wound
into West Farleigh, an attractive place where the
locals must have strong ankles, as it’s on a slope.
Pulling over, I quickly programmed the QX30’s
sat nav system, then headed into the sort of

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would be Yalding.
The often-unmarked lanes I took were frequently
hedgerows and trees.
Soon, I dropped down into Yalding, which has
of negotiating high-hedged lanes and I reached