At secondary level, the school is in the Mascalls Academy Comprehensive catchment area. However, the village is home to many children who attend grammar schools in the neighbouring town of Maidstone. Leisure Yalding has a cricket club whose first recorded game was in 1798. The cricket pitch was once beside the River Medway on the Lees (Village Common). They currently play on the Kintons ground. The Greensand Way long-distance footpath crosses the Medway at Twyford Bridge, and follows up the High Street, passes through Blunden Lane, and leaves the village by an ancient byway by Bustom Farm Cottages. The Medway Valley Walk follows the river from Tonbridge to the sluice on the east bank, then the Hampstead Lane Canal, and the river to Maidstone on the west bank. Yalding Organic Garden has a display of fourteen individual gardens, demonstrating gardening through the last 800 years. The plants have been carefully chosen to make sure that they are accurate to their historical period. Yalding has a popular annual contemporary music festival called 'The Vicar's Picnic', set on the edge of the village. Taking place every July it attracts up to 4000 visitors who camp in adjoining fields. Notable acts that have recently performed include The Fun Lovin' Criminals, Starsailor, Reef, Norman Jay MBE, Seb Fontaine, Bruce Foxton, Nightmares on Wax, 90's Indie Britpop band Cast, Canterbury folk-hiphop act, 'Coco & the Butterfields' and The Bluetones lead vocalist Mark Morriss. The festival is taking a break in 2019, returning in 2020. The Yalding and District Beekeepers Association was formed in January 2011, by a group of local beekeepers, and meets monthly in the Chequers Inn, Laddingford. There is a football club, formed in 2011 – Yalding and Laddingford FC based at the Kintons ground and the Jubilee field Laddingford with teams in the Maidstone and Mid Kent Sunday League. The teams are in Div 1 and 3. In 2012 club formed a side to play in the Tonbridge Saturday league . A new junior section of under 10's and under 13's was formed in 2013. In April 2014 the Saturday side won the club's first major silverware by winning the Chairman's cup at Longmead Stadium and the following week the Sunday reserve side became league winners. Following this season the club was accepted into the Kent County League in division 3 East. The club has a junior section with 7 teams playing