July 19, 1991: Witley Station to Guildford
The church in Hascombe
Only five days after Karin, Gavan, and I had walked the first day of the Greensand Way, Gavan and I returned to do a second leg. Gavan was playing hooky from work and was desperate for amusement – so it was either a day watching videos with him or another walk. I chose the latter, even inviting the just-returned Lees – who couldn’t make it. So at 8:15 on Friday, July 19, Lotus’ answer to Clark Kent arrived in his business togs, ostensibly on his way to consult with some computer ace in Newbury, and a few minutes later he emerged from my study in his cut-offs and Rhode Island School of Design sweatshirt: Superwalker.
I had already been out with the dog. We had stopped at the Nosh store and I had bought some snacks and liquid. I carried our Indian bedspread downstairs and we arranged it over the back seat of Gavan’s company car, a new grey Ford Sierra. We left at 8:40, with Dorothy still not quite ready for work. Although I kept telling Gavan that there was plenty of time, he insisted on an aggressive rush through traffic as we headed over the Hammersmith Bridge to the A3. Poor Toby, trembling in the back seat, was quite unhappy, and I was not doing much better with the car swaying back and forth and the Eagles screaming on the tape deck.
We arrived in Guildford at about 9:45 and started looking for a parking place just south of town – in territory familiar to me from my North Downs Way days. We didn’t have much luck and finally Gavan agreed to park in a convenient public parking lot, where we could leave the car all day for £2.40. The twists and turns of this parking search did in poor Toby, who threw up on the Indian spread just as we pulled in.
We locked the car and headed up into town, stopping first at a Marks and Spencers on the High Street, where Gavan was sent in to get us sandwiches. It took him a long time to reject the chicken tikka sandwiches, the Chinese chicken sandwiches, and the Thai chicken sandwiches in favor of the classic BLT. Then we started walking toward the railway station along the river. Unfortunately there did not seem to be any convenient access to the station from this side. I spotted a set of iron steps up to a likely looking bridge and sent Gavan up to see if we could use them. A lady on a bicycle stopped. “I’m sorry,” she apologized on behalf of the municipality, “the gate seems to be locked for some reason this morning. You could climb over.” This we decided to do, Toby being handed over first. It was just as well that we did this because the train station was just opposite the bridge approach.
We bought singles for Witley Station and waited around a few minutes until we were told to use the “tunnel end cars” of the train on platforms 6&7. I found this to be a not particularly useful announcement for those who weren’t familiar already with Guildford geography but a guard advised us where to sit. Our train left a 9:28. The locals were discussing the new curate’s cat. Just fifteen minutes later we got off at Witley Station. There was an unexpected fine drizzle, which we decided to ignore. The moisture was gone in a few minutes and we walked in dry, but grey weather for most of the day.
We walked back through the station parking lot to the little path that had brought us here only last Sunday. Gavan had no way of knowing which direction to turn at this point. I suggested we turn east (our direction for most of the day) since we had earlier come from the west. We were soon walking on a road opposite the Pig N’ Whistle pub (not the long gone Wood Pigeon specified in the guidebook). Gavan expressed incredulity that this was a common name in pub annals (there are five in London); back then he had a way of dismissing anything he hadn’t heard of as stupid or inconsequential, but – unfortunately – there was still much, at 19, that he hadn’t heard of. Later in the day it became evident that the future American attorney (or so he claimed at the time) didn’t know who Earl Warren was either.
Toby, recovered from his mal de mer, was allowed to run freely along the muddy track that lead us to the A283. Here Gavan put him back on lead as we crossed the street and headed north briefly. We continued on tarmac as we turned east again, eventually turning up another muddy track. This brought us by the first of a dozen desirable Surrey farmsteads and took us uphill on an increasingly overgrown path beneath St. Dominic’s school. The final stretches of the route were overgrown with nettles and Gavan was cursing himself for having bare legs again. I got stung on the arms and scratched through my pant legs as we fought our way down to the road that ran through the village of Hambledon.
There were many charming and ancient cottages in this village and I enjoyed my walk through it tremendously. At the end we were directed up some steps. Here Toby charged two Dobermans on the opposite side of a secure fence – what a fool. A stile at the top of the hill put us into a marvelous wheat field, with a narrow slit of a path continuing across and up the other side. The exit stile put us out on another road, just opposite Hambeldon’s St. Peters church. Here we paused for some liquid while some horsey people trotted by.
We continued along a track, with wonderful wide views to the north. Just as we were about to reach a turnoff two women on horseback came around a blind corner. I ordered Gavan to put Toby on lead but he failed to act with any speed and the dog started barking. One of the horsey women, in spite of our obvious efforts, advised us to put the dog on lead – lest some accident occur. Gavan was deeply offended by the superior tone (for which he no doubt blamed all of England) but I too was perturbed. There is something about climbing aboard these huge, ill-disciplined beasts that invites condescension toward the yeomanry on foot. In the event Toby was quickly distracted and we continued along a narrow path in the woods, soon accompanied by a lane below. When this path, drier and crunchier, turned north we soon reached a road –where we had a brief sit-down on a fallen tree.
After walking up the road a bit we headed east again on a track that climbed a hill – whose conifer plantation had been pulverized in the great storm of October 16, 1987. We had a little difficulty figuring out if we had come far enough for our turnoff, but we persevered and it all soon started to make sense. The sun had come out briefly on this open hilltop stretch and the temperature had risen dramatically for a while. We now used some very steep paths to descend to the village of Hascombe, already visible at the four-mile mark through the trees below. We crossed a few final fields and could see a number of horse people (but not the dragon lady) having a stirrup cap of lager opposite the appropriately named White Horse.
I selected a corner table out in front and placed Toby’s lead under a corner of my chair. There had been so much rain the previous day (no wonder footing was so muddy today) that the ashtrays on the table were full to the brim with water. Gavan brought out pints of Castlemaine 4X and the barman brought us our lunch a little bit later. While we were waiting for the food I walked up the lane a bit to photograph the church, Toby squeaking in distress over the abandonment. Some bicyclists borrowed our OS map while I ate my steak burger and Gavan his smoked salmon platter. He also had a second pint. It had been very pleasant sitting out in front of this pub, but, at about 1:30, we moved off.
We passed the church and a nice pond and a number of village houses before heading uphill on a track. We met another horsewoman coming down but she was quite agreeable and asked what kind of terrier Toby was. There was a barn at the top, with the first of a number of colts we saw on this day, but Toby paid no attention to any of the equine fraternity. On our descent from this hill there was a very muddy patch. The dog charged up a bank where there was a thin trod and we followed him; he had discovered an alternative down to the next section, a sunken track that brought us out to a road near Scotsland Farm.
It was tempting to continue to this large structure but we had only forty meters of road walking before being sent north on a series of paths and tracks. Much of this was through delightful woodland but eventually I began to encounter features not mentioned in the guidebook or accounted for on its maps. An unmentioned pond on our right was followed by a stations of the cross facade in the wall of a large establishment that turned out to be the Wintershall Estate.
I left Gavan dozing on a grassy bank with the dog while I wandered forward in search of a GW marker. All I found were two Wintershall hounds, large noisy creatures who jostled me until I had retreated to the grassy bank – where Gavan was freaking out because the Schnauzer was beginning to get agitated by the other dogs. He eventually charged them, though on lead, and they trotted off meekly. By this time I had determined (with the help of the OS map) that we still seemed to be heading in the right direction.
We continued north, through the estate, and eventually located a barn mentioned in the guidebook. Several stiles were no longer in evidence but we were certain we were on the right route when we passed the cottage called Keepers. There were some more muddy tracks to follow – my day boots were pretty wet – before we emerged at a house called Brookwell. A Lhasa Apso came out to have a look at us as we crossed a field. The guidebook ordered us to continue through a gate next to an oak tree (no evidence of a GW marker). This we did, emerging onto the A281 just south of Rooks Hill Farm.
I had a close look at the spot, for I expected to take a taxi back to this turnoff the next time I walked the Greensand Way. Today, after passing the farm and reaching the bridge over the abandoned line of the Horsham-Guildford railway, we turned away from the Greensand Way proper and continued for another five miles along a link route – also outlined for us in the Surrey Council guidebook. In fact we were looking for a place to sit down and have a snack (though Gavan had just borrowed the Tums). There wasn’t any place dry enough on the bridge so we climbed down to the rail line and headed north, making good but muddy progress toward the old Bramley and Wonersh station platform. There were quite a few kids about – another road show company of Lord of the Flies were right behind us for a while – but we escaped them as we continued along a narrow woodland strip on the old railway embankment.
Gavan wanted a toilet but I couldn’t promise him one of these. Just to our left were the backyards and business establishments along the A281 but there was just enough privacy behind someone’s allotment. Someone, pushing a wheelbarrow, emerged soon thereafter but fortunately he turned away from Gavan. My only other problem was keeping a puzzled Toby (bribed with water and biscuits) from pursuing his friend into the bushes. I ate my M&S egg and cress sandwich and Gavan soon returned to eat his BLT.
Near Gosden Bridge we encountered four tykes from a nearby estate staring intently into a puddle in the middle of our track. “Is that a lamb?” one of them asked of Toby. “No,” I replied. “It’s only a dog, isn’t it?” he sighed. We emerged from the trackbed, crossed the A281, and started to follow the Godalming Navigation canal in increasingly sunny weather. A modern office building was sited next to an ancient gunpowder store. We crossed to the other side of the canal just as one chap from a boat party was changing his trousers after sitting in some poo. “Sorry about that,” he apologized as we passed. “Quite all right, old fellow,” I replied. He then went back to the wine and the beer and the paté, but he and his laughing comrades never caught up with us on their slowly chugging boat – and we lost them forever when they reached a lock.
There were some wonderful vistas in the Wey valley here, with wildflowers everywhere and trees hanging above the limpid waters. When we came beneath the sandy slopes of St. Catherine’s chapel (which I had skied down in 1982) there were lots of wet kids, some completely covered in sand after having rolled down the hill in their damp clothes. We passed more and more strollers and their dogs as we reached the attractive waterside scene just south of Guildford. At one point we put ourselves on the wrong side of the river as we neared our parking lot –but it was pleasant to walk through the park to reach the A281 and return to the car (Gavan had left the sun roof open). It was just past 5:00.
I prepared the Indian bedspread so that Toby could have another go. “Get in,” I ordered. Obligingly, the dog jumped into Gavan’s lap in the front seat. (Ironically, Gavan lost one of the family dogs on Hampstead Heath the next day.) We plugged in some Rachmaninoff on the portable CD player and started off. I tried to doze a bit on the A3 but as we started through the stop-and-go of rush hour traffic Gavan’s unnecessarily combative acceleration and consequent abrupt braking made this impossible. Toby too was disquieted and threw up for a second time before we arrived in Maida Vale at 6:20.
Gavan came upstairs to resume his Clark Kent costume while the bedspread went straight into the washing machine and the muddy dog into the bathtub. I had enjoyed this twelve-mile outing considerably but I had to lie down with two extra-strength Excedrin for an hour before dinner.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: