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Day 10 – Ock-Cami

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Cami-flage Day 10 – Sunday 20th September 2020

Today’s walk was a short one – in Menorca we would only have been asked to cover just over 7 miles, and there is a handy equivalent not too far from us covering Ockham (hence the title) and Wisley Commons. It may be short, but it has several interesting and unusual features – read on to find out more.

The weather comparison between Surrey and Menorca is getting quite interesting.

It may be warmer Over There In The Foreign, but today and for the next couple of days we get the sun – and better temperatures for walking around, actually. Schadenfreude’R’us. Here’s hoping the gods of weather don’t take their revenge too swiftly….

Here’s an overview of the walk.

The roundabout in the middle top of the picture is Junction 10 of the M25, where it meets the A3. The walk straddles the A3 but stays south-west of the M25.

We started from the Ockham Bites caff, which advertises itself as selling award-winning Bacon Buttties; so we promised ourselves one for when we returned at the end of the walk.

The walk starts out over Chatley Heath, which is attractive enough,

and was even more so earlier in the year when the heather was actually in flower. We soon reached the first landmark, which is the Chatley Heath Semaphore Tower, a unique remnant from the Napoleonic era, the only surviving semaphore tower in Britain. It was once a cutting-edge building at the forefront of technology and design, a vital link in a signalling chain that transmitted messages from Admiralty House in London to Portsmouth Docks in just a few minutes. But in recent years water ingress has been threatening the structural integrity of the tower to an alarming degree. When we visited recently, it was shrouded in tarpaulins as repair work was carried out; today, whilst it was clear that there was plenty of work going on, at least we could see most of this unusual building.

The path then moves into woodland, amongst which can be found several huge Redwood trees.

(you can just see Jane bottom right, which gives an idea of scale). As the trail moves on, the Teddy Bears’ Picnic line comes to mind: “If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise.” Between the trees you can start to make out an unusual object

and, getting closer, you see a mausoleum, which is certainly a surprise finding to anyone covering the route for the first time.

This (according to an engraved plaque) houses the mortal remains of Bernhard Samuelson (1820-1903), his wife and daughter. It’s a striking and unusual thing to find in Surrey woodland.

The woodland trail continues, via a couple of left-and-right shimmies, past a grove of Hornbeam trees

and debouches on to a road. A couple of hundred yards along that you dive off and emerge blinking into a large field (harvested, of course, this being Autumn); in the distance, you can see another mystery object.

As you get nearer, the object turns out to be an air traffic beacon – specifically, a VHF Omni-Range radio navigation aid.

To get to it, you have to cross the airstrip of the now-disused Wisley Airfield on a path between barriers. It’s a former wartime airfield; originally a grass airstrip, requisitioned in 1942 for WWII, the runway was converted to tarmac in 1952 and used to test aircraft built at Weybridge by Vickers. Flying ceased in 1973. The owners have recently been trying to get permission to build on it – so far unsuccessfully.

In case you’re interested, here’s what this area looks like from the point of view of a pilot using a chart to find a route:

OCK is the beacon, the circle is a compass rose to identify radial direction for navigation purposes. DME signifies Distance Measuring Equipment, so it also enables an aircraft using it to establish its range from the VOR. WISLEY has an X in its circle to show it’s paved but not in use (as you can see from the photo; in fact it gets used a lot – illicitly – by kids on motorbikes and the owners have stacked up piles of earth, tyres and other detritus periodically along it to try to discourage them). You can see Fairoaks on this chart (because you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that that’s Chobham’s local airfield) and the edge of Heathrow’s Air Traffic Control zone, too.

Back to the mainstream of this post…..the path carries on past the beacon and then scurries along the side of fields all the way down the length of the Wisley airstrip, which is about a mile; you can see the airstrip on the Overview image above.

Across the fields, in the distance you can see the building work going on in Woking.

