Activities

Join Catherine Ames for a walking tour (approximately 8.7 miles) through National Trust land with a climb up the Black Down in the morning, and a walk through gentle woods in the afternoon. You will see mixed woods with blackberries and bluebells and heathlands of bracken, gorse, heather and bilberry, with fine views from Black Down (280 metres/919 feet), the highest point in both Sussex and the South Downs National Park. Before lunch, the view from the Temple of the Winds, is spectacular. In Tudor and Stuart times, Haslemere was a centre for the iron industry. With the coming of the railway in the mid‑nineteenth century it became a popular spot for literary people. The poet Tennyson’s house, Aldworth, is on the slopes of Black Down where he loved to walk; and George Eliot wrote Middlemarch in Shottermill. We will have lunch at The Red Lion in Fernhurst.

Travel details and pub menu will be provided to participants closer to date; registrants should plan on an all-day event, meeting at 9:00am or so at London Bridge train station, and returning to London Bridge station by 5:00pm or so.

Train ticket and lunch tab not included in event ticket cost.