Author: RB

Surrey About It All 2½

Treed this weekend: annoying. So what I am doing, before resuming the walk next weekend, is catching up on the route planning and learning more about the heritage of the county which I am circling.

I was brought up in Surrey, and explored its hills and villages. Despite what has happened to the north-east corner of the county, the free, green hills are beautiful – but what of where it becomes, you know – edgy?

Far from the genteel idea of Surrey, the Surrey Docks were a hard, industrial area, backed by hard, coal-black, damp tenements bewailed by all who saw them, Dickens among them – what a change now though, with luxury Docklands development where once were tubercular hovels!

The suburbs have grown and changed: fresh new developments for the swelling middle-class, becoming ordinary an downmarket areas, but equally the reverse, as once poor areas have gentrified. It is a cyclical process, and all visible on the streets today. Still there are woods and commons preserved from the lusting concrete mixers, showing something of how the county once was.

Going south out of the town, I found not a single village on my path, as if the frontier with Kent were as hostile as in the days of the Heptarchy, but it is far from hostile – it is beautiful. In the very south-east corner (which I will see on Saturday) the spot was once famous for prize-fights. The fights brought all levels of society together, celebrated and patronised by the gentry as well as the common man, and thoroughly illegal. If officers of the Surrey magistrates were to descend, the ring would be shifted a hundred yards into Kent, outside their reach. If officers from Kent arrived, it would be moved again to Sussex.

Going west, the outer streets of East Grinstead trespass over the border. The oddities of East Grinstead are best left for a Sussex article, but I will say it has a pretty High Street, and is convenient for Surrey’s international airport – Gatwick. The whole airport is in Surrey (whatever bureaucracies have been set up) – there is still a County Oak roundabout south of the airport, close by the old oak tree that marked county border.

West of Gatwick the countryside empties into the Weald. There is much here hidden in the landscape. Here in the Wealden clay, they long quarried marble, which appears in local churches, not just the grandest.

A Roman road, Stane Street cuts arrow-straight across the landscape. When King Alfred was a boy, a Viking army marched down the road, and was defeated here in Ockley, beneath a far older reminder of battle – an Iron Age fort. How many Iron Age forts there were in the Weald i cannot say. The local Home Guard occupied the fort during the war – its strategic position was not over. The same road began a Victorian craze for ‘invasion literature’, when George Chesney portrayed a German army marching up it, to a victory at the ‘Battle of Dorking’.

Surrey’s county top, Leith Hill, is not close enough to the border for me to divert to climb it, but I have climbed it a number of times before, and it is a grand hill – the highest in the south-east.

Most people have seen another airport near the border – watching the Stig and his pupils piling cars around Dunsfold.

Closer to Haslemere, the ground is cruelly folded, with no straight way, in the woods of the High Weald. (Sussex’s county top is within the woods close to the border.)

North of the town is the Devil’s Punchbowl – a vast hole in the ground, and the tales told about it, both the idle legends and the true gruesome stories, would take more articles than these brief paragraphs.

At some point I will come to the Frensham Ponds (which overlap the border slightly, but basically are in Surrey). Cool and pretty in the woods, they are a natural part of the landscape to all appearance, but are said to have been dug in the 7th century to provide fish.

Farnham has a castle that belonged to the Bishops of Winchester – clearly the bishop took the concept of the ‘Church Militant’ a bit too far. It is a pretty place, with many stories of its own, and I may revisit them. Farnham is also the last place before the land becomes overspread again, with a new conurbation spreading over the river from Farnborough. From Aldershot in the south to Sandhurst in the north with Farnborough in the middle, the Army and the Royal Air Force are heavy on the Hampshire side, and Surrey feeds them too. For officers with families, Camberley was always the place to live.

I think I will have a break at this point, and resume the narrative after i have a few more stages under my belt. Thank you for bearing with me this weekend.

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Route map

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Surrey About It All 2

Joyous green countryside. What a contrast from yesterday – I was plunged in the shapely hills, the woods and farms where Surrey edges against Kent.

The route was south, following a waymarked path; the Tandridge Border Walk. It is a good route which I was pleased to have with me.

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I set off from Clacket Lane Services, along the rural lane of the same name that is the foot access, heading south. After the excessive pavements of the previous day, I was hoping for softer paths, and in turn I climbed into the North Downs, and the path led me into a pine wood, The Chart. It is a gorgeous walk, with care needed to keep to the track

Emerging from the wood, there is a quite lane, always south. Lanes, woods, fields, tickling the border, for mile upon mile in the glorious sunshine, grabbing such shade as the route allowed for; still following the Tandridge Border Path.

After another jag, the path brought me to the Kent Brook, which here marks the county border, and south alongside it to the lane at Haxted, that leads west to Edenbridge., three and a half miles from Surrey’s south-westernmost corner. I called it a day here (some of us have to work in the morning).

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Surrey About It All 1.2

An urban day, mostly. A whirlwind of townscapes and landscapes, until I escaped into the green. And it was far too long. I should have broken it into two days.

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I began by the Thames, at The Globe at 7:30 am and headed downstream on the Thames Path, through changing scenes, very pretty, until the Surrey Docks (or ‘Surrey Quays’ as the area is marketed), the uttermost corner of Surrey, to Greenland Dock and a plush marina. From there I walked a short way west, and turned south, through the edge of Deptford, to New Cross Gate and south (finding a pleasant urban park on the way), and on, and on through residential streets on or close by the county border with Kent to the east.

The suburb starts early. All this was developed as a swelling town spreading south with the railway, regardless of county boundaries. A well set church was putting a rack of clothes out – whether because are the surrounding area were built by the Haberdashers’ Company or by convenience I am not sure.

The first landmark I came to mid-morning was Honor Oak: a sudden woodland breaking the suburbanity. I climbed One Tree Hill to a ridge summounted by the Oak of Honor itself – planted where the original stood, which once shaded Queen Elizabeth I, and marked the county border.

Descending, I followed a Green Chain walk through the gorgeous grounds of the Horniman Museum, and then an unexpected woodland of Dulwich and Sydenham Commons, and out onto roads again to Crystal Palace Park for a lunch stop.

The Green Chain routes are a good addition to suburban landscape, linking parks and spots of wood and green – I would have followed them more closely, but the distance I had earmarked for Day 1 was ridiculously far so I cut out diversions, and kept closer to the county border – anyone following might better enjoy is by using the Green Chain.

Through the long streets of Penge (the Surrey side of the town) and out to South Norwood Park, and my first encounter with the Croydon tram system. (Two pleasant, encouraging conversations here about what I am doing.) It became a bit anonymous after this, looping through the tram lines and following a green chain line down to Shirley, where surely I would reach the and of the conurbation?

I did indeed emerge all of a sudden, to descend a long hill to Addington. A pleasant, if almost entirely residential village. Rather dehydrated by then, I dropped in at the Harvester. I also found that overuse of the Ordnance Survey tracking app (an excellent tool, with the Premium subscruption) had drianed my battery to zero. Back to paper maps from hereon in.

The distance yet to go was concerning, so I crossed the A-road and powered through New Addington (residential development for decanting from the towns – nothing to speak of except admiration for the tram system serving the place) and out the other side suddently into wild Surrey.

At this point I went wrong. I found the Tandridge Border Walk (which should have led me to my destination, and supplied the whole of the Day 2 walk) but had a moment of doubt and went past, arriving at a very nice rural pub, the White Bear, where a waiter was performing table-top conjuring for the amusiement of customers, and my tale of travel was met open-mouthed as another amusement. At least I had identified my location, but it was getting dark as I set off down the lane.

Basically, I messed that last section up. I promised to walk the route I had marked, following the Tandridge Border Walk, so I will go back and some point and walk the last section properly, and I will write it up. Somehow, anyway, in the dusk and with horribly aching feet, I walked down Clacket Lane and to the eponymous service station to my night’s rest.

Please donate for the Stroke Association.

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Surrey About It All 1.1: This wooden O

I am outside Shakespeare’s Globe at 7:30 in the morning, about to set off. May we cram within this wooden O the vasty fields of Surrey? No, but I will draw a much bigger ‘O’ that will; about the county’s border.

