Length: 20.3km (12.6 miles) T=3.57
Shorter options: 13.1km (8.1 miles) to Chilworth, 17.5km (10.9 miles) to Shalford
Catch the 9.28 train (two minutes earlier than usual, note) train from Waterloo to Guildford (9.35 Clapham Junction) to Guildford, arriving 10.13.
On arrival, leave the platform and past through the ticket barriers and out onto the station forecourt to do the meet and greet. (Just inside the doors if it is wet.)
Buy a day return to Guildford, though if you are planning to do one of the shorter endings, get a return to Chilworth or Shalford instead.
For walk directions click here, for GPX click here, and for a map of the route click here.
This walk has plenty of woods, including sweet chestnut and beech which should be showing good colour by now, if there is any justice in the world. There are also views from Chantries and St Martha’s Hills and a riverside finish.
The walk last had an outing this time last year when heavy rain meant hardly anyone turned up. We can do better this year, right? (With the weather or numbers of walkers? - Ed) (Both, hopefully - Walk Author)
Lunch is in the very nice Drummond at Albury, which has always accommodated us in the past.
The walk can be ended at Chilworth via a short cut mid afternoon (making a walk of 13.1km/8.1 miles) but trains from this station are only every two hours at 3.56pm, 5.56pm etc. In between you can lurk in the Percy Arms or you may be able to catch a bus (hourly from outside the station) into Guildford
Better, if you can stand it, is to carry on to Shalford - 17.5km/10.9 miles - from where there are hourly trains on the hour (00 past) to Guildford, and also more frequent buses. There is a pub here by the station, and you might even get to the lovely Snooty Fox cafe, which shuts at 4.30pm.
The full circular walk (20.3km/12.6 miles) carries on from Shalford to Guildford along the River Wey - easily doable in the dusk or dark, though if the night is clear some of us may take advantage of the near full moon to do a moonlight walk in the area - eg southwards along the Wey to Godalming.
Trains back from Guildford are every 15 minutes - 03, 17, 33, 47
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Sigh! Another soggy Saturday (the fourth in five weeks), though actually there was only w=rain-in-the-afternoon after a dry morning. Approaching the lunch pub we even discussed carrying on past it to make the most of the dry weather (as maybe some of the sandwichistas did?) but it would have done no good, as the rain started shortly after. For the rest of the daylight hours it was then pretty relentless, though less extreme than last week.
There were 11 of us at the start of this walk; one more materialised soon after and one caught us at lunch. So n=13 in all. Two “hors de combat” walkers also joined us for lunch in the pub.
Autumn colours were excellent throughout this walk, with golden beech and sweet chestnut prominent. The short cut before lunch, with its stately avenue of very tall beeches, was particularly fine. Honourable mention also goes to Blackheath after lunch, where copper-coloured bracken complemented the tree tints.
The Drummond at Albury accommodated us for lunch without fuss, as always, and served walker-sized portions. For tea I was delighted to introduce two walkers to the Snooty Fox in Shalford, one of my favourite tea stops. Two went to the Seahorse pub nearby, and two of us joined them there after tea.
At least one person had walked on to Guildford by this point and one got the train to Shalford. The four of us in the Seahorse pub then walked in the atmospheric last dregs of the daylight (not moonlight, alas, but a bit like it) across the Shalford Watermeadows and along the river to Guildford, arriving a little after 5pm. We had a drink in the White House and got a train at about 6.30pm.
I forgot to mention that at the start of this walk the route along the river from Millmead Lock was blocked by the collapse of a footbridge and weir in last Saturday’s deluge. We diverted around this fairly easily, but it meant the Wey Navigation was a metre lower than usual. Later research revealed it had been totally empty of water till the previous day, when construction of a temporary sandbag barrier to plug the gap started. Whether a temporary footbridge over the gap will also be erected soon, I do not know. Meantime a diversion around the blockage is possible by crossing Millmead Lock and walking to the main road, then turning right along it for about 300 metres until there is a footbridge across the Navigation to your right, which gets you back into the walk route.
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