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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Saturday 16 May 2015

Saturday Third Walk – A manor house by the M25

New Walk – Woldingham Circular, via Titsey Place
Length: 17½ km (10.9 miles). Toughness: 7/10

09:53 East Grinstead train from Victoria (Clapham Jct 09:59, East Croydon 10:11), arriving Woldingham at 10:27. Buy a day return to Woldingham, or (for an extra 40p) a return to Oxted if you might want to take the shorter ending (see below).

Trains back from Woldingham are essentially half-hourly, at 30 & 59 minutes past. If you finish at Oxted these Victoria trains leave at xx:24 & xx:53, and there's also a fast hourly service to London Bridge at xx:20.

This walk has been specially devised for the British Deaf Association, and I can confidently predict that your enjoyment of it will be greatly enhanced if you're deaf in the right ear (or bring a wad of cotton wool). A glance at the Walk Map will show a 1 km stretch within spitting distance of the M25, where you'll be obliged to practice your sign language or lapse into silent contemplation. At any rate there's no point getting your ears syringed the day before.

If you can blot out this intrusion you might enjoy a short woodland stretch in Marden Park Woods and some longer ones through the wooded hillside of the Titsey Plantation, part of the large estate surrounding Titsey Place. In theory you can stop off to visit this manor house and its gardens but a last-minute notice on its website apologising that they're unable to offer light lunches in its Tea Room has made this rather inconvenient.

Assuming that you leave a visit to a day when they've got their kitchen sorted out, a steep climb back up the North Downs will bring you in a further half-hour to the lunch pub, the Botley Hill Farmhouse. If your GPS device is accurate you'll observe that you can eat in either the western or the eastern hemisphere. There are yet more hills in the afternoon (hence the walk's 7/10 rating) but eventually you descend to the Dene Coffee Shop, ten minutes before Woldingham station.

Shorter ending: If you want to relax in a pub at the end of the walk I suggest following the Short Walk directions in the afternoon to finish in Oxted: Woldingham has nothing to offer beside its tearoom.

You'll need to print the directions from this New Walk page.

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