Here by the Thames, the Bard built his theatre, of which the building beside me is a wonderful recreation, outside the puritan censure of London on the free fields of the Surrey bank, and following that tradition, the bankside here is marked with theatres, television studios, galleries and all sorts.

The spot where I stand is the cradle of culture that now laps the world, and Surrey can be proud of it. It is why I chose this as a starting point

Right now though, I am chilly and keen to get going.

Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought…

Please donate for the Stroke Association.

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Surrey About It All – it’s on

The Surrey Border Path was always a challenge, but next week I am setting off, walking all around Surrey’s border, to forge a new route and to support the work of the Stroke Association.

The route is planned, the overnight accommodation is booked. The stages will be long, but over a series of weekends, I will go all around the county, checking that it is stil there. A county three hundred years older than England itself must have a fine solidity, whatever has been done to its fields by generations of rapacious builders.

I start by The Globe in Southwark on Saturday morning (5 September 2026), down the Thames a short way to the Surrey Docks, then south through the suburbs along the edge of Kent – the historic counties are what count here and not Whitehall inventions. Two days’ walking should bring me to the south-eastern corner of the county, where Surrey, Kent and Sussex meet, to turn west.

Don’t worry about wishing me luck: just donate.

Route map

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Moel Famau

Moel Famau is the highest hill of the Clwydian Hills and, standig on the border of Flintshire and Denbighshire, is Flintshire’s county top. At 1,817 feet, it is the lowest of Wales’s mainland county tops, but majestic on the horizon, and distinctive with its huge Victorian monument.

I climbed Moel Famau on my way back from Snowdon. I drove out to Ruthin, and to a lane running out of Llanbedr-Dyffryn-Clwyd, to the car park of the Moel Famau County Park. The car park was buzzing with Liverpudlian voices – this is a place to breath and enjoy the open air.

The Offa’s Dyke Path runs through here – it is a broad, made path, and it leads straight to the hill and its summit. The climb then is simple – follow the big path. It is only a couple of miles.

In this weather, the grass has been frazzled. Either side, the heather grows as vigorously as ever, and below is the green valley. Reaching Moel Famau itself though, the path runs up through browned land.

The summit is crowned with the Jubilee Tower – Victorian, concrete and decayed, but with a view out all around. (The trig point below has been painted ina naïve-art style for some reason.)

Back the way I came, and another county top done, with little drama.

Maps

The Miners’ Track up Snowdon for real

Snowdon – I have written about climbing Snowdon’s various paths, some from other’s accounts. This week I finally walked the Miners’ Track myself.  Snowdon is the highest mountain in the British Isles outside the Highlands (and one of only 34 ‘Furth Munros‘, which is to say mountains of the British Isles which would be counted as Munros as exceeding 3,000 feet had they not had the misfortune to lie outside Scotland).

I first looked down from the summit over thirty years ago (having come up the Llanberis Path) and saw an intriguing path snaking over Llyn Llydaw. It took me until this week actually to walk it, as I was in Snowdonia for a few days.

From the bleak, bustling bus-hub of Pen-y-Pass, I headed off on a broad, well-made path to Llyn Llydaw, where the path crosses a causeway. (I seem to remember seeing stepping stones all those years ago – I may be mistaken.) The lake water was very low – the dry, dry summer has shrunk it back. Around the shore of the lake, there comes the first real climb, up to Glaslyn, a smaller lake (but the source of the River Glaslyn that flows down through Llyn Llydaw to a string of pretty lakes on the south side of Snowdon, and to the sea at Porthmadog).

The cloud had descended, and visibility was very poor. The far side of the little lake was invisible. The path followed around the shore of Glaslyn and stopped. I knew there was a heavy climb ahead, up to the high ridge, where it meets the Pyg Track. I think I missed the track I was meant to follow up, and went further along the shore, but in no place could I find a beaten track. (I have since read walkers’ reports which tell me it is there – but in the cloud I possibly missed it.)

