TADS #58:Leatherhead to Ewell (or The Epsom Derby).

The last TADS walk (the Peak District two dayer) began with nine women and four men. Saturday's TADS walk, the Epsom Derby - from Leatherhead to Ewell via Epsom - began with just three men and ended with just three men. Two of those men, Shep and Adam, happened to be very very fast walkers which meant, even with the inevitable 'two pint mistake', that the walk was finished a lot sooner than normal. They didn't even stop and wait when I slowed down to take photos. At one point Adam even told me off for reading a sign!

 

None of which is to say that the walk was anything other than great fun. It was. I'd started the day early. Train from Honor Oak Park to Clapham Junction where I met Adam. The two of us took another train down to Leatherhead, a place I'd never visited before, and we walked through Leatherhead Park on a gloriously, unseasonably, sunny October day. Global warming/climate change is undoubtedly a real, and very bad, thing but sunny days in October are one positive. You need to take what you can in these grim times.

Adam and I made our way down to Stories Cafe where he had a veggie breakfast and a latte and I took cheese omelette, chips, and beans with a cup of tea. Portions were large and the food was tasty. Shep arrived on the next train and put his brunchington away so quickly he caught me up. Then it was time to get moving. It wasn't even noon yet. We were making good time already.

Leatherhead seemed like a pleasant little town (though in the sunshine everywhere looks better, of course) although it doesn't seem a place anyone would have much reason to go if they didn't know somebody who lives there. During the late Anglo-Saxon period it was a royal vill and the first known mention of the place is in the 880AD will of Alfred the Great.

For centuries it was chiefly agricultural but roads and railways arrived and brought with them big companies like Ronson (who made lighters) and Goblin (vacuum cleaners). That's now been mostly replaced by service industries though both Esso and Unilever have offices in Leatherhead. 

JMW Turner painted Leatherhead in 1797 and the town also features in HG Wells' War of the Worlds where it is completely obliterated by Martians. The band John's Children (who occasionally featured Marc Bolan) former in Leatherhead and the town's Surrey Sound recording studio has played host to The Police, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bros, Joan Armatrading, Rick Astley, Alternative TV, Godley & Creme, The Lotus Eaters, and The Wombles. Cue a brief singalong of Minuetto Allegretto.

Monty Python's Flying Circus and That Mitchell And Webb Look both took the odd jab at Leatherhead and Arthur Dent's house in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was in the town. Michael Caine was born in Leatherhead (not a lot of people know that) and Marie Stopes and Bluebird pilot Donald Campbell made the town their home.

After The Running Horse pub (one of the town's oldest buildings) we cut down to the side of the Mole river for a brief riverside stretch that took us under various, imposing and architecturally pleasing, road and railway bridges. The Mole is a tributary of the Thames that runs for about fifty miles from near Horsham to East Molesey (opposite Hampton Court Palace) but we weren't on it anywhere near that long.

Just a few minutes passed before we emptied out into Common Meadow Nature Reserve and cut a diagonal line across the verdant grass. Leaving the park there was a fairly dull stretch down Cleeve Road and along Kingston Road which eventually, once we'd passed a B&Q (that's how exciting that bit was - although there was a strangely small pylon in someone's front garden that amused us briefly) took us over the eight lanes of roaring traffic that is the M25. 

All that oil being used and all that pollution coming out of those cars and lorries, a sight to warm Rishi Sunak's heart. For us, crossing the M25 - be it by bridge or tunnel - is something of an October ritual but I was quite impressed that once we were inside the M25 things got much quieter (even if took a while for the sound of the motorway to die down) and we entered almost immediately into Ashtead Common.

Ashtead Common and Epsom Common are so closely joined together that if it wasn't for a sign telling you you'd have no idea which one you were in. To begin with we hardly saw another person but as we got closer to Epsom we started to see lots of dog walkers. It was a good two and a half mile stretch through the commons and I found it highly enjoyable.

Even more enjoyable was the fact that as we came out of the common the first pub stop was in sight and it looked good. The Cricketers on Stamford Green Road was very busy (the sun brings 'em out) and though it took a while to get served we got some beers, and some water, and found a nice big table in the garden where we were soon joined by Darren, Cheryl, Tommy, and Luca.

Cheryl told us about her recent National gig at Alexandra Palace, Tommy played on his phone, and Adam told me off for charging my phone up too often (apparently charging your phone up too often means it doesn't charge properly - although I'd wager not charging it all is an even worse tactic). As Teresa wasn't there it was, of course, my turn to be on the receiving end of Adam's teasing.I don't mind though.

Inevitably, a two pint mistake was made while Cheryl listed all the men in order of how angry they were (Shep being the least angry, Adam and Darren tying for first - which means I must be somewhere in the middle with Tommy and Luca) and I read out some of the spiel that if you've already go this far into the blog you'll have already read.

It was a very dog friendly pub and it even advertised a 'paw-fect' dog menu and suggested hounds can "fetch a yappy meal" there. Dogs! They're taking over. Although there were some quite cute ones out and about on Saturday.

