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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.

Sunday 15 May 2016

Sunday Walk 1: Greensand hills in Surrey & Kent

Extra Walk 63 Oxted Circular
Length: 19km (11.8 miles) Toughness: 5/10

09:53 East Grinstead train from Victoria (Clapham Junction 09:59; East Croydon 10:10), arriving at Oxted at 10:30.

Return trains are at xx:28 and xx:58, (journey time 41 minutes).

Much of this walk is on the wooded Greensand hills which run parallel to and just south of the North Downs. There is an option to extend the walk after lunch to pass Chartwell (NT), Winston Churchill’s home. This extends the walk to 13.4 miles.

There are numerous pubs and cafes for lunch in Westerham, which is reached after 5.5 miles, and several options for tea in Oxted.

The walk directions and map can be found on the Walk 63 page.

4 comments:

Sean said...

If you do the longer walk via Chartwell, note that the alternative route in §10b is no longer feasible. The National Trust have blocked the back exit from the grounds on this route, no doubt because people were using it to sneak into the grounds for free.

At Easter you could still enter the woodland at the back of the grounds (in §10a) but the way through to the Visitor Centre was blocked by work on a new overflow car park. That should be finished by now but there might be other complications. All things considered, it might be best to do the standard walk for now.

[I'm currently revising the walk to include these and other changes, but I doubt if an updated version will be ready by the weekend.]

Marion said...

Intend going. Is anyone interested in viewing either of the National Trust houses?

Marion said...

8 on the main walk-sunshine with a cool breeze. 2 latecomers joined us at lunchtime and 2 others were seen at the Carpenters Arms later on when 3 of us stopped for tea and ice cream. Two groups of Book 2 walkers with USA accents were overheard on the train but did not alight at Otford so independent walking groups are making great use of the book rather than downloading from the internet an organised walk. 4 had lunch at the George in the garden and were served very swiftly but the other pubs and cafés were much busier and possibly better quality. In the afternoon 3 of us took a wrong turn in the final stretch of woods where the Greensand Way and the woodland paths diverge before Limpsfield and the busy B259. We couldn't keep up with the fast pace of the younger hung ho ladies but armed with an ordnance survey map and compass and SATNAV (recommended for all independent walkers) we sorted out the problem and revived our spirits at the excellent Carpenters Arms for tea. Recently refurbished the lunch food looked amazing and the place was still packed at 3.15pm. Perhaps Chris L could clarify the woodland directions in his revisions.

Trains were running bang on time and the 30 min service was a welcome change from some of the delays and cancellations experienced on previous outings.

Anonymous said...

N=12