June 5, 1983: Merstham to Oxted
Near Gravelly Hill
Over a year had passed before I was able to return to the NDW; indeed over ten months had gone by since the end of my last outing anywhere – a final five days on the Pennine Way. Bad weather, foot problems, and a schedule that permitted only Sunday possibilities had left me well out of shape. I was especially eager to move past my Day 39 – the number of walking days I had been stuck on since last July.
When the weather at last promised to be favorable, on June 5, 1983, there was, of course, a hiccup in the transportation department. No trains were running to Merstham at all because of engineering works, and I was told by information at Victoria that I would have to take two trains and a bus instead. Nevertheless I determined to press ahead and so I rose before 7:00, bathed, made my lunch, packed my pack, and set out for my first local walking foray from our new home in Maida Vale. Once again, I was alone on this day
It was alternately overcast and sunny and on the warm side as I left at 7:30. There was no ticket seller at Maida Vale tube stop but the trains were crowded for so early on a Sunday morning. I changed to the Victoria Line at Oxford Circus and had time at Victoria to reconfirm my itinerary. I headed for my first platform, having somehow figured out, even this early into my walking career in Britain, that this was the 100th time I had waited for bus or train on one of my outings.
The 8:36 to East Croydon was full of Americans heading back to the States via Gatwick. A loud Scot, left over from this week’s football match in Wembley, climbed aboard wearing a gigantic Tam o’ Shanter. He tried to jolly up the passengers nearby, but they were English and they weren’t having any of it. He was miffed when they objected to his smoking in the no smoking seats and he got up once to smoke at the end of our car. This was a temporary relief to his fellow passengers for it was obvious that he still reeked from last night’s booze-up. “Let me tell you what I got up to last night,” he offered, but an impatient Englishwoman snapped, “I assure, I don’t have any interest in what you did last night.” After he had passed out Scottish flags to the Americans and sang a chorus of “Over the Sea to Skye” the subject of his huge tam came up. “I thought perhaps your head had shrunk,” the Englishwoman noted icily.
I escaped all this at East Croydon and spent a few minutes trying to figure out which train to take to Coulsdon North. It arrived at 9:05 and made only a few stops before putting me off at 9:15. A local lad with horn-rimmed glasses and a limp had heard about the bus service to Merstham and guffawed over this drollery as we marched under the tracks and up to the front of the station. In the event I was the only passenger to climb aboard a huge Green Line coach – which took me down the A&M 23 to Merstham railway station in five minutes.
I returned to the A23 and bought some Anadin against an incipient headache, sat on a bench and adjusted my pack and camera, and returned to charming Quality Street – where Dorothy and I had left off in May of last year. I took the first of a number of photos (of the Old Forge house, in this case). Most of this picture taking was concentrated in the first half of the day and on close objects – since the haze and the low cloud made panoramic shots difficult. There are great similarities of terrain in this section of the Way so that I’m sure that such shots soon start to look alike anyway.
I had made additional notes in my copy of Allen and Imrie, which again proved quite useful today because there were many times when the waymarking was insufficient. On the bridge over the M25 I said my first good morning to the initial member of a large troop of Sunday strollers. This one was accompanied by an Old English Sheep Dog, shorn for the summer.
At the opposite end of the bridge was St. Katherine’s church and Rockshaw Road. I enjoyed the burgeoning gardens of the private houses along this street, which I followed for half a mile. Then it was off onto a grassy path (or a path in the grass) down the hill to an underpass beneath the M23. I paused briefly to roll up my cuffs before a long climb up to the top of the ridge, with birds singing in the foliage that surrounded a little sunken valley on the left. When I reached a lane at the top I passed another very serious walker, heading downhill with backpack and OS maps. I was determined to take it easy and so I adopted a slow pace on my out-of-condition legs, experiencing only the most occasional minor twinge on the instep of the left foot, recently recovered from a bout of gout.
I had started so early that I had to bypass a pub not far from the War Coppice Road, having reached this point well before opening time. I sat on a log after Willey’s Farm and ate an apple. I had brought my binoculars but once again I found it difficult to concentrate on birds. Some magpies were up to no good with some blackbirds.
