May 9, 1982: Westhumble to Merstham
Bluebells on Juniper Hill
Another month passed before it was time to begin anew. Once again Sunday proved to be the only available day in our busy lives and – as May 9, 1982 promised to be dry and warm – I went to the Saveway on the Portobello Road the night before for my usual packed lunch shopping.
Dorothy again accompanied me, a mark of her enthusiasm for the last venture. So at 9:00 there she was taping her feet in my timeworn ritual. We drove to Notting Hill at 9:15, parked, and – using the Circle Line – soon arrived at Victoria. Our 10:04 train was already waiting for us, but we had to change once in Balham. Dorothy brought two sections of the Sunday papers with her – just as well since we sat on the track for twenty minutes at the mid-point of our journey while BR tried to fix a signaling fault. We were about fifteen minutes late at Westhumble.
Out of the train there tumbled a dozen sullen teenagers intent on a day of sylvan mischief on Box Hill. One of them was carrying a tape deck the size of a suitcase and serenading all of Surrey with musical loathing. He had a face like a piece of raw meat. We passed this gang at Mulberry Cottage and I was much relieved to see the pied piper turn left when we turned right.
The next crisis occurred at the River Mole and its famous hexagonal steps. Here Dorothy discovered a talent for vertigo; her high anxiety was not helped by my attempts to pose her mid-river for the obligatory (overexposed) snap. We then began the very steep ascent of wooded Box Hill – some of the gradients were as steep as those on Great Dun Fell (of Pennine Way fame) but the struggle was over much sooner.
The first of a long series of route finding mysteries was encountered as we reached the patrol of day trippers on the summit, but I found our continuation forward after a while and we sat down at an observation post and had our first snack. This proved to be quite seductive to Hobo, a naughty Jack Russell, with a keen interest in hardboiled eggs and Penguin bars. Dorothy knocked over the canteen – “Does this mean I wouldn’t be any good on an expedition to the Sahara?”
The next stretch was, I could tell from my guidebooks, full of problems. I had copied the more detailed instructions from one book into a second, and I was glad I had. We had to make a half left without the aid of path (aiming only for an old lady and a King Charles on a bench) and parallel the summit road before it was time to plunge into the woods – with a good deal of up and down and not many acorn posts.
At the grave of Quick, “a thoroughbred,” we began a descent from a caravan site through the Betchworth chalk pits. We had to hunt around for the right path several times while dust-covered motorcyclists charged up the chalk. Dorothy paused to admire a beautiful garden just before the B3932. “It would be even nicer if somebody else would do all the work,” a woman responded.
We had to make a left turn up the road but a path had been provided. We passed the front yards of some lovely private homes before crossing the road and heading east again. A brief section of open field brought us back to the foot of our ridge. Ahead we could see the forested heights – in a variety of spring colors – and Juniper Hill House shining like a beacon. We walked up a little bit too far as we re-entered the woods. Miss Dorothy voiced her only complaint of the day at this time – an observation that so much uphill was not her favorite form of walking. We retraced our steps back to an unmarked path (which proved to be the NDW) and settled down for a nice lunch in a cool and shaded bower.
After lunch I carried my binoculars around my neck, expecting to do some bird watching, but walking and watching don’t really mix, and the only thing I spotted, most surprisingly, was the Goodyear blimp, hovering above and trying to find me after so many year’s of friendship during my childhood days on Corning Street in Los Angeles. We met a number of walkers and their dogs as we moved below the ridge in an easterly direction. Finally it was time for the last steep ascent of the day, doubling back to the top again on a wide track. Near the summit the bluebells began.
At “Swiss Cottage” there was a sign pointing back downhill, but no indication of the way forward. We started to follow a path opposite, which seemed to be bending in the right direction for eastbound traffic. A number of houses were passed and the track certainly resembled that described in the guidebook. We made extremely slow progress now because Dorothy was picking bluebells at every opportunity. I would lose sight of her and have to wait ‘til she reappeared, which was exactly what was happening to another walker ahead of us, waiting for her dawdling Spaniel. This slow pace contributed to my inattention to one detail which now began to bother me just a bit: the sun was on the wrong side of the ridge – or we were!
When Dorothy caught up I asked her to fish out my compass. It proved what I was now suspecting; we had been walking back in a westerly direction. What a humiliation for Natty Bumpo! So we started to retrace our steps – even though by this time we must have come three quarters of a mile from Swiss Cottage. Again there were delays for bluebell picking. I had time to speak about the route to another gardener who was doing her thing while a Siamese cat sat contentedly on the grass.
I reminded Dorothy that I didn’t want to miss the 5:41 train (the 4:41 having been lost for sure due to embarrassing orienteering problems) and so we began to pick up the pace. At Swiss Cottage I discovered that the hairpin to the right that we should have executed was unclear on the ground because the NDW sign had collapsed behind a tree. After a while we emerged on Reigate Hill, with fine views and hundred of trippers. As we began our decent we located a caravan with a snack counter and enjoyed a chilled Coke.
A long downhill section brought us to the grounds of the Royal Alexandra and Albert School, which we traversed on roads. The hazy sunshine persisted to the end of the ten-mile day as we trod a narrow path down the last hillside to Merstham, passing the Sunday cricket on route. We found the railroad station easily and had only a fifteen-minute wait. We had to change trains in East Croydon but we made very good connections. One hour after leaving Merstham I was hunting for a parking place on Kensington Park Road.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: