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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 28 October 2017

Saturday walk - Guildford via Chantries Hill Circular - Surrey woods, hills and views

SWC Walk 57 - Guildford Circular via Chantries Hill
Length:            - 20.6km (12.8 miles) for the full circular walk
                        - 17.2km (10.7 miles) finishing in Shalford
Toughness:        4 out of 10

9.30 (Portsmouth Harbour-bound) train from Waterloo (9.37 Clapham Junction) to Guildford, arriving 10.10.

Buy a day return to Guildford, unless you intend to return from Shalford, when a day return to Shalford is better.

For walk directions click here. For GPX file click here.

I am balancing the clamour for shorter walks here (due to be amply fulfilled anyway between now and the end of January!!!) with the demands who will want to make the most of this last day of British Summer Time.

This walk fits the bill thanks to a new option sneaked into a year and a half ago but not so far given an outing - namely the option to end in Shalford, rather than Guildford (option d in the walk directions).

You don't have to decide if you want to do this till late in the walk. The whole group will be together (as far as SWC groups are ever together...) for a pleasant walk along the River Wey, a climb over Chantries Hill with its woods and views (including sweet chestnut which can be very colourful in October), and the walk over St Martha's Hill - familiar territory for many of you.

You then descend to the village of Albury for lunch at the usually reliable and welcoming Drummond pub (a short cut through the woods to this is available, saving 0.8km/0.5 miles: it been incorporated into the Guildford to Horsley walk - see page 9 in that walk's directions: paragraph 28 in that walk is the same as paragraph 28 in this one).

After lunch it is up onto Blackheath, an area of heaths and more woods, where old timers will eventually recognise that they have jouned the route of book 1 walk 14 (which this walk was partly designed to replace, when that walk lost its lunch pub).

When you get back to the River Wey you have the option to finish at Shalford (where there are two pub options and a cafe, but the latter shuts at 4.30pm) or to carry on along the Wey into Guildford. (You can also use the option d directions to have an early tea in Shalford and then continue the walk to Guildford, it being probably the last day for some months when you have the luxury of having tea before the end of the walk.)

Trains back from Shalford are at 03 past the hour: with a nine minute change in Guildford, this gets you to Waterloo in one hour

Trains back from Guildford are every 15 minutes and take 41-44 minutes. T=3.57

Would the last person to finish please switch the lights off until spring....

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds good and will be a popular choice. Thanks, Walker.

Anonymous said...

There is a rail replacement bus service between Woking and Guildford on Saturday 28th

Walker said...

There is, but it does not affect us. Trains will run via an alternative route between Surbiton and Guildford but it does not affect journey times or frequencies. (This route is in fact used by some peak hour fast trains anyway). Thank the Victorians for building all these “pointlessly duplicated” rail lines.

Anonymous said...

I think the bus service only applies if you are getting on or off at Woking. Trains appear to be running directly from London and Clapham Junction to Guildford

Walker said...

N=22 on this walk, let us say - I counted 17 at the beginning, but we acquired at least five more during the morning ('We parked at Chantries Hill", "I got an earlier train but it turned out to be a stopping service" "The hamster ate my homework" etc), so we were a nice big happy group going over Chantries Hill and St Martha's Hill. It was a w=lovely-sunny-day - all you could ask for in the last day of British Summer Time - and layers came off, right down to shirtsleeves. We had a pleasant sit in the sun on the benches in front of St Martha's church. But I noticed that for those of us who sat in the garden at lunchtime (for the last time this year??!!??) the layers started coming back on again - ie, it was not QUITE as warm as it looked.

The lovely Drummond pub in Albury accommodated us all with ease, as it always does, bless it. I am a biased and prejudiced reporter, having written this walk, but I enjoyed it heaps, despite its familiarity: a nice range of terrains from woods to open views to heathland to farmland and then riverside. Autumn colours were good on outward faces - that is to say, good tints on those parts of the tree explosed to the sun, green at path level still. The sweet chestnuts did not disappoint, and there were also four red admiral butterflies.

A handful of us tried the new option to the Snooty Fox tea room in Shalford - the first time an SWC has visited this? Two got a bus from here to Guildford. Others went straight on to Guildford to tea, getting there as early as 3.30pm. The rest of the Snooty Foxers had a nice walk along the river into Guildford, enjoying the last of the British Summer Time sunshine.

Anonymous said...

In case anyone is wondering about the many "missing dog" posters en route today, I'm happy to say Shelley (who went missing from St. Martha's Hill on Monday 23rd and had since been spotted running around) has been found safe, although very hungry, and is back at home.

Anonymous said...

Jolly good anonymous,nice of you to report this happy news and proves that at least someone in the club likes dogs!😄