TADS #27:Gomshall to Dorking (or Friday Street, I'm in Love).

"What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?" - E.M.Forster.

"Life is easy to chronicle but bewildering to practice" - E.M.Forster.

 

I'd been, as ever, really looking forward to kicking off a new season of TADS. So much so that I'd prepared the first walk in its entirety about two months ago. Come the morning of the walk though, I wasn't feeling so grand. After a week of worrying (about the usual stuff) and bad living, I'd had a night in which I'd not slept a wink and felt massively exhausted. I knew however that a nice walk would probably cheer me up so, with trains to Gomshall infrequent and an earlier start time set for this year so we can take it, in theory, steadier, I got a lift from my dad to Shep's house not long after 8am. Tina knocked round and we walked down to Basingstoke station where we'd meet with Adam and Teresa and set off on the circuitous route to Gomshall where we'd meet Pam (we were down to six walkers but we'll surely see numbers rise as the season progresses) and head off.

Except it didn't prove that easy. The guy at Basingstoke station gave us tickets to Godalming instead and this caused a lengthy and baffling, though thankfully none too heated, debate with the train guard as we changed them. Then Shep opened the toilet door just as a lady was sitting down to have a wee! Fun times to start the season but after changes in both Woking and Guildford we finally arrived, snaking through the Surrey countryside, at Gomshall. My first time ever there and I wouldn't be staying long.

We took a little selfie before we crossed an unnecessarily complicated railway bridge, went down a back alley to the A25, and exited Gomshall - but not before I bored my 'troops' with a little of the place's history. The Manor of Gumesele was a Saxon feudal holding and Gomshall appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Gomeselle. At that time it was 'held' by William the Conqueror and its assets included thirty hogs.

No hogs on show today. Nor any trout (brown or rainbow) in the Tillingbourne river that soon runs parallel to the road. There were people wading and dogs splashing about but not many children playing, perhaps fearful of being blinded by dog excrement.

We were already in the next village, Abinger Hammer. A pretty place that in the summer you could imagine middle class families picnicking to their heart's content. It was quieter in March.

The Tillingbourne that runs through it was 'impounded' in the sixteenth century to provide water for a mill which worked Sussex sourced iron, giving the village its splendid name. It's now been converted to grow watercress but the clock on the main road still shows Jack the Blacksmith who strikes the hour with his hammer (we arrive about half-past!) and bears the motto 'by me you know how fast to go.

Between 1925 and 1945 E.M.Forster (A Room With A View, A Passage to India, and Howard's End) lived in Abinger Hammer with his mother (he never married) and now the actor John Gordon Sinclair (Gregory's Girl) resides in this pleasant and moneyed place peppered with antique shops and cottages. Perhaps misjudging my audience, I'm opting to pepper my report with quotes from Forster rather than Gregory's Girl!

"Either life entails courage or it ceases to be life" - E.M.Forster.

The Tillingbourne flows eleven miles from Leith Hill to Guildford where it flows into the Wey (a river we walked along last year) which in turn joins, of course, the Thames. Mills on it were used for gunpowder, paper making, and tanning. It's a pretty stretch, more of a brook in places, and we would soon be crossing it, leaving the road, and heading slowly uphill away from the sound of traffic. It finally felt like we were on a proper walk.

Rusted farm equipment, fingerposts, panoramic views across the Surrey Hills, and good spirits warmed me even though it was pretty windy. I had to revert to my OS map a few times, and compare it with Adam's GPS thing, but we soon reached Sutton Abinger and The Volunteer. It looked nice. It seemed to be open. It was 11am. I put my foot down and insisted we marched on.

It wouldn't have been the earliest time of day I'd taken a drink but I knew there was (hopefully) better coming up. A path I'd expected us to pass along seemed to be no more so we walked along the quiet (for cars anyway, there were lycra clad cyclists everywhere to go with the more voluminously clad mountain bikers who'd passed us earlier) B2126 and into another pretty village, Holmbury St Mary.

Which, luckily for me (all of us), had not just the largest monkey puzzle tree I think I've ever seen but a really wonderful pub in The Royal Oak. With a stiff climb ahead it made sense to oil our joints and just as we arrived the sun got its hat on so, once we'd chatted with the amiable landlord Darren (and I'd taken a pint of Legacy), we retreated to the garden. Pam was already avoiding the sun (not for the first time this year).

