10.09 train from Waterloo to Fleet, arriving 10.49
From Clapham Junction get the 10.01 to Woking, changing there (arrive 10.29, depart 10.34: same platform, says my train planner, but check on the day) to connect with the above train. An earlier option, if you are nervous about the connection, is the 9.52 from Clapham Junction, arriving Woking 10.19
I said to the man who stood at the Gate of Spring
"Give me a walk where I might tread safely without too much mud"
And he replied: "Go out into the countryside around Fleet
But wear proper waterproof boots just in case."
(With apologies to Minnie Haskins, 1875-1957)
Or to put it another way, we hover on the threshold of happier days, with drier paths and burgeoning flowers, but unsure if the winter is really past. This walk has a history of being a reasonably dry underfoot at this time of year....but don't wear your party shoes.
A highlight of this walk is going around Fleet Pond (a large lake) at the start and end of the walk. Last time I did the walk we were denied this bit because they were resurfacing a critical section of path. But that was three years ago, so hopefully the work is done by now. Otherwise there is a nice mix of scenery, heaths and fields and so on, with a fairly long section (relaxing or dull, according to your point of view) along a canal towards the end of the walk.
There are FOUR possible lunch pubs. Two are quite early on - the gastro Foresters after 2.6 miles and the more standard Tweseldown slightly off the route about 3.7 miles in. Better situated at 5.4 miles is the Windmill, but it is quite small and probably worth phoning before relying on it. If you can hold your horses till 8.7 miles, the Fox and Hounds on the canal section is a fairly large and efficient place, which serves food all afternoon.
At the end of the walk there is the Station Inn, a chain pub with all the usual virtues and downsides of such places. An alternative is the Heron on the Lake, also a chain pub, which has a terrace overlooking Fleet Pond, but this requires a ten minute walk along a main road.
Trains back from Fleet are at 10, 23 and 40 past, the 23 past being ten minutes quicker
4 comments:
I’ve booked a table for 6 at 1pm at the Windmill Inn. So far I have three takers.
Alice I would like to join your table. No Joanna today.
Looking forward to seeing you John
23 assembled at Fleet station, relieved to see the morning mist burning off, but I learned at least two had started the walk a bit early and the walk author turned up at lunch, so N=26 in all. The weather was W=lovely-and-sunny and, a few gloopy bits apart, the walk was remarkably dry underfoot (lots of gravel tracks). Walkers were kind enough to give me credit for both these things, but really as poster I was only tangentially responsible for the second.
I don’t remember there being so many pine woods on this walk, but I suppose they were there all along. There was reasonable birdsong and a few flowers (eg a good scattering of lesser celandines at one point): spring tentatively poking its nose out from under the duvet.
Two tables, seating 10 in all, had been booked at the Windmill. Four (?) others ate inside and two outside in the sunshine. A handful of others had drinks. The landlady was a bit put out to discover we all knew each other and made the ritual complaint about walking groups descending “without warning”, but actually she and her staff coped perfectly well. The food was delicious and came quickly (at least mine did…). A very pleasant lunch, I thought.
In the afternoon we got strung out, but we regrouped at the Fox and Hounds on the canal, one group securing two nice tables in the sun at the water’s edge and then conveniently leaving them just as a second wave arrived to take their place. What greater pleasure than this, to be having tea and drink in the spring sunshine in good chatty company?
By the time we got back to Fleet Pond the sun was declining. We puzzled over the way the online maps get the lakeshore wrong (is this one of those deliberate errors to foil copyists?). A group of us went to the Heron-on-the-Pond, where some earlier arrivals were having tea on the deck. The rest of us thought it by now too cold for such things and had drinks inside. One or two left to get the 18.40 train. Ten of us got the 19.23, with talk of foreign trips past and to come filling the journey back to Waterloo.
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