We are very fortunate where we live that we have access to a large network of public paths through the countryside classified as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty right at our doorstep. We can walk in almost any direction for miles through a variety of landscape such as mixed farmland, forestry commission land, national trust land past historical buildings, ancient woodland, protected environments where rare orchids and snakes can be found but never too far from a civilising glass of something cold and refreshing.
We took an unexpectedly long walk a few weeks ago with
a couple of friends and their dog. We started from home and by means of
navigation first stopped at the Wotton Hatch in the parish of Wotton close to
the historic St John the Evangelist church used by the Evelyn family who were
based at the nearby Wotton House, birthplace of John Evelyn the noted diarist.
After a quick drink we forged on to the StephenLangton located in the quaintly named Friday Street. The pub is named after the
Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King John but perhaps more
excitingly was the location for some of the early 80’s sci-fi television series
the Tripods and can be seen in the early episodes of this programme.
After another sit down and drink we continued onwards
to the Abinger Hatch located at Abinger Common where every year there is a medieval styled fair.
Again after refreshments we continued onto our final
public house, The Volunteer, located at the nearby Sutton Abinger.
We had originally planned to get a taxi back from here
but we realised that we did not have a number for one that would take us and
the dog so we had to walk back home as the sun was setting, eventually reaching
our humble abode several hours and about six miles after we had left it.
...
More recently Sue and I took another longish walk,
though this time it was only about three miles round trip. We did however go up
the steep Ranmore Common encountering walkers, horse riders, cyclists and a
group of young people who were participating in their DofE. The sun was shining
as we saw the first of the vines that make up the large sprawling Denbies WineEstate (there were no pubs on this walk, but I guess a vineyard would do). After
a brief browse around the farm shop we stopped at the café and had a cake and a
glass of fine wine (Denbies make award winning wines and claim to have a
climate and geology similar to that of the Champagne region), before we went to
support our friend Mrs Mac who had a stall there as part of a local charity
craft fair. Mrs Mac Makes wonderful craft pieces out of
upcycled/recycled/repurposed materials and can create lovely unique items to
your specification (we had her make a Christmas Sack for our friend’s son with
his name on it), and she was one of the couple with the dog that we did our pub
crawl - sorry ramble - described above.
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