I climbed, on the track that appeared. I hate scree slopes and this was a bad one. Another pair of climbers were ahead of me and must have found their footing. I climbed on such solid ground as I could, partly in a trickling stream bed, which had cleared the stones. I could do it only because I had excellent boots and long experience. The jaunty families I had seen bouncing along the track before were stuck at the bottom.

I climbed, hands and knees, up. Others had come that way – on occasion I saw discarded a crisp packet or beer can or similar. (How do walkers do that? We do not have the death penalty for littering in a national park, but I would have some sympathy if it were proposed.) Did I mention that I hate scree slopes?

Eventually I reached the upper path, meeting the Pyg Track, which is well defined, by the many walkers on it as well as by the path itself. It is still a climb though, if not as vertical as the Miners’ Track section I had just done, and on until the summit ridge, where all paths converge.

The summit was packed, and cold and wet and with cutting winds. After patting the summit, I sheltered in the café, Hafod Eyri, standing incongruously at the top of the mountain, wondering why had carried my lunch up when they had soup and rolls.

I had done the Miners’ Track at last.

The weather being as it was, with little visibility in the cloud, I abandoned the plan of trying to find the Pyg Track, and I came down the Llanberis Path – one you can practically run. In Llanberis the sun was out and the lake glistening and blue and filled with happy family voices. What a difference three and as half thousand feet make.

See also

For now, I have provided a map below showing the main routes.

Maps

The best maps for Snowdon are of course the Ordnance Survey maps; the ‘Explorer’ at 1:25 000 and the ‘Landranger’ at 1:50 000:

Route map

Herts Embraced: what HS2 has done

HS2 has chewed up part of the Hertfordshire Border Walk between West Hyde and Chorleywood. I walked it to see how it can be done. I took a pre-HS2 map (Explorer 172 – Chiltern Hills East) as a guide to where the paths ought to go.

HS2 have said that they will restore the footpaths when the works are completed, and there are signs of the blocked paths’ being preserved, but it could be several years yet before they are opened, and we cannot tell what alignments will be left. The county border is unmoved and immemorial, even if the paths which once defined it move.

From the A412 Uxbridge Road, the mouth of the footpath on the county border has been obliterated by the HS2 work site. However there is a way round, and HS2 have posted a diversion map on a tree. I walked south along the road into Buckinghamshire, under and then alongside the massive new viaduct. By a layby is a small path up through the woods, to a lane (Tilehouse Lane) where I turned north again. The lane used to run through, but is now cut off by the construction site: it ends where the border path resumes.

I followed the path eastwards therefore, along the edge of the wood, with the vast site to my right, along the county border, down across a new works access road, and then it is closed again, with a diversion.

This diversion is the same as the one I did some years ago – then I think I had to work it out on my own, and took a wrong turn somewhere that led me into difficulty, but this time the diversion is shown on maps attached to signposts. It took me south and round and under the M25 in a foot tunnel, and to a road at the edge of Chalfont St Peter. Walking north along the road to start of the village, there is path back eastwards, tree-lined and then out into a broad field. It is well defined now, skirting the side of a mobile home park to the left, and to an access road close by the M25. A new local road has been built since the map was printed, but this is the end of the diversions. They added perhaps two miles to the route.

I headed down Shire Lane, which runs along the county border. Very soon the road swings left, but Shire Lane, the old road, is straight on, a tree-lined path, emerging at a corner and resuming being a road, past the Dumb Bell Inn and on northwards. When the road hits a T-junction, it is stil straight ahead: Shire Lane has become a woodland footpath (with Newlands Park to the left: the Chiltern Open Air Museum is in the Newlands Park Estate).

After a dog-leg, the path heads north again through woods a house comes into view and the path becomes a road, and leads down into Chorleywood.

It is a lovely stretch of walk, that took just a few hours. It will be better when the convulsing works are finished and the paths are put back, but I will take it as it is for now.

Route map

See also

Maps

The route spreads over a wide are and a series of maps is needed to complete it.  It might be done with standard Landranger maps, though the additional detail of an Explorer map can be very helpful.