We took a short detour once we’d followed the track and re-emerged at the far end of the Wisley airfield. During this and previous Summers, we’ve had a wonderful crop of blackberries from bushes at this end of the airstrip, so we (meaning Jane) thought it would be interesting to see if there were any still worth picking. The answer was “not really”.

There were berries aplenty, but a one-two punch of heavy rain followed by an extended hot dry spell had ruined almost all of those that had ripened.

The trail leads beside the A3 before going under it to the north side; someone has major designs on it and if that’s the council, maybe improvement work will follow? Otherwise they’re just designs, and very colourful, too.

Once over the A3 and past the very posh Wisley Golf Club, a tiny detour enabled us to go and marvel at Ockham Mill, a wonderful building.

It’s one of a group of lovely buildings clustered around the mill pond, such as this

(I wish they’d cut back all that damn’ greenery so that passers-by can get decent photos of the place; can’t imagine why they don’t do this. Anyway, a gin bottle shot seemed a good idea.)

The path leads beside field’s where the farmer’s have clearly had problem’s in the past with dog’s (and punctuation).

The main crop appeared to be a variety of cabbages. I was very taken with a couple of ideas the farmers had used to keep pigeons off the crop.

In the background one can see the Glasshouses which are at the far end of the RHS Wisley Gardens.

The path actually goes alongside the gardens and one can catch glimpses through into them,

and a bottle shot seemed to be a good idea at this point.

At one place, our path intersected another going between different sections of the RHS gardens. Unsurprisingly, the RHS are not too keen on people using this crossroads just to wander into the Gardens without paying.

(I wonder how long it would have taken for their security people to find a senior citizen in a white hat and blue checked shirt in their 240 acres had I taken this opportunity to sidle in. But I’m far too honest to consider doing that. No, really. Anyway, Jane is an RHS Member…)

After the Gardens, the path goes through more woodland, which looked lovely in the late Summer afternoon light.

It soon becomes clear that, despite the sylvan beauty, one is near to several major roads, not least the M25: the traffic rushes by only a few yards away at one point and the traffic noise can be quite intense.

We then turned for home on the final stretch of today’s route, a broad made-up path that led past Pond Farm, where the Surrey Wildlife have a base and which takes its name from, well, a pond.

There’s a lot less water in it than there was earlier in the year, rather like Deep Pool. You’ll know all about Deep Pool because you read the earlier post, didn’t you? Didn’t you?

Eventually, we reached the steepest climb on the trail, which was the bridge over the A3 to get back to the car.

and we couldn’t resist a final bottle shot for the day.

Back at Ockham Bites, we treated ourselves to a bacon butty, which was OK, but the Award Winning Chef was clearly off duty today. The tea was nice, though, and the whole thing was most welcome because, despite today’s being a short walk, we were both feeling a little the worse for wear. Jane (who personfully carries the daypack we use to transport water and gin bottles, blackberry containers, power banks and other odds and ends) found her shoulders were aching and that there’s a spot of trouble with a tendon in one foot; my back was aching and I felt generally tired. So, in both cases, we felt a lot less fresh than we had at the end of, for example, the longer and more strenuous walk that we did yesterday. Perhaps Day 10 is where Walkers hit the wall? It will be interesting to see how we get on tomorrow, on a longer and more testing walk, which takes us back to the highest point in Surrey, although via a different route than our previous visit.

Today we covered 7.57 miles, a smidge more than the 7.18 of the Menorca equivalent, so we continue to be ahead of the game. We have covered over 90 miles so far and tomorrow will see our mileage hit three figures, so come back then and see how we got on.

Day 9 – Cami Mill: Gunpowder Plot

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Cami-flage Day 9– Saturday 19th September 2020

Because it suits my nefarious purposes, I will share the weather comparison between Surrey and Menorca today

mainly through schadenfreude, as you can see. So, we had a great weather outlook for a walk starting near Albury in Surrey.  Today’s walk can be found on the Explore Surrey section of Alltrails, which is part of a collection set up by Surrey County Council.  And it’s a great walk as you’ll see if you read on.  Here’s its overview.

The conurbation, OK village, bottom left is Shalford and the route runs through Chilworth which is slightly to the right of it.  The timing of the day was actually determined by the Chilworth factor, as the one pub on the route, the Percy Arms in Chilworth, could only offer us a table at 2.30pm, so once again we found ourselves starting the walk shortly after midday and, like mad dogs, going out in the midday sun.

As you can see from the route profile, the first thing to do is to go up.  The landmark to visit is a church, St. Martha’s on the Hill, which is world famous in Surrey.  It normally operates only infrequently

but, sadly, we noted that it has been shut down because of the pandemic.  I’m actually amazed that, pandemic aside, enough people are prepared to clamber up to it on Sunday mornings, because the route up is pretty damn’ steep.

But the church is charming, and the view is stupendously good.

You can see Chilworth, our lunch destination,

and a gin bottle shot seemed the right thing to do.

After a few minutes at the church, we went down again, past wartime defences

on to a path which is one of my favourites of any of the walks we do in Surrey, through mainly beech woodland beside the Tillngbourne river.

At the end of the path, we passed Waterloo Pond

into an area of attractive buildings

which seemed a natural backdrop for another gin bottle shot.

The next part of the walk is one of the highlights of all the walks we do in these ‘ere parts – the Tillingbourne Gunpowder Mills Heritage Trail (giving us the excuse for the title of this post.  I realise I’m straining things a bit, but cut me some slack here, OK?)  I can’t put my finger on why I love this trail, but I do.  We had done this walk recently, and an important part of the trail was barred because of work being done.  We were delighted to see that the trail was fully open.

You pass the remains of several buildings where the gunpowder was manufactured

In the last of these pictures, which are of the buildings where the ingredients (saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur) were mixed, you can see bracing metalwork between the walls, which we guess is the work that was being done; I’m glad that this means the buildings are secured.  Further along the trail are examples of the huge millstones used to grind the powders

(seen here with gin bottle)

and you can also see, in the picture below, the round bedstone which was used as the base for grinding.

A stream runs alongside

and there are also ponds which make the whole place very attractive; and there are boards around which tell the story of the gunpowder mills, the use of which spanned from 1650 to 1920.  All in all, the Heritage Trail is a great place to visit.

The next stop was a short way along a path into Chilworth, where we lunched at the Percy Arms.

This is quite an operation, being pub, restaurant, B&B and butchers, with a takeaway service as well as eat-in.  The menu has a distinct South African slant to it (as does the wine list), which means that the portions are hearty; we had a very enjoyable lunch there.  As well as a lot of indoors, and a decking terrace, the place has a big garden which features a great canopy

which in Oman would be called a Majlis – a great idea to ensure that people can sit out even in weather less clement than today’s.

After lunch, our ongoing route took us through Chilworth, where you can just make out St. Martha’s in the distance

through some very horsey territory, including one horse who tried to persuade us he was a zebra

but we didn’t fall for it. The route goes through fields by a stream which is the basis for water cress beds in neighbouring fields.

up a track with some very spooky hazel trees

across a railway

(which gives opportunities for some fun)

past a bus shelter which doubles as a library

and some magnificent chimney work

before debouching into Albury Park.

One might be forgiven for thinking we were nearly done, but the path goes on a long way through the countryside near Albury

by some wonderful traditional hedging work done by the Surrey Hedgelaying Group

to one of the other unexpected pleasures of the route – Sherbourne Catholic Apostolic Church.

