Length: 16.7 km (10.4 miles) 6/10
I've had a request for a hilly walk so I'm posting this one a bit earlier than previous years. The bluebells won't be out yet but the walk usually gets a Saturday outing later in the spring.
Travel: 0941 from Victoria (Clapham Junction 0948, Epsom 1024) arriving Holmwood 1047. Return trains from Gomshall via Guildford at 1501, 1601, 1731 and 1831; via Redhill at 1622, 1722 and 1821.
Get a return to Gomshall. This will be valid as far as Dorking on the outward route and might be accepted to Holmwood, although you could be asked to pay a small supplement. Holmwood and Gomshall are on different lines with trains operated by different railway companies, so if you want the option of travelling back via Guildford, you will need a day return to Gomshall any route permitted.
Lunch: the walker-friendly Wotton Hatch pub (tel.01306 887694) in Wotton, some 11.5 km into the walk. This pub serves food all day in comfortable internal and outdoor seating areas (both quite extensive) and has a good value set menu in addition to an a la carte menu.
Tea: The Abinger Hammer Tea Rooms are just over a mile from the end of the walk. Just before Gomshall station, the Compasses Inn at Gomshall Mill has a pleasant beer garden with a stream outside, while the Gomshall Mill next door has reopened after a big refurbishment.
Short and long options: The easiest way to shorten the walk is to catch the hourly 32 bus to Guildford or Redhill opposite the Wotton Hatch pub. If you have tea in Abinger Hammer you can catch the same bus from there or, as detailed in the walk directions, simply turn right, westwards, from the tearoom and stay on the A25 to Gomshall Station.
The route intersects the Dorking circular walk SWC 274 so if you want to finish at Dorking you could follow that from Friday Street or Wotton, a slightly shorter (15 km) route.
There are various map-led ways to extend the walk, for instance following the Greensand Way west for 6 km to Holmbury Hill (5 km south of Gomshall station; reverse the route of this walk to get there) or heading towards Box Hill (route described on last year's April posting, see History page): the viewpoint on Box Hill is 10 km from the lunch pub.
For walk directions, map and GPX click here
T=1.42
1 comment:
A select N=10 on this walk, many regulars apparently being away (on a foreign trip?). But we were a jolly band of brothers (and sisters) and enough to do our country loss (etc: see Shakespeare Henry V).
The weather, in a famous phrase of a former French friend of mine, was “not as bad as I thought it would be” - w=cloud-with-some-sun, the occasional light shower, not that cold really. We got nicely warmed by the climb up Leith Hill anyway, and once at the top had tea at the kiosk, with some having a sneak preview of lunch too. The pale grey sea was just about visible through Shoreham Gap.
Many topics of a social, cultural, medical and geopolitical nature were aired on the long descent through the woods to Wotton Hatch. Two of us ate in the pub and three or four others had drinks, having sandwiched in the churchyard watched by a couple of hundred jackdaws. A noted SWC backmarker caught up with us here and asked how many had done the steep gully on the climb up Leith Hill: he had, but the rest of us did the zigzags, I think.
On the way to Abinger Hammer the sun came out in more force. I inveigled the four I was with to divert to the Abinger Hammer tearooms. My idea was that in the bright sunshine we might sit outside, but the charms of the elegant indoor parlour won out. Good choice! During tea the rain really hammered down, with plentiful hail. We amused ourselves by using Google Lens to value the china teapots: one was apparently worth £40.
After tea we walked the back way to Gomshall but were still too early for the train. Two of us had a swift half in Gomshall Mill and got the 5.31 to Guildford. The other three presumably got the 5.20 to Redhill.
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