September 23, 2001: Betchworth to South Nutfield

Only a week after concluding the Saxon Shore Way, the Lees and I returned to the footpath to get in another stretch on the Greensand Way. It was a rather grey and threatening Sunday when I left the house at 7:50 – to make my way to Victoria. I had better connections this time and I was in the vast station by 8:30. The Lees arrived a few minutes later but they were clearly having trouble remembering “Betchworth” and Harold became so upset that Tosh replaced him in the line. She too got it wrong several times, and the clerk hadn’t heard of if it (I had to show her my own ticket to prove that the place existed). We then bought coffee and pastry – Tosh succumbing to the entreaties of a panhandler while doing so, though the barista said that this tale of woe was well-rehearsed, and that the bum haunted the station every day.

We took the 9:02 Bognor Regis train, having only half an hour’s ride this time to Redhill – just as well that we had only a little school gossip to catch up on. When we got off our train there were no signs indicating what platform we might take for our connection – so we asked a platform guard. She informed us that our train had been cancelled – due to a “fatality on the Reading line.”

I decided that we needed to find a cab and the exit guard (who grumbled something about “jumpers”) directed us to an establishment across the street from a McDonalds that we could just see on the other side of a roundabout. This well-guarded outpost was manned by a chap behind thick glass but he signaled that we could have a cab in five minutes and we were soon heading west. One advantage of the cab ride was that we could now be taken directly to the village of Betchworth and save a mile of off-route walking from the halt. I couldn’t remember the name of the pub we had used here but when the cabbie suggested the Dolphin that rang a bell. Sure enough we were soon outside this establishment, a black and white cat welcoming us as we paid the driver £8.00 and prepared for our journey. I put the guidebook in the map case, took off my sweatshirt, and, at 10:20, we were heading east on Wonham Road.

A footpath, which soon ducked inside a hedge, accompanied this road and we walked along a bare field edge to its end at Sandy Lane. Tosh asked me if I weren’t cold, and I answered, “Not yet,” but as long as I kept moving I had no trouble walking in only a khaki t-shirt today.

Our next instruction was for us to turn right at a T-junction, which is what we did at the first road we met (as it ended on Sandy Lane, this was a T-junction) but after several hundred yards, just as far as a Dead Slow Children sign, I began to have my doubts – and so we retraced our steps to Sandy Lane and continued to its end (another T-junction), where we turned right. There was a GW sign on our right soon after this junction, though it took a while for the steps we were looking for to materialize. We used them to climb steeply up to a stile.

Here we encountered a field with horses. Temporary fencing had been established in this space and it wasn’t easy to figure out where we were to go. We climbed under a wire and took off in a northeasterly direction but I was really only guessing that this was the correct way to go; there was no path and there were no markers. At the far corner, however, there was a gate and a stile and the latter put us off on a crossing track – which we could use to reach our continuation forward. I had guessed right but it was obvious that this would be one of those days when progress would be halting. The placement of GW arrows and disks was most inconsistent, and this didn’t help matters.

We followed along hedges in the direction of Four Penny Cottage, but we never passed through Dungates farmyard, and instead we continued forward in a narrow hedged passage, moving in an easterly direction, to reach our next lane. There was no GW sign here but I knew from the Surrey Council guide to turn right. The lane curved to the left and passed between the two cottages signaled on the map, but it was hard to figure out how far to go before looking for the Y-junction mentioned in the text.

We were looking for a cottage as our next landmark but this proved not to be a thatched one on our right but a pink one adjacent to our track, just on the borders of the Betchworth golf course. We crossed a fairway and made our way up a sandy track toward the clubhouse – which was overtopped by a lovely windmill. A family with four dogs was resting on a bench at the top, and one of these canines greeted me raucously.

We used the golf club access road for just a bit, soon turning south and descending to more of the golf course and a residence called White House. We used lanes and paths to climb up to two more cottages, Ivy and Tilehouse, and then followed a narrow path out to the parking lot of the Skimmington Castle pub. Tosh wanted to stop here for a drink, but it was only 11:15 and they didn’t open until noon.

There were lots of people about, many with dogs, and a Border Terrier was just treeing a small ginger and white cat. (After the enemy had departed I coaxed the cat back down to earth.) We continued forward and downhill but we crossed a track we should have taken and had to flounder around a bit in a dead end below – before climbing back up to a spot just below the pub.

We were heading south again but we now had the company of my cat! He danced along above us and then on the track after us and I thought for a while that we were going to have another Whisky, the ginger kitten who followed a school group during a walk in France. I charged at him twice and only deflected his interest a bit, but when we reached another lane and turned left, he lost interest. He was really a charming fellow.

The guidebook fell silent on the twists and turns of Littleton Lane (and its map straightened out its kinks); indeed there was no mention of its steep progress uphill, where we met a busy road and darted across to find more uphill steps. A chap was beginning to walk two dogs and asked if we were doing the Greensand Way. He said he had walked it and that the hill ahead was the steepest section of all. It was steep, but – even by last week’s standard – the climbing was over pretty soon. Some people walking seven large Whippets (or were they small Greyhounds?) were encountered at the beginning of a long grassy ridge heading eastward. Halfway along this a chap exercising his dog took a nasty fall. We all agreed that if this had been one of us then the rescue helicopter would have been deployed next, but he seemed unfazed.

We passed an OS column and a memorial seat to the donor of the land and entered woodland for a descent to Reigate. At the bottom was the A217, where (abandoning the GW for a while) we crossed the street and turned downhill in search of noontime refreshment. Tosh was charmed by a chap who was using an old fashioned mower to cut his grass and this 80 year-old advised a turnoff on the next corner for a nice pub.

In this way we discovered the friendly confines of the Venture Inn. We settled into the more restaurant-like side and ordered our drinks (I had just a Diet Coke again). The efficient and friendly bargirl took our orders. I had sausage and mash, Harold had penne and Tosh had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. It took a long time for the food to arrive – though we were the first customers – but soon the place was crowded. There was one large Asian family having their Sunday dinner. Outside there was a brief shower, then some sun. I was trying to figure out which train to aim for later that afternoon. We had arrived at about 12:20 and we stayed about an hour and I guessed that, with five miles to go, we could aim for the 4:19 from South Nutfield.

To tell the truth, my tummy was in a bit of an uproar as we returned to the A217 to head south, uphill. This upset was only one of the factors that turned the second half of our walk into a bit of an ordeal.

After several blocks we took a half-left up Isbells Drive. This lead us into suburbia, where we turned left – first on a path and then on a street – to head east. GW signs were only sporadically present and when we did discover one, at our next turnoff, the directional arrow was most puzzling, for it signaled a continuation straight ahead while the guidebook called for a right turn on a lane behind some garages. Harold went forward a bit to see if there were any further indications straight ahead – but he returned to say there were none. So we decided to follow the guidebook. This was a mistake. In the twelve years since its publication there had been quite a few changes to the local scene and, after a left turn at the last fence corner we were soon floundering along amid many rival paths in woodland.

We persisted in making our way in a generally eastward direction but as our path seemed to be circling around on itself we reached a newish suburban cul-de-sac and here we made our escape back to suburban streets. On a corner I paused to take out my compass. I knew we were looking for Cronkshill Road and I asked a teenage girl, who thought it was uphill on our left. Tosh too asked for its whereabouts at a nearby pub and we were soon heading uphill on a sunny street. The Lees were charmed with an espaliered apricot tree in someone’s front yard.

Half way up the hill we spotted our street on the right. We should have been walking downhill to this junction – so it was by now quite obvious that the GW had undergone a facelift in the intervening years.

Once again we were heading east. When Cronkshill turned right we found a fenced-in path that lead us out to a common, where there was a sharp right on a track that brought us out to a busy road in Redhill. We crossed this at a bus shelter and turned south again, soon entering the extensive precincts of the local golf course.

There was a little drizzle as we turned east again, following a directional arrow that, in retrospect, I think we should have ignored. We never reached Earlswood Lake (or the much needed toilets); instead we improvised our own way between the green and the bunkers ­– with many golfers of both sexes about – and climbed into a woodland, following a path that brought us out on another main artery.

In fact we were directly opposite an entrance to the Royal Earlswood Hospital, which is where we wanted to be, but I turned south for a bit on the pavement ­– just to make sure there wasn’t another entrance. In this way we discovered the GW making its official exit from the golf course.

So we retraced our steps and took the right entrance road. It led us by a bit more common (where a boy wanted to know if we were lost) and under a railway bridge. We were supposed to be moving eastward through the hospital grounds but the only nearby building was a nursery school. Next we approached Redhill Brook and followed its muddy bank for a while, forsaking it for a series of stiles across fields and through thin lines of trees. There was a long stretch in which we were accompanied by a hedgerow on our left, but this finally brought us out to a road, where we turned left.

It looked like we would still be in time for the 4:19, but as we made our way under our railway line and on up to Bowerhill Lane we discovered that the circuitous entry into South Nutfield would first require the conquest of a very steep hill. The Lees, as usual, got well ahead of me here, and I was worried that they would shoot by our next turnoff, but something caused them to slow down near the top – rain.

I found them sitting disconsolately at a road junction (not mentioned in the guidebook, which also had failed to refer to this hill) and together we continued forward to our turnoff, the beginning of a track along a ridge – where we paused at a stile to put on full raingear. Tosh wanted me to point out the railway halt in the village below us, but visibility wasn’t so good and, of course, I had never been here before.

I was beginning to worry about making in to our train on time so after climbing the stile I set a furious pace along the ridge and then down to the Nutfield Road. I had time to pull out the OS map here and reconfirm the position of the station – then, when the Lees caught up, I continued my charge on the village pavements and soon we were able to take a half right up to trackside.

We used a pedestrian bridge to cross the tracks and here, with ten minutes to spare, we sat down on some covered benches at the end of a nine-mile day. The train was on time and we were soon back at Redhill, where we had about fifteen minutes on the platform before a Victoria train arrived. The sun was trying to come out again and we hadn’t taken in too much moisture in the last half hour of our walk so we were comfortable enough. Naturally our tickets were rejected by the machines at the barrier, but a guard waved us through and I was home by about 6:00.

This day, with its many frustrations and puzzles, sounds like it should have been a real pain ­– but, of course – it was also a lot of fun.

To continue with the next stage of our walk you need:

Day Six: South Nutfield to Hurst Green