Hascombe - Hydon's Ball - Surrey Hills AONB - Circular
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Hascombe lies in a valley in the Surrey Hills south of Godalming, just to the south of Winkworth Arboretum, which you may have visited. It has a very special Victorian church, well worth a look, a lovely village pond and a great pub, the White Horse – see Additional Information.
Your route leaves Hascombe beside the pub and heads west through fields and lanes to the National Trust area of Hydon's Ball and Heath. You pass a memorial to Octavia Hill, one of three volunteers who founded the National Trust. Incidentally there are now 47,000 volunteers who help to run the NT's properties and its annual income is close to £400m. The NT woodland is a mixture of planted species with natural regeneration and includes oak, rowan, holly, birch, pine and chestnut. Bilberry or 'hurt' grows in profusion on the common.
You cross the West Surrey Golf Course and see the particularly fine Enton Mill near Witley. Witley has some very interesting old buildings and several pubs, one conveniently at the turning point of your route, but sitting astride the busy A283 it lacks the peace and quiet of the rest of the walk.
As you leave Witley, you will pass Enton Hall, a former health hydro. When in 1956 the writer Ian Fleming's sixty cigarettes and bottle of gin a day began to catch up with him, he spent some time here. It features in Thunderball as 'Shrublands', where a reluctant Bond is packed off by M. It seems that rest and recuperation had a better effect on Bond than on his creator, who needed further heart medication immediately after checking out.
You join the Greensand Way, which in total runs for 108 miles from Haslemere along the Greensand ridge, parallel to and south of the North Downs, into Kent and almost to the coast. It takes its name from the layers of sandstone and in particular the green-coloured mineral glauconite.
You miss the village of Hambledon, the Surrey one, not the more famous home of cricket further south in Hampshire, but Hambledon's Church of St Peter is quite separate from the village and right on your route. The church was almost entirely rebuilt in 1846. The churchyard contains two gigantic yew trees, one with a thirty-foot circumference and hollow, with space for four people inside. Legend has it that if you walk around the interior three times you will see a witch. The trees antedate the church by many centuries.
England - South England - Surrey - Surrey Hills
Features
Birds, Church, Great Views, Hills or Fells, Lake/Loch, National Trust, Pub, Public Transport, Restaurant, Woodland
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