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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 2 April 2016

Saturday Second Walk - A new (-ish) walk in the Weald

SWC Walk 236 - Ashurst to Eridge
Length: 21.3km (13.2 miles) - with shorter options of 18.3km (11.3 miles) or 16.3km (10.1 miles)
Toughness: 5 out of 10

10.08 train from London Bridge (10.23 East Croydon) to Ashurst, arriving 10.58.

Buy a day return to Eridge, unless you definitely want to do the 16.3km (10.1 mile) Circular walk, returning to Ashurst, in which case a return to Ashurst will be sufficient.

For walk directions, click here. If I have got this right (and the walk author should feel free to correct this if necessary) you can save paper by clicking on "(Main)" below the map. This eliminates directions not relevant to today, while keeping the directions for all the options.

This is a new walk and yet not new. Walkers may remember the "Cowden to Eridge via Fordcombe" walk at this time last year which had beautiful scenery and weather, but alas a stubborn pub that refused to serve us. The walk has now been comprehensively re-routed - parts of the former afternoon even seem to have been reversed to create a morning route - to take us to other lunch options (at least two if I read the document correctly), the second serving food all afternoon.

The tea places remain the same - the surprisingly nice hospital cafe at Burrswood - or pubs in Groombridge or Eridge.

Shorter options omit Burrswood, reducing the walk to 18.3km (11.3 miles), or circle back to Ashurst which is 16.3km (10.1 miles). If you do the latter, note that there are no refreshments around Ashurst station and nothing to do there if you miss the train so time that one carefully.

If you do the main walk ending to Eridge, some wood anemones (photo) can be found towards the end of the route, particularly on the last lane and above Harrison Rocks (they only open out when the weather is warm, though). There may well be some earlier in the walk too, and who knows, perhaps some early bluebells?

Trains back are at 50 past the hour from Eridge and 55 past from Ashurst, until 22.50

3 comments:

Walker said...

N=28 including at least three late or alternative starters. W=warm-and-sunny-till-mid-pm-then-cloud-with-rain-after-5pm This new version of the walk worked well, with a particularly beautiful start climbing onto a ridge with fine views. Some substantial mud in places but largely OK. The new lunch pub was charming and coped well with such a large influx: it was idyllic sitting out on their terrace. However they were mysteriously slow to produce fish and chips and forgot altogether about two such orders.

The cloud covered the sky by mid afternoon, a bit of a shock after such lovely weather earlier. I lost track of most of the group in the afternoon but most seemed to be at The Burstwood hospital tea room: we were all inside, though, rather than enjoying the terrace. Some talked of short cuts to avoid the imminent rain. At least five of us pushed on to Eridge. Good wood anemones on this section but they had unfortunately all closed up now against the increasing rain.

After a drink in Eridge we went for the 18.50 train but it disappeared from the departure board at the last minute. The problem turned out to be a signal failure in Ashurst. After lingering in hope of the 19.50 being run, as was originally indicated it might be, we ordered a taxi to Tunbridge Wells where "our tickets were accepted on alternative services" as the jargon goes.

Ian T said...

At the risk of sounding smug, the 10 or so who got the 17:50 from Eridge had no problems

MG said...

At risk of sounding even smugger, the 2 of us who caught the 16.50 also had no problems (1 of whom who managed this thanks to doing the shortcut to Groombridge).