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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.

Sunday 17 January 2016

Sunday walk 2: Surrey woods and heaths

Haslemere Circular
Book 1 walk 22
Difficulty 4/10
14km, 8.7 miles
A beautiful walk through mixed woods and heathland offering fine views from Black Down, the highest point in Sussex. A bridleway shortly after lunch has a reputation for ..er.....what was that group sang Tiger Feet? What's the m-word, rhymes with "thud"? If you're wearing your smartest trousers and new xmas boots, you could try looking for the detour suggested by "Em" on the walk's comments page. (But see discussion below)
Trains: take the 10:00 Haslemere train from Waterloo (Clapham Jct 10:09,) arriving 11:06
Trains return from Haslemere at xx:17 and xx:42
Lunch: The Red Lion, Fernhurst (01428 643112). They like to be warned, so good idea to phone from the station.
Tea: Darnleys on Haslemere’s High Street or Hemingways across the road. There are at least two pubs on the High Street, The Swan and the White Horse. The station is 10 mins walk from the High Street.
Directions for Haslemere Circular can be found here or in Book 1.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the detour suggested by EM in the comments section:

"The original book 1 walk instructs people to climb up a bridleway sharply uphill, continuing on for 800 metres, just before point 13. Somewhere along this path you eventually come out of a woody archway onto Black Down and its superb views. However, this path is one of the muddiest in the county. It is easy to avoid this mud by turning right at the bottom of the hill where the path starts. You head up a sloping grassy meadow and eventually reach the top of a hill, where if you turn left, you soon come onto the main area of Black Down that you would have reached through the bridleway anyway".

Sean said...

It's been a while since I did this walk, but EM's comment (from 2010) looks odd. My recollection is that the notoriously muddy section is in the climb through Reeth Wood, between points [11] & [12] (see para 28 in the online directions: "If it is very muddy at this point..."). At this point you're not yet on the open access NT land and I don't know if you can escape from the wood to a "sloping grass meadow".

The book describes the 800m bridleway between points [12] & [13] as "somewhat winding" but doesn't mention any problems with mud here. In any case you can bypass this part of Black Down by taking the recommended diversion to the Temple of the Winds in para 32.

Can anyone clarify the situation?

Mr M Tiger said...

I have to admit I’ve always gone straight up this bridleway. But then I’ve got tigers feet. I thought the meadow off to the right rang true but I could be thinking of one on another walk. It’s been a while….

Anonymous said...

Who is E M ?

Anonymous said...

Who is Anonymous?

Mr M Tiger said...

Note that the Jubilee line isn't running north of Waterloo this weekend. Northern and Bakerloo lines running as normal.

Anonymous said...

It would be good to find a better climb onto Black Down. From the OS map, it looks possible to carry on along the road past the lunch pub, take the path left towards Lower House Farm and Lower Calhams, then the 1st left path up past Blackdown House onto Black Down and up to the Temple of the Winds. I don't know if this would be any better but please post feedback if you try it.

Anonymous said...

I have written a walk from Haslemere which would indubitably be less muddy.
However it involves some road walking.The walk is entitled The Temple of the four winds.
The other drawback with it ifs that if walking it on a sunday it would involve
getting a taxi back to Pulboroough at the end. This would be feasible if several people took part.

jfk

Anonymous said...

n=3 on the "official" walk plus a group of 10 and another group of 6 doing the walk independently. w=dry,_cloudy_and_cold_but_no_wind

The previous night's snow was melting, dripping gently from the trees in the woods during the morning section. After lunch, 2 of us tried an alternative route onto Blackdown which turned out to be rather scenic. Blackdown and the Temple were the highlight - magical in light mist and the usually sandy paths and the surrounding hills were still covered in snow.

The route we took was along the road past the pub, soon picking up a footpath on the left parallel to the road just after the cricket green. This veers away from the road, eventually joining a lane, where we turned left and followed the footpath east, then eventually left, northwards up a grassy slope with a vinyard on the right towards Blackdown House to join the original route at Ferndale Lane. I'd say it was 50% dry paths and 50% muddy paths so could be a drier route in better weather.