New Walk – Oxshott Circular
Length: 15 km (9.3 miles), or 12½ km (7.8 miles) to Cobham. Toughness: 2/10
10:02 Guildford (via Cobham) train from Waterloo (Vauxhall 10:06, Clapham Jct 10:12, etc), arriving Oxshott at 10:42.
Trains back from Oxshott are hourly at xx:11. If you want to give yourself the flexibility of a shorter ending buy a slightly more expensive return to Cobham & Stoke D'Abernon (see below; trains back at xx:08).
The main purpose of this new walk is the opportunity to visit Painshill Park, which claims to be “England's most elegant 18thC landscape garden”. However, you'd need to pay the entrance charge of £8 and November might not be the best time of year to appreciate its many charms, so by all means just treat this as a regular walk around Surrey's wooded heaths and the Mole valley (plus lots of expensive-looking houses in this affluent neighbourhood).
If you want an early break for refreshment The Cricketers has a nice location on Downside Common, which is also a good place for a picnic. You'll get there quite early and The Plough is more conveniently placed for a pub lunch, half an hour further on; The Medicine Garden nearby looks like an interesting alternative, but I haven't tried its café or restaurant. There are plenty more refreshment opportunities in Cobham's town centre but nothing near Oxshott station, so make sure you've had your fill if you take this ending.
If you do visit Painshill keep an eye on the time – it's easy to spend longer there than you intend. Sunset is at 4.18pm and you'd need to leave there well before 3pm to get through the heavily-wooded Oxshott Heath before dark (and catch the 16:11 train). The Cobham ending is shorter and much more manageable in failing light.
You'll need to print the directions from this temporary New Walk page. A fairly high proportion of the walk is on hard surfaces, so choose comfortable footwear. T=swc.305
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n=14 w=partly-sunny.
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