Length: 17km (10m)
Toughness: 5 / 10
Transport: Take the 9:50 train from London Victoria arriving in Upper Warlingham at 10:22. Return trains from Hayes every 15min starting on the hour. All stations are within Zone 5 or 6 so you can use your Oyster card.
A pleasant walk through woodlands near London finishing via Hayes common. The lunch pub is the Grade II listed White Bear in Fickleshole. I'm not sure if the quaint Java
2 comments:
The 9.50 was cancelled but lots of us on the 10.20, which we hope will move soon…..
I wasn’t expecting to write the walk report for this one (being a refugee from the cancelled Meopham walk…) so I did not count, but at least n=15 on this walk, possibly one or two more.
Victoria was a mass of train cancellations. The 9.50 to Upper Warlingham looked to be an exception. It was marked as late, got a bit later, then succumbed. The 10.20 did depart but proceeded to stop at every signal, so it seemed, including one just outside Upper Warlingham station, where it sat for about five minutes. We finally disembarked at around 11.20.
Our walk poster had very patiently waited for us. Two car drivers had gone on ahead, and two or three others materialised in the lunch pub, having apparently got earlier trains or come from New Addington.
So off we set. Our later start meant the rain hit us fairly soon after starting, and very wretched it was, driven on by a keen wind. The ground underfoot was as soggy as you might expect in places, though not in others. The White Bear was a welcome refuge when we got there.
Finishing lunch at about 2pm, we emerged into lashing rain. A whole gaggle of walkers responded to this by setting off for the shorter ending to New Addington. At least two carried on to Hayes. Four of us went back inside the pub to have another drink. This proved a good move, because when we emerged the rain was stopping, and there was even a bit of blue sky later. So w=heavy-rain-clearing-mid-afternoon.
We had a pleasant, if often squelchy, walk into Hayes. There were little signs of spring - cherry plum blossom starting, some daffodils, a lark singing. We got to Hayes at 4.45pm, having met the two aforementioned Hayes walkers on the way, and, cute little independent tea shops being in short supply, had a cosy tea in Costa Coffee before getting the (?) 17.30 train back to Covidland.
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