Political posters were tied to the fences of the farmyards at all the crossroads today. I felt very much at home with such electioneering, for it reminded me of similar rural displays on behalf of the local drain commissioner or tax assessor candidates back in Michigan. The most popular candidate today was someone named Howe. It wasn’t until the following Thursday night that I realized I had been walking through the East Surrey constituency of Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Geoffrey Howe. Far from addressing a parochial electorate, as such similar partisan gestures would have done back in Ingham County, I was seeing hoardings bearing the name of Britain’s next Foreign Secretary.
I crossed a road marked Weald Way (but not to be confused with the footpath of the same name) going north-south to my west-east before I entered a long forested section of real footpath on Gravelly Hill. This emerged into an open space with brilliant sunshine bathing picnickers – who were lying in a sea of buttercups. I walked through these flowers to a bench in the shade and found my boots covered in yellow dust.
I ate my lunch. I had persevered in my attempt to make as slow a progress as possible, but another thought now occurred to me. I had covered close to half of this day’s nine-mile distance and I was still so early that I could easily get back to London in time to accompany Dorothy to a party at 5:00. So I decided to pick up the pace and even succeeded, quite needlessly, in gulping my lunch and swilling my Pepsi.
I returned to the trail on Gravelly Hill before noon but some of my route finding now required guesswork, with a variety of paths on offer, and I looked in vain for help from Allen and Imrie’s little schematic maps. These were to Wainwright as stick figures are to Van Eyck. Some of the hillside I was descending seemed to be bulldozed away but I kept going on the path I had chosen – and this proved to be right. I emerged on a road that ran by a caravan camp. Here I was shown off the premises by an ill-tempered Labrador.
I crossed a footbridge over the A22 and then a field recently mowed down by a tractor, which was still chugging away in the distance. There was a brief stretch on a hedged lane. Two running boys greeted me guiltily as I left this – but I hadn’t a clue what they had been up to. One of them was carrying a jack handle. After passing the quarries at Godstone there was an attractive road with private houses along a track leading to the queer cottage of South Lodge.
It was now overcast. I climbed a forested hill and began a descent in the wet woods. Crossing Gangers Hill (which turned out to be a street name) my heart sank at the sight of the track through Hanging Wood. In fact I retraced my steps to make sure that the NDW arrow meant what it said. I had been doing a lot of muck dodging, creeping along the edges of tracks still saturated with spring rains, but there was no escape now (if I didn’t want to cheat and follow the roads) from this glutinous muck. The track was downhill so I skied down it, squirting puddles of water to the side as I went, the boots covered to the top in porridge. I also seemed to be driving before me a small flock of sheep, including some half-grown lambs. I don’t know how they got there – the track was completely open at both ends – but they began to walk up a tarmac road at the bottom. I lost sight of them because the NDW has its own overgrown up-and-down path in the shrubbery that grows beside this road, and I chose this official version, as I did on a similar just-off-the-road route along wet paths at South Hawke soon thereafter.
I descended a long series of steps over the railway tunnel, hearing the sounds of the 1:10 train, whose sequel, an hour later, I hoped to take. The path was clear on the ground, running steeply down through cornfields and around trees skirting an old quarry. I was reminded of walks at Rose Lake in mid-Michigan a number of times today and this stretch of the route, hard on the feet in the re-emergent sun, was one of them. Eventually I reached the tarmac road that descends to Oxted and I took this, chugging along at a fast pace in order to make my train.
I had to stop at a crossroads to check the OS map in C.J. Wright’s book. I also made enquiries of a resident who was washing his car on Barrow Green Road – a pretty suburban street that lead to the Station Road. I arrived at 2:00, ten minutes early. I started drinking a can of Diet Orange here (it was still with me when I changed at East Croydon). I tried to rub off the first layer of muck as I waited now in Oxted. Here I heard the first crack of thunder. Rain followed and I was forced to put on my rain cape – not for the walk itself – but to get home from the tube stop. I made it by 3:30.
This Merstham to Oxted day was a unique one for me in a number of ways. It was my last solitary walk. From this point forward I always managed to find at least one companion for my rural adventures. By a curious accident I was about to get to know for the first time two of these future fellow walkers, for the party I was rushing to was given by Tosh and Harold Lee. When they heard what I had been up to they insisted on coming along at some time in the future. In the years that followed Tosh, who was also to be my boss (and then I hers) in the English Department at ASL, chalked up over 3000 miles at my side, with Harold close behind. So I discovered my most steadfast walking partners precisely on a day that turned out to have been the scene of my last solo effort.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: