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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 3 October 2015

Saturday Second Walk - Wooded Surrey heaths and easy fields

SWC walk 136 - Ash Vale to Worplesdon
Length: 19.8 kilometres (12.3 miles)
Toughness: 4 out of 10

9.23 train from Waterloo (no Clapham Junction stop) to Ash Vale, arrive 10.14

If you miss this, get the 9.30 Portsmouth Harbour train and change at Woking (arrive 9.54, depart 10.00) for the above train.

Buy a day return to Ash Vale, which our resident train guru assures me is valid for return from Worplesdon, contrary to what it says in the walk directions

For walk directions click here.

It is a full two years since this walk had an outing. I seem to remember it was well received at the time, so I am sure it deserves another. The morning up the Basingstoke Canal and then out across the wooded Surrey Heaths, which sometimes require careful navigation. This is MOD land but this walk is entirely out of restricted areas.

11.6km (7.2 miles) of this brings you to the Royal Oak, the lunch time pub, though if this is busy there is an alternative 3.8km (2.4 miles) further on which serves Thai food all afternoon (and a is very nice place, from memory). Its website talks about booking, however, so you might like to check it can accommodate you before relying on it.

The afternoon is different from the morning - more conventional woods and fields as far as I recall. Towards the end there is a short diversion to a possible tea pub. I remember sitting outside it in the sunshine and wondering how much longer the warm weather would last before autumn set in….

The walk ends at isolated Worplesdon station, from where trains go at 40 past the hour. You might like to time your arrival here carefully as there is nothing much in the vicinity if miss one. It is just one stop from this remote fastness to metropolitan Woking, however, and the fleshpots of London beyond.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hard to print out more than a few pages of the document?

Anonymous said...

I had no problem! Walk looks good.

Anonymous said...

Around 18 on this walk in pleasant weather: the sun emerged in the afternoon. Warm enough to sit out in pub garden at lunch. Prompt service. Tricky walking instructions in places. Plenty of armed, but friendly, soldiers running about in the first half of the walk: a regiment competition, rather than a felt need to police the bandits hiking on army land. Most got the 3.40 back to Waterloo. Thanks for putting the walk on.

Andrew said...

n=18