The path carries on, past the biggest log pile <Jeremy Clarkson voice ON> in the WORLD <Jeremy Clarkson voice OFF>

past some more lovely bucolic countryside

up a very steep path

and past some more countryside, at the top of which one can see Newlands Corner (my favourite hill to cycle up if I fancy a challenge)

before depositing us back at our car park, some 10.64 miles after we started.  That’s short of the Menorcan equivalent distance, but only by 0.15 miles, which is virtually a rounding error.  Our cumulative distance so far is 83.78 miles, nearly five miles further than we would have walked by this stage had we been in Menorca.  And (whisper it) we’ve had better weather for walking.

Tomorrow’s weather promises to be warmer than today’s so it’s probably just as well that the walk in prospect is shorter.  It has one or two unusual features in it, though, so I hope you feel minded to come back and find out about it.  Maybe see you then…..

Day 8 – Cami in, the water’s lovely!

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Cami-flage Day 8 – Friday 18th September 2020

Because today’s walk was along local paths, we had the luxury of a leisurely start; so different from our normal holidays, when it seems we have to be up early to be getting on with whatever has been set up for the day. So in our very comfortable and eerily familiar holiday hotel room, drinking the Right Sort Of Tea, we could think about the forthcoming walks and set about important planning activities, i.e. booking pub lunch spots. Just as well we did, as we discovered one pub wouldn’t be open on the day we passed it.

We were also able to check on the weather outlook, both for Surrey and Menorca. Today promised to be sunny in Surrey and cloudy in Menorca (though eight degrees warmer there) and generally speaking the prospects for our part of the UK are more conducive to enjoying the walks. We’ve been lucky so far; let’s hope our luck holds.

Plans laid, breakfast and coffee consumed, we set out on today’s walk. Because it’s close to my home, and close to my heart, this is a long post, but I hope you’ll bear with me for this one.

On this map, the village of Chobham is the cluster of habitations toppish leftish.

We have a pubic footpath going through our front yard (long story, blame the people who owned the place before us) and we really can start the walk from our front door. The path is basically fine, but gets a bit overgrown in places in the summer

and shorts are not a wise clothing choice for this nettle-strewn section. The path goes through a wholesale nursery called Daydawn

which I’m glad to say is recovering after really suffering during the pandemic lockdown. They now have areas with plants waiting to be delivered to other nurseries

but there are also remnants showing how bad it got during the lockdown, which was disastrously timed for the plant industry.

The path then goes through an area called Deep Pool. Here is the eponymous pool, which, despite stern warnings, is not at all deep, largely due to the dry weather we’ve had of late.

By comparison, here’s how it looked after Storm Dennis whistled through in February of this year.

Similarly, just along from the pool is a bridge over the local river Bourne, which looks idyllic on a quiet summer day.

But in the February rains, it was submerged at times. For a long time, the water level was very high, lapping at the bridge spars, as shown in this photo.

The path continues through to Horsell Common, which has borrowed some cattle to mow (moo…?) the lawn.

They can be found at various places in the wide open spaces of the common.

The common is popular among local horse riders

and is generally a nice place to walk, with attractive woodland paths.

This one goes past an example of the shelters which have cropped up on this and Chobham Commons. I don’t know what their provenance is; perhaps the local rangers are practising their forestry skills or something?

Along a bit further, our path took us by a café called Heather Farm, just by some wetlands that are run under the auspices of the Horsell Common Preservation Society. It’s a popular café, but any temptation we might have felt to pop in vanished as we saw the size of the pandemic-mandated queue. “Perhaps later”, we thought.

We crossed the common heading, on well-made paths, for Fairoaks Airport. There are bridges and streams, just made for doggy-paddling on such a lovely summer’s day.

Again, I thought it worth comparing the view from one of the bridges today

with how it looked last February.

As we approach Fairoaks, I’m always amused by a sign that one can just about pick out in the shrubbery

(here is it is, in more detail) .

To quote Michael Flanders, “there’s not much you can do about this. Maybe take your hat off?”

The path goes right by the airport and it’s not unusual to find a couple of plane spotters watching the action, as you are very close to light aircraft going in or out (depending on wind direction). We stopped for some moments to watch the fun as aircraft came in

and take a gin bottle shot.

