The Bewilderness

Surrey does not have three peaks

Tonight I shall inveigh against the Surrey Three Peaks. This was a challenge that I would find posters for scattered across the woodland south of Dorking near Leith Hill. It was an admirable endeavour for charity whereby walkers, runners and the can't make your mind up crowd of joggers complete three hills in Surrey. The usual route is 26 miles though the peaks can differ. The highest hills (Box Hill, Leith Hill and Holmbury Hill) are usually included.

This a good stiff walk and could be accurately called the Surrey Hills Challenge (a more fitting tribute to the locale) or the Surrey Three Hills. I am unconvinced that any of the hills in Surrey could be described as having a peak. One expects snow, technical scrambling and walking up for a few hours. The ups and downs of Surrey just don't cut in and these titles do encourage a Trade Descriptions Act moment.

Does this appropriation actually detract from the Three Peaks itself? Not really. Those who experience the proper challenge understand what is required and can look down on such error from a great height! The lesson is that you do not need to clothe your route in another's garb. I am sure that there is a better name for these routes. Though I would balk at the Surrey Stride which is also intellectual property theft. I would prefer the Surrey Hills marathon.

Barraboy Mountain

During my sojourn in Ireland, there was one opportunity for scouting future trails and taking the air in the mountains. The weather was so bad (indeed equivalent to the rain now beating down upon my conservatory) that there was no alternative to bundling in the car and taking off for the Misty Mountains (my parochial mythmaking for the Dingle Peninsula).

There are three trails that criss-cross through this beautiful and mournful country: the Beara Way, the Kerry Way and the Dingle Way. All of them are exceptional in terrain and landscape. All three will be walked.

My sole attempt in Ireland was a useful primer in the bogs and mountains of Kerry. Having been bought a guide: "Walks in Kerry", I flicked through the pages and selected one of reasonable challenge. Words such as "don't do it alone" and when the mountains are in mist proved irresistable. Hardest first is a foolhardy motto but I chose it. As with all such books, the time and the distance was wrong. It took four hours, not six: and the distance was 13 miles, not 9. These are mere quibbles.

The first section followed the Beara Way up minor roads and up an old track called the Esk Way to a radio transmitter. The incline was steep and the track petered out but the off-road element gave me an alluring taster for this trail. (Added to the list!) After that, there was no path: just picking your way across a ridge walk for four miles in the mist and rain. Sometimes conditions were clement, especially as you trudged down into a saddle; sometimes conditions were ferocious. I last saw my baseball cap in a howling gale sailing north on the wind whilst rain battered me. Luckily these conditions were infrequent and didn't mar an enjoyable walk too much.

The peak of the walk is 519 metres near the Priest's Leap following which you turn back down into the valley on a tarmac road (a wonderful respite) and leave the heights behind. On a sunny day, the ridge walk must give a wonderful view of Kenmare and Bantry Bays. Even in the rain, one could see glimpses of this.  

The path is good experience as the ridge walk follows a fence due east for four miles. A compass is essential but it is hard to get lost. I never needed to look at an OS map, just the sketch outlined in the book. You can do worse than the Barraboy Ridge for an introduction to the Irish Mountains and bagging Barraboy Mountain (456 metres)

Tea is best appreciated after 40 miles

The Ridgeway 40 is not the hardest or the most enduring of routes, and the wide track can induce a certain ennui after twenty-five miles given the monotonous series of views one walks through. On a slower and more sedate pace, it is a splendid trail, but this all lost to the pain of slogging. 

Is the pain of weary feet and sore legs worth the small Certificate given out at the end and the bone-weat satisfaction of sitting down with a cup of tea? It is not a question I can answer. But ne'er did a cup of tea taste so good!

The beauty of the High Weald

If I leave my house and trend in a southerly direction, I find my way blocked by Gatwick Airport. Some would view this as a blight on any ramble, inhibiting an appreciation of the countryside and destroying vaunted pace with engine roars and frenetic activity. This is a wholly one sided view of the airport. Public footpaths run round and through the grounds so you skirt this vast machine following rivers or paths. One can marvel that a pleasant river meanders not five minutes away from a runway, once one has tracked away from the roads and hotels.

If the small pleasure of finding pleasant fixtures on the margins of Gatwick provides a small satisfaction at the start of the walk, then the commencement of the Weald a few miles further south becomes a splendid secret rarely sought by those outside of the area. The rolling hillsides and small villages provide a small landscape of fields and woodland. The paths may seem tame but you soon start to descend up and down steep banks leading to rivers passing through the woods and carved out deep channels in untouched settings.   

The principle paths that run through this small-scale land with its unseen challenges are principally three: the Sussex Border Path, the West Sussex Literary Trail and the High Weald Landscape Trail. I have walked parts of two out of three. All the paths fall below the Crawley blight and meander through small villages with ancient churches and crumbling cemeteries. For me this rivals the Surrey Hills as an area of natural beauty.

A quest for the bouldering glove

I am not sure why bouldering gloves are such an obscure product line. Meandering around the outdoor shopping cluster in Covent Garden, I asked about this in two shops. Neither were much help. The term scrambling appears to have gone out of fashion in favour of bouldering. I am not sure why! 

The first response was an "Urk!", as if I had asked for the moon. The second asked me to define a "bouldering glove": light, with grips and acting as a backstop if the surface is cold, snowed or wet. Their recommendation was diver gloves for working underwater. Not as daft as it could sound and could possibly work well.

