Of ices and men

A group of ten walkers left Warlingham’s White Lion at 2.30pm prompt on June 10 and soon passed the elegant semi where choir concert secretary Bren resides. 

Crossing lush spring fields, with poppies

Shortly afterwards we missed our turning and strayed into private farmland whose owner made clear his displeasure, his anger unmitigated by any apologies we could offer.  Muttering about the future of the landowning classes under the revolution, we moved on and, after another diversion, reached Tithepit Shaw Lane. 

Once past Riddlesdown Quarry we had extensive views over the A22 valley  to Kenley Common. We also tried out some excellent new benches installed by navigator Dave and the Downlands Partnership team.

Nine walkers pose for Pete

We crossed lush spring meadows then followed a narrow wooded path through Mitchley Wood before crossing Mitchley Hill.  We ascended open grassland and entered Sanderstead Rec before emerging in Sanderstead.

Banners had proposed using the Sanderstead Costa for our R&R stop but a popular uprising from among the group insisted we use hyper-local Filtr coffee shop instead.  Serving ten coffees took age but that was the price we were prepared to pay for eschewing global megacorp Costa.

Our return journey started along suburban streets and then took us into King’s Wood,  mistakenly named after another landowning parasite, namely Mr King. We followed grid-like paths through woodland, emerging near All Saints Church. 

Banners, unable to resist

Here Navigator Dave was unable to resist partaking of an ice-cream, thus eating his dessert course ahead of the mains which were consumed back at the White Lion.

Our route