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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 13 May 2017

Saturday Walk – Glencoe Warm-up -- the High Peaks of the South Downs

SWC Walk 68:  Rowlands Castle Circular T=SWC.68

Distance:  15.9 miles or 25.5 km for those more metrically minded (longer (18 miles/29km) and shorter (10 miles/16 km) options are available)

Difficulty:  9 out of 10 for the main walk (4 out of 10 for the shorter walk and 10 out of 10 for the extended walk)
Train:  Take the 9:00 AM Portsmouth Harbor train from London Waterloo, changing at Haslemere (arriving 9:48 and departing 9:55) to arrive at Rowlands Castle at 10:21.  Return trains from Rowlands Castle are hourly at 46 past the hour until 22:46. Buy a day return to Rowlands Castle. 

I recall that this made a good warm-up exercise for the Scottish trip last year and seeing as the Scottish trip is just around the corner again – thought it would be a good warm-up for those heading off to Glencoe, as well as, a good energetic walk for everyone else…  It is a demanding walk in the western part of the South Downs along an undulating route with great views far and wide, after a gentle start along a beech tree avenue towards Stansted House and with lunch in a very remote and isolated valley.  You can find more information about the walk and download the walk instructions here.

The recommended lunch spot is the Royal Oak (01243 535 257) in Hooksway (8 miles/13 km into the walk) which serves food until 2:00pm – so do keep an eye on the time.  Tea and other post walk refreshments can be had at the Castle Inn -- a stone’s throw from the train station.    

Enjoy the walk!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Essential training for mountain men and women:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/07/ice-baths-and-snow-meditation-can-cold-therapy-make-you-stronger-what-doesnt-kill-us-scott-carney

Walker said...

n=14 on this walk, including one late starter that caught us at lunch. The weather was w=cloudy-clearing-to-sun_and-cloud-later. There were the remains of some good bluebell woods at the start and throughout we kept coming on good patches of wild garlic more or less still in flower. Early on we had our Senderismo en Londres friends (a Spanish walking group) on our tails but we lost them after a bit and never saw them again, even though they said they were doing the same walk.

I had never done this new longer version of the walk, which was very pleasant - up hill and down dale, plenty of variety of scenery. The wonderfully remote lunch pub had a lovely sunny garden. All but one then did the extension up onto the South Downs, and some even did the extension to the extension - 19 miles in all? Feeble old me stuck to the main walk and so did "just" 16 miles.

My reward was to get to the Compton village shop in time to get tea in pots: the rest arrived just as they were packing up and had to make do with takeaways (which nevertheless they were allowed to consume at the outside tables). We were then all together (ish) for the last 4.6 miles into town, where most of us caught the 6.46 train but some stayed for dinner.