From the pub we passed a picturesque pond and headed into the centre of Epsom where all the pubs and gardens were heaving. Even the local Spoons, The Assembly Rooms, looked like a nice spot but we weren't ready to stop again just yet so we carried on along the High Street stopping, very briefly, to admire the 1847 clock tower designed by James Butler and Henry Hodge which tops this blog.

Epsom's first evidence of human activity dates back to the Bronze Age but the modern town grew up in the Middle Ages. Charles II, Samuel Pepys, and many others came to Epsom to take the waters but it was soon surpassed by other more successful spa towns like Bath and Tunbridge Wells. Epsom is, of course, most famous for horse racing and the Derby has taken place in Epsom every year, even war years - even pandemic years, since 1780. Lester Piggott is the most successful jockey in Derby history winning the race nine times.

The Oaks is one year older and began in 1779 but doesn't seem to have quite the same fame or appeal. In 1913, famously, the suffragette Emily Davison died after being hit by King George V's horse, Anmer. While John Constable painted the town of Epsom other artists turned their eyes towards the Derby itself and these included Gericault and Alfred Munnings. Notable Epsomians include Jimmy Page, Jimmy White, Norman Wisdom (perhaps Shep's least favourite comedian - he's more an Eric Sykes man), Warwick Davis, Andrew Garfield, Joe Wicks, and John Challis who played Boycie in Only Fools and Horses.

In true Only Fools and Horses fashion I then made a plonker of myself by leading the walkers up the wrong road. Luckily, just outside a branch of Pets At Home, I realised my mistake and we were able to quite easily correct ourselves and carry on up Hook Road. About ten minutes along there and we turned into the final section of the walk - a long path along a linear park that followed the course of a fairly measly little stream.

This stream eventually rain into the Hogsmill river and we crossed under a bridge and over the river and followed the Hogsmill into Ewell. Shep and I had done this stretch before, over five years, as part of a lengthy section of the London LOOP but this time we'd not be on the Hogsmill (another Thames tributary but nowhere near as long as the Mole) for long.

After a pompous little bridge we spotted a pub. The Wheatsheaf. It wasn't one we'd planned to visit but we'd made such good time that we allowed ourselves an extra stop. The pub didn't look promising as there was only about one person in it. Though that was because everyone was out in the garden and soon we joined them. The bar staff were bringing the locals free sandwiches but we didn't need that as we'd be getting curry fairly soonish.

A forest bug (thanks, SEEK) landed on my table and we made our way, via some waterfowl in the pretty pond outside Bourne Hall Park (a park where Shep and I, during that leg of the London LOOP, witnessed a three way fight between a duck, a squirrel, and a pigeon over a piece of bread), to the intended final pub stop - The Spring Tavern.

I had good memories of the place - it was a stop on that LOOP walk on another gloriously sunny day - but Adam thought it felt more like a restaurant and suggested The Wheatsheaf had been a better pub stop. Though, to be honest, The Cricketers in Epsom won the day hands down. It was nice to be able to sit outside each of them.

With time still to burn we had another two pint mistake which meant that by the time we got to Dhansiri Indian restaurant I was feeling a little refreshed and somewhat bloated. The food, we all agreed, was very good though I was quite unimaginative and had a tarka daal and a garlic naan. Adam was eager to  rush off but I didn't let him go until he'd heard some Ewell spiel and I'm not letting you escape it either!

Ewell was once held by William the Conqueror and Samuel Pepys visited often but not often enough, it seems, that he learned how to spell Ewell. It's called Yowell in his writing. Underneath the Spring Tavern there is an unusually large telephone exchange fitted with underground facilities designed during the Cold War. It was a place where they believed people would be able to go and survive a nuclear conflict. 

Epsom and Ewell has long been a Conservative seat and we all know they look after their own. In fact they're so unfussed by corruption in this constituency that they have elected Chris 'Failng' Grayling in the last six general elections. Failing Grayling is standing down at the next election which rather deprives me of the joy I would have had watching him getting kicked out.

Petula Clark, James Whale, and Michaela Strachan were all born in Ewell and the likes of John Osbourne, Michael Frayn, Sean Yates, and Ron 'Chopper' Harris all made it their home. Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painters like William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais would regularly visit, and paint, the place.

Which would be nice but I was now more inclined to start painting the town red. Adam had headed off and Shep and I repaired for lasties to The Famous Green Man where there was a cover band on doing indie rock classics. They were pretty good and I was impressed with their rendition of Oasis' Cigarettes and Alcohol and even more so by their take on Made of Stone by The Stone Roses.

More than a little jolly, we made our way back to the station. Shep changed at Clapham Junction and I went on to Waterloo. It'd been faster, boozier (for me at least), and less well attended than lots of other TADS walks but it'd still been a good one. Hopefully some more familiar faces will be back to join us for next month's TADS walk, Insane in the Crane - from Hayes to Isleworth, and not least because it'll be the season's last walk and that means you can bring games in and don't have to wear uniform. School's (nearly) out.