The route took us onto the western end of the airport and Jane reminded me that there’s a café there. Given my strong feelings about not walking past an open café on a hike, we felt it absolutely essential to make the short detour for tea and cake. The facility is basic,

with commensurate pricing, but it’s a reasonable place to have a cuppa on a sunny day,

admire the view of the distant building work in Woking

and take another bottle shot.

We then crossed the road and headed towards Chobham Common, through an area called Stanyards, mainly because of Stanyards Farm

(which has an orchard with some lovely-looking apples ripening)

and Stanyards Cottage. Very handsome buildings they are, too.

The path carries on for some distance, crossing Gracious Pond Road

which is a reminder that we have reached Chobham Common (you’ll have been paying attention to last Sunday’s post, where we mention that Gracious Pond is a disused and now drained pond, won’t you?). And the far point of the walk is the delightful Fishpool, which you’ll also have admired in that post as well, of course you will.

It really is a delightful place, with young moorhens piping as they dabble about and, quite surprisingly, water lilies still open and thriving.

It is, of course, a good environment for another bottle shot.

and we left with one last look at the peaceful and lovely water (hence the title of this post).

The path carries on back towards Gracious Pond Road past another shelter, this one with real living material as part of it,

and a massive ants’ nest.

I really like the paths along this part of the common, which have a different character from the typical woodland paths hereabouts.

The route took us back (via a short, but nonetheless very unrewarding, stretch on a main road) towards Chobham, then branching off on a path

which all of a sudden brought us out into the middle of Fairoaks airfield.

I was hoping for some more aircraft action,

but no luck, so we carried on, past a very unusual sign,

to the next stage of the walk: through the parkland setting of the McLaren Technology Centre (McLaren the Formula 1 racing team and upmarket sports car manufacturer). The Centre is a stunning building, which seemed a good backdrop for a bottle shot.

As you can see, McLaren are big on privacy and one can’t get close enough to the main building for a really good photo. Here’s the best I could manage.

The park is quite nicely landscaped, with lakes and areas with picnic tables for people to, well, picnic at.

After McLaren Park, the route re-enters Horsell Common beside a couple of houses, one of which has, unusually, a totem pole outside it; this looks as though it is creative re-purposing of the remains of a tree…

We carried on to the main path that leads across this main part of Horsell Common. It’s a long, broad path

which is normally a-buzz with people, but which today was very quiet indeed. Perhaps people’s joy at schools going back means that they can’t be bothered to skive off on a Friday afternoon? Who knows? Anyway, the path is world-famous because it leads past a sand pit. Not just any old sand pit, you understand, but the very one where H. G. Wells’s Martians first landed when they made their bid for Planet Earth!

Off to the side of the long path are some steep drops which are a great attraction (on busier days than today) for kids on mountain bikes who love nothing more than to go plummeting off the edge.

Today, the common was very peaceful. We past a handsome stand of trees in lovely light

which gave me the idea to try an artistic shot with ICM (photographer’s jargon for Intentional Camera Movement). It only took a dozen or so attempts to get something that looked approximately how I wanted it to.

and then we headed off on the rest of our route which happened, goodness gracious, to lead us near to Heather Farm, where we were able to get ourselves a final tea-and-cake refuelling before heading the last mile or so home. Today’s mileage was 10.82, well in excess of the 8.11 of the corresponding Menorca outing. We’re now about 5 miles up on the overall required distance.

We feel very lucky to have such great walking countryside right by where we live; being able to reach it quickly for daily exercise certainly helped make lockdown bearable earlier in the year. As you’ll have noted from the other posts in this series, we’re near Windsor Great Park and the Surrey Hills, both lovely areas for walking in. Tomorrow’s walk is an interesting one in the Surrey Hills, involving gunpowder, so I hope you’ll come back to this blog to Read All About It then.