But with retail efficiency like this, no wonder we turn to the net for all things emporium.

The Clarendon Way

The Clarendon Way can be viewed as an extension or the final part of the South Downs Way. The hills become more attenuated after you leave the National Park and they are punctuated by the Test Valley. Yet, the path begins where the South Downs Way ends: at Winchester Cathedral. 

The first few miles wound around the countryside and suburbs of Winchester before finding its stride after leaving Oliver's Battery. Then, for the next six miles, you get a good hilly walk with views before the path finally declines to the Test Valley and the village of Kings Somborne. All of the villages are currently feeling the effects of flooding. I bought lunch at Kings Somborne and had to cross sandbags and a bridge to get to the village shop. This was a taster for the lake within which the various branches of the River Test flowed. I was perturbed but the track is well-maintained, raised and presented no problem in reaching Houghton. 

From here. the landscape undulates and flattens out. the track passes through fields and woodlan before the settlement of Middle Winterslow is reached. Of irritation is the difference in tracking between the map and the signs. Variation allows different routes to be tried out, though they all end in the same destination, Salisbury. 

And as you walk through the woods and walk down towards the town, you can see the immense spire of the Cathedral rising through the mist. Measured at 30 miles, the Clarendon Way is one of the most beautiful walks accessible from London. And you get in a measure of the Monarch's Way and cross the Test Way!

Six Paths of Connection

Great Britain is criss-crossed by long distance paths: some marked on Ordnance Survey maps; some accessible through websites where such matters are collated. All are connected in one way or another. 

When completing long distance paths: does the goal of completion become an obsession? Are these connections a hidden set of highways and byways: perhaps a hidden lymph system set down and away fromthe busier nerve systems of roads and rail.

All I know is that there a lot of paths and, time enough, to walk them. 

One castle and some fields

The Three Castles Path is a long distance route that commences on the Thames near Windsor Castle and ends at the third fortress in Winchester. Walkers may witness the second (or middle) castle at Odiham whilst meandering along the Basingstoke canal. This is the canal, constructed during the eighteenth century, that links the Wey navigation with Basingstoke. Most of the waterway is intact and there was recent evidence of dredging, the path narrowed by mounds of mud on the side. Yet, the limit of navigation is reached soon after the castle and the canal flows away into a blocked tunnel at Greywell, an anticlimactic end behind a screen of trees and ferns. 

The path commences through a series of historic Hampshire villages and via a set of lakes on the leg from Crowthorne. However, the flooding did take its toll and we had to take a short detour to avoid an impromptu river. Many of the village cemeteries held more gravestones of servicemen than I recall seeing on other walks. Perhaps this is a local feature; perhaps not. 

The view of Odiham Castle, now a picaresque ruin, is short. Built as a castle for King John, this mediaeval stronghold is now a walled shadow. It is hard to believe that this also formed a site for Parliament. The castle is a good stopping point for photos since it stands only a little way from the path. However, the stop is short and once you are back on the road, the canal is shortly replaced by good tracks and some field walks. 

The route does not go to Basingstoke so a further two miles can be factored in via the footpath near Backwood house to reach the town. Despite the dogleg, this was a pleasant parkland walk and reinforced the notion that the Three Castles path aims for the posher parts of the south-east.

A thirst for the green on the London Loop

After the station of Hayes (Kent), the LOndon Loop meanders south and westwards along the borders of Bromley and Croydon. The path seeks out whatever stretch of green open space divides two housing estates and gently explores ancient woodland. All of the land here is an extension of the North Downs, and the slopes become steeper as the walk trends south towards Whyteleaf and Kenley. 

The Loop shares its apth with two other ways: the Vanguard Way (completed) and the Tandridge Border Path. South of Croydon, the path is supposed to entertain the spirit of the rural. This was not my expectation or experience. A series of commons was advertised but felt like a succession of London's wilder parks. Only Happy Valley and the view back from Farthing Downs convinced me that I was part of a wider landscape.

The section from Hayes to Coulsdon South has merit but, imprisoned by the city: the promise of heath and woodland hemmed in all around, only served to leave the path wanting in a wider sense. 

Unsuccessfully following white posts

The Epping Forest Centenary Walk is one of those paths that curls off the map. Forests are difficult terrain to navigate at the best of times. A route that angles down small paths or veers off into brush does not fill me with the hope of following every twist and turn marked on the map. 

The Centenary Walk is a useful marker for witnessing the gradations of wildness that you pass by on your journey out of the city. From one of the most cosmopolitan and diverse suburbs in Manor Park, you leave a street full of Pakistani shops with Polish subtitles for an invisible cloak of woodland and wildland that allows to proceed by stealth without meeting another Londoner (apart from the ubiquitous dogwalkers).

Whilst this provided me with an opportunity to increase my intimacy of London's green spaces such as the Wanstead Flats or Epping Forest, there is a notable lack of diversity. One finds that the word for London is forest and you begin to feel a hunger for some of the variety for which the city is renowned. Perhaps this is due to the lack of a view on most of the walk. It is one of those rare routes where you do not a vista looking down into the City. There are no famous landmarks here.

It is unfortunate that my time to ponder the route and meander was cut short by train delays and the shortest day of the year. Prevented from following the route "off-piste", I opted for the wider paths and found that they did not follow the marked path. Neverthless, despite never making an accurate trek, I found that this was a sufficient expedition to seek out other paths that may meander across the city. Hopefully they are easier to find than the white posts of Epping.