The Rough Guide to Walks in & around London (Travel Guide eBook)

Rough Guides

• Editore: Rough Guides
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781789197198
• Edizione: 4
• Argomento: Crescita personale
• Categoria: Viaggi

The Rough Guide to Walks in and Around London Make the most of your time on Earth with the ultimate travel guides.
World-renowned 'tell it like it is' guidebook Discover walks in and around London with this comprehensive, entertaining, 'tell it like it is' Rough Guide, packed with our experts' honest and independent recommendations. Whether you plan to stroll through Hampstead Heath, spot deers in Richmond Park or marvel at the views of the city from the Royal Greenwich Observatory, The Rough Guide to Walks in and Around London will help you discover the best places to explore, eat and drink while you discover the capital and its surroundings on foot. Features of The Rough Guide to Walks in and Around London:
- Detailed coverage: provides in-depth information for each route, from longer walks through sprawling forests to chilled-out strolls in popular tourist areas
- Honest independent reviews: written with Rough Guides' trademark blend of humour, honesty and expertise, and recommendations you can truly trust, our writers will help you get the most from your walks in and around London
- Meticulous mapping: always full-colour, with clearly numbered, colour-coded keys. Find your way around Epping Forest, Stonehenge and many more locations without needing to get online
- Fabulous full-colour photography: features a richness of inspirational colour photography, including picture-perfect boats on Regents Canal and the captivating pathways in Hyde Park
- Covers: walks through London, The North Downs, The Weald, The South Downs, The Saxon Shore, The North Wessex Downs to the New Forest, The Thames Valley, The Chilterns and Blenheim, St Albans to Bedfordshire, Essex, Cambridge and the Ferns About Rough Guides: Rough Guides have been inspiring travellers for over 35 years, with over 30 million copies sold globally. Synonymous with practical travel tips, quality writing and a trustworthy 'tell it like it is' ethos, the Rough Guides list includes more than 260 travel guides to 120+ destinations, gift-books and phrasebooks.

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REGENT’S CANAL

London

The Royal Parks

Regent’s Canal

Hampstead Heath

The Parkland Walk

The New River

Epping Forest

Walthamstow Marshes

Limehouse Basin

Greenwich Park

The Thames path, East

Richmond Park

The Thames path, West

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NORTH DOWNS WAY SIGN

The North Downs

Downe and around

Box Hill

Guildford and the North Downs

Gomshall and the North Downs

The Pilgrims’ Way

The North Downs

The chalk escarpment of the North Downs stretches from Surrey to the cliffs between Dover and Folkestone. At their western extent, the wooded downs provide dense greenery in an otherwise overdeveloped corner of the southeast, while to the east they are characterized by orchards and farmland, and by almost untouched, prototypically English villages. The first walk in this section takes you from London’s fringes through deep countryside to Darwin’s House at Downe. The steep escarpment of Box Hill provides unexpected drama, while the walk to the secluded village of Compton takes in the Watts Gallery and Chapel. The shortest route, Gomshall and the North Downs, links a couple of medieval Surrey villages and provides a leg-stretching climb. The final walk, the two-day Pilgrims’ Way, ascends the North Downs, leading from Charing to Canterbury. You can easily treat this as two separate one-day trips, although spending a weekend walking does give a satisfying sense of the original pilgrimage.

Downe and around

Chelsfield to Down House via Cuckoo Wood

Distance and difficulty 14.75km; moderate

Minimum duration 3hr 40min

Trains London Charing Cross via Cannon Street and London Bridge to Chelsfield (hourly; 35min); return from Chelsfield to London Charing Cross (hourly; 35min); Southeastern Railway

Maps OS Landranger 177: East London; OS Explorer 147: Sevenoaks and Tonbridge

This walk covers the territory where the London suburbs end and, magically, the Kent countryside begins. From Chelsfield, the route runs up to Cuckoo Wood, which contains some ancient woodland as well as orchids, bluebells, violets and primroses. Emerging from the wood, you come to a country lane that leads to Downe, Charles Darwin’s home for forty years. There’s an excellent pub in the village, George & Dragon, which does great food, or you can eat at the tearoom in Darwin’s house itself. The house is a wonderful tribute to the great naturalist, and shouldn’t be missed.

From here, the route follows an intricate network of tiny paths that cuts through fields and woodland to the venerable church at Cudham. From Cudham you begin to circle back towards Cuckoo Wood, with London’s tower blocks shimmering on the horizon.

Getting started

1.5km Exiting Chelsfield station on the platform 2 side, walk up the long sloping path to the road. Turn left down the hill. Where the road forks, go left down Windsor Drive and carry on up the wide suburban street. From Woodlands Road onwards, the road heads downhill, with a curve of countryside ahead of you.

