Backup Only

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.

Thursday 25 July 2019

Evening Walk: Lovely Lavender near London

Evening Walk -- SWC Short 23: Woodmansterne Lavender Walk (Banstead to South Coulsdon) T=Short.23
Distance: Approximately 5 miles or 8 km for those more metrically minded
Difficulty: 1 out of 10

Meet: Banstead Train Station (meet arriving train at 18:56)

Train: Take the 18:00 Epsom Downs train from London Victoria OR take the 18:11 Epsom train also from London Victoria (changing at Sutton onto earlier train -- arriving 18:43; departing 18:49), arriving Banstead 18:56Return: Regular return trains from Coulsdon South until 23:25.

This walk has a surprisingly rural feel for being a short distance from London. It passes through Banstead Down with views to London and follows the London Loop for a spell before passing through the Mayfield Lavender Farms.  The walk takes you along Coulsdon High Street past the Pembroke Pub for post-walk refreshies on route to Coulsdon South station….More information about the route can be found here. As there are limited instructions for this walk, I would suggest also printing out the map page from the OS Map tab.

Enjoy the walk!

1 comment:

Stargazer said...

5 familiar faces found each other at the Banstead station exit in w=extreme-heat-cooling-slightly-later-with-gentle-breeze and soon came across one newcomer who had set off earlier, making for a total of n=6, on this enjoyable evening. The route has a country feel with some nice views from Oakes Park from where we could already detect the slight fragrance of lavender from the nearby Mayfield Lavender Farm....The lavender was in top form last night -- large bushy plants of a deep vibrant purple -- really spectacular against the setting sun....and full of buzzing bees.....

On the final stretch, we had an odd encounter with a man in the middle of open pasture land and some dogs with very young puppies which did not look great...Fearing the worst, some of us returned...but the guy seems to have taken the puppies back from where they came....we think a nearby travelers camp....

At Coulsdon South Station we were met with the carnage of a delicate rail system in mid melt down.....The Victoria trains seemed to handle the heat better....