Trip to a small island

28 May – Sunday

We decide that we have been sitting around long enough so we plan s cross country walk. I have seen on local maps the South Downs Way marked. It is a famous long distance walk. It is even marked on our bus maps to show where you can do the walks and intersect with a bus route to bring you home. And so, we provisioned with sandwiches, water, and just to prove I am a bushman, I took my Letterman (thanks Tony) sand my compass.

And off we went to the Priory and quickly picked up the White Marker that indicated the trail. We thought we would head to Dorking, 5 miles as the crow flies. The bus map only showed the roads that buses travel down so all the in between roads were missing. But any bushman armed with a compass can handle those minor difficulties.

And so, we set off along the ridge for about a kilometer before the road shot off into the forest and started looping around. The footpaths (read mudpaths) were extremely sloppy in response to recent drizzle and after much negotiating we popped out of the forest at the Priory Pond, around 500 meters from our starting point.

This was hardly the auspicious start to our 30 minutes of meanderings through the forest. So we picked up the trail again wandering between farmers trails on the way to Dorking now 4 ½ miles away. The trail was marked with white markers which would disappear for large stretches. We would often come to a cross road and only through guesswork, would estimate how far I thought we might have traveled given the lack of geographical features on the bus map.

At one stage we were walking up a particular road and after consulting the compass, worked out we were heading east instead of west. Some back tracking, a walk through a field of linseed or similar, we finally stumbled across the path. Again we set off, a little unsure of where the next road might be but confident that civilization was not that far away. (The jets bound for Heathrow kept flying in a line in front of us. I figured if we kept going in that direction, we would have to eventually stumble onto the M25 and certain rescue.)