Walking the North Downs Way

I noticed recently that a lot of families often post asking for advice on Facebook about where they can go for local walks. So I thought I'd start sharing some of our favourites.

Caterham Viewpoint, which is on Gravelly Hill and can be reached via Tupwood Lane or Harestone Hill. It has stunning views across the North Downs and is a fairly short walk from home, albeit uphill.

The plan was to take a walk around the area and then head home but, Lee decided to try a different route this time, which ended up being a six mile hike through fields and woodlands and slippery-sliding down a steep hill through the mud.

The North Downs Way is a long distance footpath running through Surrey right to the Kent Coast. We took the route which crosses the A22 close to Godstone Vineyards, to be honest I didn’t have a clue where we were headed. We past Brittania removals company on the Quarry Road in Godstone and took a hike up some very steep steps through the woods.

At the top we stopped for a sit down, Shannon was starting to flag a bit - she was worn out after climbing the steps and didn’t seem too impressed that it could be two hours until we made it home. This walk seemed to involve a fair amount of whinging!

We climbed over a stile, Lee was going on instinct about which way to turn and we ended up in a field, where the girls had a climb on a pile of big branches and we found a secluded pond, up here we could see all the way to London! It was pretty windy so we stopped again and all had a little lie down on the grass.

(London skyline in the distance)

Lee recognised that we were behind Woldingham School and if we carried on through the woods we would end up behind Tillingdown Farm, where the old abandoned houses are. The kids climbed some trees and we saw a few types of fungus, one looked like honeycomb and the others were orange winter mushrooms.

The walk up to Tillingdown was a steep uphill struggle with worn out little legs but we were soon home in the warm. Lee checked out google maps and realised that we’d walked six miles – one of our longest walks yet with the kids.

#walking #greatoutdoors #Trespass #NorthDownsWay #LandandFurrow