In the Explorer, 1:50 000 series:

In the Landranger, 1:25 000 series:

Wandering from Keswick

There is no need to drive out of Keswick to enjoy a beautiful walk: the town is in the midst of prettiness. It was my quiet day, and so I looked about me at the town where I have been staying.

Derwentwater glimmered in the sunshine. I found the path up through the woods to a viewpoint on a tiny hill, Castle Head. From here, the lake is laid out before you, in its verdant basin, and the fells beyond.

I then followed paths to the north and east, through woods, by farms and over the road to a long, muddy way out to the Castlerigg Stone Circle.

There are always visitors at the circle, admiring it, breathing in the ancientness, or performing invented pagan rituals within it. All three were there to be seen.

Then down the road to Keswick. I spotted a path down to a rail trail – a footpath laid down on the old Penrith-Cockermouth Railway line, so I followed that in to the town centre.

A good morning’s walk.

Helvellyn over Striding Edge

I was told this was a fearsome climb. It was in part a gentle walk, and in parts gritted teeth, four-limb scrambling and prayer – which was answered.

From the car park in Glenridding, I followed the path another walker was going, befor finding there are several routes – you have to stick by the Mires Beck for the first stretch – but I looped over back to the beck, with cheery assistance from local folk who enjoy the views or the bowl of Lanty’s Tarn from the lower slopes. Back on track, I took the long, upward climb, along a path which is in parts steep or shallow – on average easier than those I have met earlier in the week. Past the forbidding crags, I followed up over Birkhouse Moor (the usual walk) from which the path levels out to follow a ridge beside a long, drystone wall. This leads to a prominent style known as Hole-in-the-Wall. Here the challenge begins.

On the walk I fell into brief conversation with a few other walkers – two young lads who powered ahead, occasionally caught up with, and three cheery young ladies who dropped further behind as I pressed on to the climb, and two experiences cragsmen (“Been doing this for 50 years!”) enjoying the familiar, breathtaking view.

At Hole-in-the-Wall, lying below you is a gorgeous tarn, Red Tarn, at the bottom of a huge corrie formed by Helvellyn; the back wall formed by the mountain’s long, cliff-edged summit ridge, fringed with snow; on one side Bleabury Crag and Striding Edge, and opposite the triangular shape of Catstye Cam. Up over rougher climbing (Bleabury Crag), to a jagged eyrie which is the beginning of Striding Edge. This forbidding eyrie is (I learn) called Low Spying How. Low it is not.

There is no path over Low Spying How: I packed my map away and with hands and feet I picked my way over the rocks between seemingly impossible gaps, with vertical drops to the valley awaiting any mistake. Then the Edge itself came into view. It appears like a set of dragon’s teeth, in a long ridge with nowhere for the feet. Had a wind blown up, there would be nowhere to protect you from being ripped from you feet and hurled into the void. It was though dry and largely still. I climbed down to the edge and round some way along it – occasionally stretches of path appear, and in others it has crumbled away and the tops are the only way along. It is thrilling, and deadly. Good boots that allow me to step on points of rock were vital.

I slid undignified on my bottom and reached hand over hand, creeping along in this unfamiliar landscape. Then I spotted the trio of young ladies from earlier – slower on the path, they were bounding along here, with all the confidence and suppleness of youth. And here was I creeping along: what years of responsibility can do to a man. Then halfway along, as I was poised not knowing how to move further, the cragsmen appeared. The guided me and the ladies (who had caught up by now) along the impossible tops and the final climb to the summit. I will be eternally grateful.

The summit is gentle, and in the sun shone as I ate my lunch there, unfurled the county flag (this is Westmorland’s county top) and wondered at the views.

The usual way down is another scramble, down Swirral Edge, to a gentle path. I could see hesitation amongst those going that way, and in any case I was enjoying the hills too much to go straight back.

So I headed north over Glenridding Common (a route with no scrambles and no edges). There is a gentle saddle from Helvellyn down and up to Lower man, and on to White Side, and on to Raise to the north. Over this and the path tracks along the slope of Raise before zigzagging down towards the Glenridding Beck, which I followed down to the village.

Route map

Maps