Length: 11¾ km (7.3 miles). Toughness: 3/10
10:29 Portsmouth Harbour train from Waterloo (Clapham Jct 10:37), arriving Guildford at 11:11.
There are three fast trains back from Guildford every hour, at xx:11, xx:34 & xx:43.
This is a variation of one of our popular summer evening walks to the viewpoint at St Martha-on-the-Hill. It starts with a steep climb up to Pewley Down, followed by an undulating descent towards Chantry Wood. A new section then takes you around the base of St Martha's Hill before the climb up to the church.
The return leg is via Chantry Wood and the Wey Navigation; at this time of year I suggest taking the direct ending in §Q instead of the more picturesque loop via Shalford Water Meadows, which might be rather squelchy. When you reach Guildford the alternative ‘River route’ in §R might still be stymied by a missing footbridge, but the ‘Town route’ will take you past a wide choice of refreshment places on the High Street.
There's no lunch pub on the main part of this walk, so I suggest you bring provisions for a brief refreshment break at St Martha-on-the-Hill. You can always indulge in some more substantial fare when you return to Guildford at around 2–2:30pm.
You'll need to bring the directions from the L=swc.185.c page. If you're printing it you can save paper by clicking ‘Short’ on the Walk Options heading line, which hides the directions for all the longer variations but shows both endings.
6 comments:
Do you think this walk might be flooded?
@Hayley: There are links on the walk page to River Levels and these show that the Wey and its tributaries were above normal level last weekend (when the Saturday walk was affected) but are now well below it. The local paper reported that the Wey didn't burst its banks, although it said there was some flooding in a few outlying villages.
Most of the walk is on high ground. On the return to Guildford I expect Shalford Water Meadows will be waterlogged, which is why I proposed doing the shorter ending to bypass them. This route does go down to the riverbank for the last stretch but if there's a problem it's easy to backtrack and avoid that too.
Great. Thank you
Two of us planning to come
Lovely walk, and the sun shone!
Thank you Sean
N=19 plus 2 imaginary walkers makes 19. We waited a while for the imaginary two but, as you can imagine, they never showed.. A w=dry_sunny day, not too cold. Largely firm underfoot. Sandy at times. Group cohesion 100%
Eventually we reached St Martha’s Hill. But we weren’t going up the easy way. No siree. We were tackling the forbidding East Face. (“if this was Kilimanjaro, we’d get a Blue Peter badge or be on Breakfast TV or something. What do we get? Nothing” gasped Mr Tiger on the way up). However, because he knew what to expect, it didn’t seem as forbidding as last time and the summit was reached without further complaint.
For ‘summit’, read ‘lunch stop’. No pub today, No chips. No cider. Luckily, Mr Tiger found a week old bagel in his bag so everyone was happy. Sort of.
After lunch it was all downhill.
When Guildford was reached, (at 2:30) some went direct to the station, some climbed back uphill to the Kings Arms. Mr Tiger fell in with a bad crowd and was lured into a Wetherspoons. Would you believe they had a 7.2 % beer called Death or Glory? Would you believe he drunk it? One and a half pints later, he managed to escape and made his way to the station.
A grand day out.
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