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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 8 October 2016

Saturday First Walk - The Hampshire Hangars

Book 2, walk 11 - Petersfield to Liss or Alton
Length: 16.2 km (10.1 miles) or 23.9km (14.8 miles)
Toughness: 5 out of 10

9.30 train from Waterloo to Petersfield, arriving 10.31

(From Clapham Junction you can take the 9.27 to Woking, arriving 9.45, to catch the above train at 9.55)

Buy a day return to Petersfield.

For walk directions (main walk to Liss) click here. For the extension, see below.

I thought it would be nice to do this fine Hampshire outing before winter mud makes it too slithery. The morning is a tour-de-force, taking you out of Petersfield and up a stunningly steep path onto Shoulder of Mutton Hill (there is a gentler way up also), with correspondingly fine views from the top. You then descend into lovely hilly/wooded territory. Lunch is in the Hawkley Inn, which serves food till 2.30pm.

After lunch the 16.2km (10.1 mile) version of the walk is to simply stick with the book two route to Liss, from where trains go back at 02 past the hour, with one mysterious extra train at 17.48. If you just miss an 02 past train it is theoretically possible to take the 06 in the other direction, changing to the opposite platform at Petersfield for a fast train to London.

Or do the extension to Alton: see below

EXTENSION TO ALTON

This is a long walk (23.9km/14.8 miles) but may tempt the more red-blooded among you looking to make the most of the daylight before the short days come.

It makes use of directions found in this document, which link the Walk 11 route with Selborne, the lunch stop on Book 2, walk 10, Alton Circular, essentially keeping along the Hangar's Way after lunch in Hawkley - a very pretty route, taking in Noar Hill and some lovely countryside.

It is 6.4 km (4 miles) from Hawkley to Selborne and once upon a time you could catch a bus there back to Petersfield. But alas, this bus no longer runs on Saturdays, so you have to continue on foot another 6 miles or so to Alton. It is thus 10 miles from Hawkley to Alton if you do this option

To get from Selborne to Alton either follow the book 2 walk 10 route in this document from paragraph 61 (turning left off the road just before the Selborne Arms, since you are coming from the opposite direction), or - nicer but requiring a map or the ability to read walk directions backwards - reverse the morning route of that walk, which also follows the Hangar's Way.

Tea options en route are plentiful and include the pleasant Selborne Arms (though not the Queen's Arms, which is now closed), the tea room in the nearby Gilbert White Museum (which can be visited without paying the entrance fee, if you ask nicely), and possibly the Coffee Room cafe between the two (if it is still there). If you follow the afternoon route of the Alton walk, the Rose and Crown in Upper Farringdon is also a tea/drink option along with the Greyfriar Inn in Chawton. And incidentally if light is fading you can do the whole rest of the walk from the Greyfriar in the dark as it is all on residential or town centre roads.

Note that if you do this option, you will have to buy an extra single train ticket from Alton to Woking, which is £6.80 with a Network Card. Trains leave Alton at 15 and 44 past.


1 comment:

Walker said...

N=21 managed to disentangle themselves from the Guildford walkers who were also on the same train (whoops - my posting error!) and set off for a lusty climb of the superb Shoulder of Mutton Hill, the Matterhorn of the Saturday Walks. Arriving at Hawkley we found the lunch pub much changed from its former rough and ready days - smartly laid out tables and "have you booked?" We had not, but they accommodated us without demur and portions were big.

After lunch there was the first of w=a-couple-of-showers-on-an-otherwise-mild-and-cloudy-day. Soon after, the parting of the ways: ten of us set off through a field of horses to do the longer walk to Alton: that presumably means eleven carried on to Liss.

We Altonians had a very nice walk to Selborne - this really is a pretty section - and there split between the pub and the lovely tea room in the Gilbert White Museum for mid afternoon "refreshies". We then opted to reverse the morning of the Alton walk - lovely territory at least as far as East Worldham and interesting to see it from the opposite direction. We arrived in Alton exactly as dusk was falling and didn't feel tired, not one tiny bit.

Most of us squeezed into the Railway Inn where we had an education from one of our party in inventively named real ales. Six of us got the ? 7.44 ? train and had wine and dips to while away the journey. (I mention this because one of our number said "You never mention the party we have on the train home." So there: I mentioned it)