As Adam confessed that not only had he taken up Dungeons and Dragons but he'd upset the Dungeonmaster, the drinks slid down easily and everyone except me had some form of veggie breakfast. There was a lot of smashed avo, mushrooms, and sourdough bread and I quite regretted not joining in. I'd only partially make up for it later.

It was tempting to stay for a second but the church bells had only just tolled noon and we all knew that would be silly. We were lively enough after our lunchtime pint. Said church is the rather impressive St.Mary's, initiated and paid for by the architect George Edmund Street who designed the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand.

We went in and had a looked at the triptych behind the altar by the 14c Tuscan painter Spinello Aretino and tried to find the painting in the north chapel by the 15c Florentine painter Jacopo da Sellaio, a contemporary of Botticelli, who has work displayed in the Uffizi. Quite an impressive pedigree for such a small, but very lovely, village.

We ploughed on, catkins showed their best side against the blue skies of spring, and near Holmbury St.Mary's other pub, The King's Head, we left the village believed to be the basis for the fictional Summer Street in Forster's A Room With A View down Pasture Wood and on to the Greensand Way.

We've walked part of the Greensand Way before (in June 2017 when we met with deer in Knole Park, great service in Sevenoaks' Raj Bari, and legendarily terrible service in Ightham Mote's Harrow Inn. But the Greensand Way is 108 miles long and we were quite a long way from Kent this time. We're not in Ightam Mote anymore, Toto!

We followed it for about an hour and a bit. Mostly uphill. In the canopy of huge trees, negotiating muddy puddles, and spotting an unfortunate (former) squirrel. Eventually, and roughly halfway into our walk, the crowds started getting busier and we came out atop Leith Hill with Leith Hill Tower, standing proud in front of us.

The views were spectacular. To the north we could make out the London skyline, to the south we could see the South Downs. It's said on a clear day you can see right out to the sea and that Leith Hill is pretty much equidistant between London and the coast (but it feels a long way from either). It's SE England's second highest point after Walbury Hill, near Hungerford. But there's a twist. If you go to the top of the tower not only are you higher up than if you were in the top storey of the Shard but you're now higher up than the top of Walbury Hill. Adam and Teresa had a rest but Tina, Shep, Pam and myself ascended the dark, twisting staircase to the top where the views, of course, could only improve!

The tower is an 18c Gothic design and was built by Richard Hull for his own pleasure and that of others as a Latin inscription above the door testifies. It's said you can see thirteen counties from here. I could certainly make out the arch over Wembley Stadium and the sun was using its ray to help the Surrey Hills AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) live up to its name.

Hull was, on his death and on his own request, buried beneath the tower which soon fell into ruin and wasn't fully restored until 1984 (by the National Trust). There is a viewpoint indicator (though you can see planes taking off at Gatwick Airport pretty clearly) to commemorate 'Walker' Miles (real name:Edmund Seyfang Taylor, nearly as good), an early pioneer of rambling so a man who should be close to our hearts.

Miles/Taylor was born in Camberwell, started the Croydon Rambling Club, and wrote thirty-seven pocket sized guide books as well as preventing many footpaths from disappearing completely. David Sharp, co-author of our London LOOP book, said of him:- "he seems to have been a visionary, sensing how important these footpaths would become, as the motor car took over the country lanes. Today we well know how important they are. It was Walker Miles who opened our eyes".

The ticket booth (it's £3 to go up the tower) doubles up as a little shop selling a surprisingly wide range of drinks and snacks. I didn't fancy a raspberry lemonade or an elderflower bubbly but I purchased a brie and chili jam sandwich (I was disparaged for my choice of white bread but, hey, I like both types and fancied a change) that I would munch on periodically throughout the afternoon leaving the residue of chili jam smeared over my oft-consulted OS map to Dorking, Box Hill & Reigate.

Leaving the tower it was time to descend over Wotton Common to Leylands Farm through a particularly dense piece of forest. We walked round the back of some farms, jumped over some trickles, and eventually made our way into Abinger Bottom and, finally, the tiny hamlet of Friday Street and the Stephan Langton Inn where we met the 'car lot' (this time:- Darren, Cheryl, and Tommy).

Tommy, who'd already scored a goal in football that morning, fancied a kickaround with me but with a probable six-seven miles ahead I wasn't being very obliging. I was more interested in trying one of their very local ales (I had an AONB, Shep a Dormouse) and chatting nonsense with my friends.

