Tag Archives: Menorca Substitute

Day 1 – Cami-mile: Puttenham, Waverley Abbey, Tilford

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Cami-flage Day 1– Friday 11th September 2020

One of the things I’ll do as we go along is to compare the weather between Surrey and Menorca for each day, just to see what we’ve missed.  Today looks on the face of it to be a mixed bag:

So, Menorca is nice and warm, but might rain, whereas Surrey will be cloudy until later and not particularly hot.  Actually, on balance, I think Surrey wins.

Anyway, on with the story of the day!

It seems to be a tradition among the organisers of walking holidays to make the first day the toughest.  This has certainly been a common feature of walking holidays we’ve been on. Maybe this is to soften up the tourists and make them grateful for the small mercies of easier subsequent days?  Whatever, Day 1 of the Cami de Cavalls on Menorca as planned by the Cami 360 crowd would have been the longest, at 12.66 miles. and so it was that our first replica walk was also a long one – officially some 12.45 miles.  In the end, we did 13.28 miles around the Surrey countryside, according to Endomondo.

This being (1) a long walk and (2) the first of, we hope, 13, there was lots to see and take photos of, so please bear with a long and rambling post.  With luck, subsequent entries will be more concise, though I can’t guarantee they’ll be any higher quality.

The general scenery was very pleasant – lovely woodland tracks, occasionally by the water.

Above is a largish pond called the General’s Pond.  In the early part of the walk, there was some very attractive heather

and we decided we didn’t want to bump into any of the moles responsible for these molehills!

Many of the tracks were sunken.

The first several miles were along a formal path called the North Downs Way,

along which is a whimsical “Fairy Cottage”.

Other interesting things were on offer:  some funky fungi:

A steam engine outside a business centre

And a sign which I hope features a typo, otherwise equine outlook is generally gloomy.

We then walked past Moor Park House, which has a chequered history and some lovely buildings

and also features a cellar, which was the perfect place to feature the first photo of our bottle of the Menorcan gin, Xoriguer.

Shortly after this was the second obvious place, which was outside “Mother Ludlum’s Cave”, the one-time abode of the White Witch of Waverley.

The next landmark was the ruins of Waverley Abbey, the first Cistercian abbey in England, founded in 1128 by William Giffard.

I flew the drone here, but didn’t do the site justice, mainly because we were beginning to need to get on with it in order to be on time for lunch.  Here’s the best I can do.

I got a better result with a shot of Waverley Abbey House, the events centre on the other side of the river, though.

The next stop was the village of Tilford, where you can find the Barley Mow and where we found lunch.

Tilford is also home to a famously old oak tree, which we thought would be a good backdrop for another shot with the gin bottle.

At this point, my phone, which was recording the mileage for this journal, gave out, I’m not quite sure why.  Fortunately, I had included a power bank alongside the drone, so we were at least able to maintain continuity. I was quite pleased to have included this, as it’s exactly the sort of thing that you learn from bitter experience to pack the next time.

We then tottered off on the rest of the walk, feeling very full of a delicious lunch.  The countryside around this part of Surrey is delightful.  You’ve already seen photos of the scenery, but there are some wonderful buildings on display, with great tiling and brickwork

and just fantastic settings – for example Cutmill House, which has the largest weeping willow I’ve seen for many a year.

And so, some seven hours after we started, we got back to the car for our journey home.  It was very nice indeed to be able to have a proper cuppa on arrival, and, now I’ve written the day up, I’m going to treat myself to a gin. Possibly two.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about the first of these walks. Do join us as we carry on the endeavour to recreate an overseas walking holiday in the UK.  Tomorrow, all being well, will see us visit the highest point in Surrey – Leith Hill.  See you then?

 

Cam-il faut: Final planning

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Some final planning was needed, so….

…we set up a typical Menorcan evening scenario as best we could, featuring Spanish chorizo (a la Waitrose), and a Menorcan cocktail called a Pomada – local gin (the ubiquitous-for-the-next-fortnight Xoriguer) and home made lemonade.

We look as if we’ll be lucky with the weather for the next couple of days here, so here’s a comparison between Chobham and Menorca:

Menorca may be warmer, but if our luck holds, we’ll have sunshine to help us on our way. I include a photo from the garden to show that although the official version of the local weather is “cloudy”, we actually had some nice evening light.

Photography will be an important part of the exercise, and as a bit of a challenge I’m going to see what can be achieved with just a mobile phone for the various landscape shots.  I should be able to launch my drone in some places so I might well aim for some aerial shots, too.

The adventure starts at 10am tomorrow as we drive to the start of our first walk – and we have lunched booked for 1.45pm at the Barley Mow in Tilford.  Come and join in as we explore various bits of the Surrey countryside over the next two weeks!

 

Cami-flage 2: Here’s the Walk(er) plan

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My previous post outlined the background and general approach to the next couple of weeks, so I thought I’d provide a bit of plan detail for the record before we start trying for a succession of walks that take the place of the Cami de Cavalls on Menorca.

A disclaimer: this is a plan, OK? If the weather takes a turn for the worse, or some domestic admin gets in the way, we are going to be flexible. But the idea is to walk around 115 miles starting this Friday, September 11th.

The vast majority of these walks come from a great website called Fancy-Free Walks. So, if you fancy free walks, we can recommend this as a great place to look for them.

Our 13 planned walks are as follows:

Day number Description Length Cami Length Hostelry
01 Puttenham and Waverley 12.45 12.66 The Barley Mow
02 Friday Street, Leith & Holmbury Hills 9.34 8.47 The Royal Oak
03 Staple Hill & Chobham Common 5.85 5.94 The Red Lion
04 Holmbury & Pitch Hills 6.88 6.77 None available 🙁
05 Virginia Water Lake 5.58 5.36 Cafe in the Park
06 Windsor Great Park 9.42 9.11 Bluebells
07 Box Hill 11.13 11.74 The King William IV
08 Fishpool, McLaren, Horsell Common 9.12 8.11 Heather Farm Cafe
09 St. Martha’s, Tillingbourne 10.14 9.32 The Percy Arms
10 Ockham, Wisley 7.12 7.18 Ockham Bites
11 Leith Hill 10.41 10.79 The Plough
12 Haslemere, Hindhead 10.14 8.53 Devil’s Punchbowl Pub
13 Denbies Hillside 9.12 10.99 Denbies Wine Estate
TOTAL 116.7 115 2,678m

Had we been in Menorca, we would have sought out somewhere decent for a rest and some lunch, and so I’ve noted some inviting-looking places for us to stop during our re-creation. While it would be nice to stop in for a full lunch at each hostelry, we’ve begun to think that the consequences on our waistlines would be too much. However, where possible we’ll look in for a beer and a packet of crisps or some such. As you can see, there are a couple of excursions where there’s no obvious hostelry, so either we’ll take a picnic or we’ll soldier on without much of a break and have a glass of something cold when we get home.

While it’s a shame that we’re not in The Foreign doing the lunatic things that one does when abroad (lunch every day, walk immense distances, that kind of thing) one has to admit that there are compensations for having to remain in the UK. We know the bed will be comfortable; we know the shower will be luxurious; we know that there will be The Right Sort Of Tea (and milk); we will have unfettered access to appropriate clothing for the day (including clean underwear); and we can say “sod it, we’re not going” if it rains. But our earnest hope is that we can do the walks above in the order above in succession. I will report on each walk (including, inter alia, the photo of the Xoriguer gin bottle) on subsequent blog posts, so keep your eyes peeled for each enthralling instalment!