Toughness: some steep hill climbs
9.24 train from Waterloo (9.33 Clapham Junction) to Box Hill, arriving 10.11
or
9.25 train from Victoria (9.32 Clapham Junction) to Box Hill, arriving 10.19
In normal times I would say that the Waterloo train is the "official" one, and those on the Victoria one could walk faster and catch us up, but since we have to split into groups of no more than six anyway, either train is as good as the other, and the only circumstance in which the Waterloovilles should wait for the Victorians is if there are fewer than six of them.... In case you are wondering why I didn't pick the 9.54 from Waterloo, the Capital Walkers have nabbed that one: but they are doing a different route from us. Nevertheless, if any of our walkers want to canvass support for using that train, use the comments function.
Buy a day return to Box Hill & Westhumble
Now pay attention at the back, because this gets a little complicated. There are four options:
1) My idea in posting this walk was to give an airing to book 1 Box Hill to Leatherhead walk - once much loved, but these days considered too short (11.5km/7.1 miles) to merit our attention. Nevertheless, you may care to do that today. You can finish in Leatherhead, or loop back to Box Hill. Two routes are given for the latter, but no distances, but the shorter one looks to be about the same length as the Leatherhead ending and the longer one a bit longer.
2) An alternative idea is to do the Box Hill to Leatherhead walk as far as lunch in Mickleham (a strenuous 8.8km/4.25 miles with two big steep hill climbs), and then switch to the Box Hill Circular walk (SWC 64) to do its afternoon route, which is 10km (6.2 miles): so 18.8km (10.45 miles) in all (with more steep hills in the afternoon, so it might feel a bit longer than that). You have to do the main afternoon route, since the short cut afternoon would be mostly going back the way you have just come.
3) Or you could just do the Box Hill Circular as it is written. It is 6.3km (3.9 miles) to lunch at Mickleham by this route, and the whole walk is 16.3km (10.1 miles). After lunch by this route you have the option of doing a shorter ending of 13km/8.1miles or 13.5km/8.4 miles.
4) Want a longer walk? Look at the map for the Tadworth Circular, which intersects with this route in places.
With all these options, splitting into groups of no more than six should be no problem. Please share your details with others within your group for contact tracing.
For pub lunches on any of the walks, you are dependent on either the Running Horses or the King William IV in Mickleham. Both can be hard to get into at the best of times: the King William maybe slightly easier if it is dry and warm enough to sit out on its very nice patio. On the Box Hill to Leatherhead walk, the Smith & Western Bar and Grill - a restaurant - is an early option.
Tea should not be an issue. In Leatherhead there are the usual coffee outlets, if Annie's Tea Room is not/no longer open. On the Box Hill Circular, I personally tend to bypass the rather too popular National Trust tea kiosk on Box Hill and go down to Ryka's in the car park at the bottom of the slope. Your tea will be accompanied by petrol fumes from the bikers whose haunt it is, as well as noise from the nearby dual carriageway, but the service is much more efficient than at the NT kiosk. Both are open till 5pm. There is also the Stepping Stones pub on the way to the station, but Pilgrims Cycles and its cafe at the station itself, are currently "closed at the weekend for the forseeable future".
Trains back from Box Hill are at 05 and 35 past to Waterloo, 40 past to Victoria
Trains back from Leatherhead are at 10, 23, 40 and 53 past to Waterloo and 13 and 44 to Victoria.
All these trains go to Clapham Junction, so you can change there if you find yourself on a train to one terminal and want to go to another
3 comments:
Was anyone on the Victoria train? Seven got off the Waterloo one and another arrived at lunch, having got a train an hour later. So n=8. But no Victorians were seen all day. If there were any, please file a separate report.
Talk about social distancing. On the train there was a group of 40+ youth: some kind of school group? Inevitably they all got off at Box Hill station and it was quite a job disentangling from them.
We seven quickly drew lots to see who had to walk by themselves (....) and then set off to do the book one route, with its two whopper hill climbs. Five had lunch on the patio of the King William IV, adding more and more layers to keep warm under the w=cloudy skies. We were the first to order and so got our food quickly.
We never saw the sandwichers again, but acquired number eight at the pub and so were six when we left. We set off to do the afternoon of the Box Hill Circular, with its malicious, not to say sadistic, delight in sending us up hill and down dale. There was at times some lovely autumn colour. Special mention today goes to dogwood, which was everywhere a riot of maroon and red.
After the final near vertical climb up onto Box Hill we found the National Trust tea kiosk miraculously free of a queue. The reason for this was soon apparent: they were “unable to serve hot drinks”, the THIRD time the NT has let me down in this way this summer. So we went down to Ryka’s, which seems to find marrying hot water to a tea bag less of a logistical challenge.
Three then went to get the 5.05 train at Box Hill and three of us walked via Denbies Vineyard to Dorking. The autumn colour on this section was excellent, including yellow vine leaves, and large golden patches on birch, beech and Swedish whitebeam. I should mention too that colours on the descent from Box Hill were good too.
We severally got the 18.05 to Waterloo and the 18.07 to Victoria, in the former of which I pen these lines.
Three Victorians walked to Leatherhead. Sandwiched in Micklesham.
So n=11 in all
Post a Comment