Passing Woodland Road on the left, cross Glentrammon Road and carry on, straight downhill on Vine Road. At the end of Vine Road turn right down the hill, then turn left at the red-brick Baptist church. Around 200m further on there’s a roundabout – go anticlockwise here, passing the Rose & Crown. Take a right off the roundabout down Cudham Lane North. After just 10m the road forks at a red postbox – turn right up Old Hill. After 20m turn left, follow the battered public footpath sign that leads round the back of no. 17 Old Hill, and up the slope. The path leads through a wooden kissing gate by a pylon, and out into open countryside.

Cuckoo Wood

2km The path runs across the field along the telegraph poles for 400m towards Cuckoo Wood and then into the wood and gently uphill through a corridor of greenery; you’re now in High Elms Country Park.

Go straight ahead past a crossroads with a bench and after 250m you reach a fork in the path. Go straight ahead down Beech Walk. At a second fork a bit further on, bear right and follow the woodland path on the edge of the golf course. After another 250m you come to another crossroads, with the golf course immediately on the right, a bridleway leading downhill to the left signed Green Street Green Circular Walk (which you’ll come back up on the return trip) and one straight ahead also marked Green Street Green Circular Walk – follow this one, still edging the golf course. This eventually leads downhill to a small car park with some information panels.

Leave the car park and turn left onto the narrow country road heading towards Downe. Watch out for traffic and use the parallel path to the road where available. You’ll come to a brown sign pointing left for Down House; follow it on the signed bridleway that parallels the road to the right-hand side.

Downe

1.75km After 1km you come to characterful Downe village, composed of a scattering of pretty cottages and grander houses, a thirteenth-century church where Emma Darwin (Charles’s wife) is buried, and a couple of pubs. Just past the primary school on the right a narrow passageway leads down to the back of the Queens Head, a real-ale pub that was apparently frequented by the great man. For pub food, George & Dragon is a better bet, though.

Eating and Drinking

George & Dragon 26 High St, Downe BR6 7UT, 01689 889 030, http://georgeanddragondowne.com. Serves Sunday roasts, big pies and chicken curry from a recipe by Emma Darwin. The interior is cosy, with a low-beamed roof and bunches of dried hops running round the tiled bar, and there’s a beer garden out back. Mon–Sat noon–11pm, Sun noon–10.30pm.

To continue, head on into the village, past the church. Beyond the church, turn left towards Down House, passing some brick and flint cottages and a Baptist church. After 150m, take the public footpath to Cudham, which leads down to the left. The path runs up the edge of a field, through a hedge into another field where you should turn right (signs to Down House point the way). Go through the metal kissing gate and over the road to reach Down House, which is very well worth a visit, not least for the large cakes in the tearoom.

Down House

At last gleams of light have come and I am almost convinced that species are not (it is like confessing murder) immutable.

So wrote Charles Darwin to Sir Joseph Hooker in 1844, from his rural sanctuary in Downe. Darwin, his wife (and first cousin) Emma and their children lived here from 1842 until his death in 1882, and it was in this Kent retreat that he crystallized the research and learning from his extraordinary five-year journey on HMS Beagle into On the Origin of Species, published in 1859.

Down House (April–Sept daily 10am–6pm; Oct & Nov daily 10am–5pm; Dec–March Sat & Sun 10am–4pm; £12.70) was a haven for the invalid Darwin, who avoided a more public life for a studious and family-orientated existence, supported and protected by Emma. At the large former farmhouse where they made their home, he alternated his studies of barnacles, earth­worms, orchids and bees with walks, copious letter-writing, village activities and a daily hour dedicated to smoking.

On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection took twenty meticulous years to develop, the same theory flashing upon the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858 when he lay in a fever – Wallace developed the theory in two hours, and wrote it up over the course of three evenings. Wallace sent his ideas to Darwin, who was then propelled to publish his own work, though the two men translated their rivalry into friendly support.

The ground floor of the house is much as it was in Darwin’s time, while the first floor features an interactive exhibition on his life and work. In the garden there’s a wormstone (designed by Darwin to show the movement of soil displaced by the action of worms) and a greenhouse containing orchids and insectivorous plants. Darwin’s studies of less exotic plant and animal life in the surrounding fields were essential to his work – as well as making close observations of grasses and soils, he set his children the task of monitoring the flight path of bumble bees, and studied the seed content of bird droppings, using this as evidence of dispersal in On the Origin of Species. It’s well worth taking the audio tours of the house and garden (included in the price), voiced by David Attenborough and Andrew Marr respectively.

Down House to Cudham

2km From Darwin’s house, cross the road and go through the gate back onto the footpath, but turn right instead of coming back the way you came. The path takes you round the buildings of Downe Court – for the moment you’re on the Circular Leaves Green route, which you follow as it zigzags round the farm buildings and fields.

You come to a crossroads of public footpaths...