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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Saturday 26 March 2016

Saturday Second Walk - Fine views and a nice tea room

SWC Walk 225 - Wivelsfield to Hayward's Heath
Length: 18km (11.2 miles)
Toughness: 5 out of 10

9.52 train from Blackfriars (9.40 St Pancras International, 9.45 Farringdon, 10.19 East Croydon) to Wivelsfield, arriving 10.53.

Alternatively get the 9.53 from London Bridge to East Croydon, changing there (arrive 10.10, depart 10.19) to the above service - but see ** below.

Buy a day return to Wivelsfield. If you take the Blackfriars train and make sure to take a Thameslink train back from Haywards Heath (see below) you may be able to get a cheaper Thameslink-only ticket, but you will probably have to buy this from a Thameslink ticket machine or a ticket office. ** Note that the connecting train from London Bridge shown above is NOT a Thameslink service - but the 9.42 from London Bridge to East Croydon, arriving 9.55 is Thameslink.

For walk directions click here.

I have long had my eye on this walk which explores the pleasant southern end of the Weald, striking north to Cuckfield, a village with several possible lunch places.

In the afternoon it then follows the High Weald Landscape Trail, with fine views to Borde Hill Garden. This is is open, if anyone wants to pay the £9 entry, but its chief merit otherwise is that it has a nice tea room outside of it, open to non-visitors. The walk ends in the rather uninspiring commuter town of Haywards Heath, whose tea options are the station cafe or a Starbucks in a Sainsbury's.

Trains back from Hayward's Heath are numerous, but Thameslink services (if you are on a cheaper Thameslink only ticket) are at 26 and 56 to Blackfriars and St Pancras, and 17 past to London Bridge: all these trains go to East Croydon.

1 comment:

Walker said...

N=11 braved poor weather forecasts to do this walk. In fact it was just w=cloudy-with-some-wind. Nice terrain, particularly just beyond Wivelsfield and near Borde Hill. Lots of bluebell-woods-to-be and lots of wood anemones to come too: a few of these out but most just peeping above the duvet. Two bemused pigs enjoyed our company at one point as we walked through their wooded enclosure (we later decided we had mistaken the path slightly and should have been on the other side of the fence).

Most of us had lunch at the "unpreposessing" pub (the White Hart?). Two went to the other pub and I immediately wished I had joined them, as our pub was a 1970s time warp with transport cafe food. In the afternoon some did short cuts, but six of us finished the full walk. Discussion about whether to have tea at Borde Hill as the weather was worsening, but the five of us who did had nice nosh and despite kitting up in the expectation of heavy rain and gales on the 4km walk to Haywards Heath, we actually had neither. Having geared up to expect lots of suburbia I was also surprised how green this last bit of the walk was, albeit that the bridleway was very muddy.