It was so enjoyable we had another, our first TADS two pint mistake of the season. Friday Street is a song on Paul Weller's 1997 LP Heavy Soul but let's focus on Stephan Langton whom the pub is named after. A 13c Archbishop of Canterbury who is credited with dividing the bible into the chapters we (well, some of us) use today. His election to Archbishop of Canterbury in 1207 was opposed by King John who favoured John De Grey, Bishop of Norwich, and after his consecration John proclaimed anyone who recognised him as Archbishop of Canterbury as a public enemy. When Stephan returned from Paris, him and his supporters forced John to sign the Magna Carta (in 1215).

I'm not a religious man but I was happy to raise a glass to him and the pub that bears his name was a pleasant destination, its only real disappointment being that there wasn't a garden looking out over the nearby Mill Pond.

Also known as the Hammer Pond, we got a much better look when we (finally) left the pub. Walking round the edge of it and skillfully avoiding the (seemingly non-existent) free range chickens we ascended one last steep hill and passed round the minuscule settlement of Broadmoor (not that one, that's near Crowthorne) before reaching, once more, the Greensand Way.

'My' walkers were starting to wonder why I was taking them on what appeared to be a diversion but when we reached the Tillingbourne Waterfall (Surrey's largest, it seems unlikely there's much competition) they worked out what I was doing.

It was as pretty as I'd hoped and actually taller than it looks in these photos as much of it his hidden from view. It flows into a little pond (that you'd not want to take a dip in) and eventually under our path into the Tillingbourne.

The walk was all downhill now, in both ways. A few more, pleasant enough but nothing to write a blog about (except, maybe, the one called Mad Horse Copse), fields brought us out into Westcott from there we followed a long, busy, and uneventful road (we were on the A25 again) all the way into Dorking.

You can tell when a walk is reaching its end and people have their minds more on warm pubs and hot food than the walk by the fact that people tend to find themselves in single file and talking a bit less. It's a pity that most walks seem to end in rather quotidian suburbs but that's the nature of the beast and we usually perk up once we get back in the warm.

This walk was no exception. After Tina had her photo taken at a veterinary centre that bore her maiden name we made our way to The Spotted Dog. A decent, if not spectacular, pub on South Street in Dorking and had a nice sit down and another drink. Once Tina had stopped swaying to Billy Joel's Tell Her About It, I laid down my last couple of paragraphs of spiel about Dorking.

In the Domesday Book, Dorking boasted of fifty-eight more hogs than Gomshall. Both Laurence Olivier and former Reading FC striker Jamie Mackie were born in Dorking and Daniel Defoe, Ralph Vaughan Williams (who was inspired to write The Lark Ascending while here), and Leslie Howard made the town their home. On South Street (where The Spotted Dog is) stand the Dorking Caves (another day perhaps?) and the Denbies Wine Estate (another one for Tina?). South Street also once was home to 10CC's recording studio where Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder recorded Ebony and Ivory.

The Battle of Dorking (by George Tomkyns Chesney, 1871) was a founding work in the genre of 'invasion literature'. Written following the Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian War, it tells of an invasion of Britain by a German speaking country called, obliquely, The Other Power. Or The Enemy.

We'd arrived in Dorking very much in peace and once watered we needed feeding. The Dorking Brasserie had good reviews and was close by so we went there. It was busy/popular but they found us a table for six and after Shep asked (four times) unsuccessfully for Bangla we sat down with our Cobras and our curries (I, unadventurously, had a tarka daal and a chapati - and struggled with it - not because it wasn't nice but because I was run down) and had a lovely old chat and a great laugh.

As usual, the day ended too soon and the walk to the train station (Dorking has THREE) was a bit of a mad rush. At least it meant no train booze although Shep, Tina, and I stopped in a spectacularly grotty pub in Woking and, back in Basingstoke, those two joined Tina's husband Neil for one more in The Queen's Head.

I got a lift back to Tadley from my kindly father and on hitting the pillow I remembered our conversation in the Dorking Brasserie about how there's nothing better than walking and curry except perhaps beer, but how none of those things would be anywhere near as much fun without good friends to enjoy them with. I was blessed to enjoy my Saturday (and many before, and hopefully many after) with a particularly fine selection. Thanks to them all and thanks to Shep, Teresa, and Tina for some of the photos in this blog. It was the tonic, not for the first time, I needed.


Next month, for the first time in a very long time, I'm letting someone else curate the walk. Adam's in charge. I'll try not to be (too much of) a backseat driver but I doubt I'll be able to help myself. I can hardly wait to arrive in Great Missenden for an amble along the Misbourne, and through the Chliterns, to Amersham.

"We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand" - E.M.Forster.