Updates (at Feb 2025) to the winter walks in the first edition of 'Walks for Each Season: 26 great days out in the countryside near London' Julia Smith. All these updates are in the 2nd edition (published Feb 2025). For each walk below, I've listed the more significant changes rather than all the small ones.
Walk 21: Faversham Circular
No 7. Housing estates have replaced the industrial estates
mentioned here.
No 10. The remains of the old jetty are now more accurately
described as a sunken crumbling jetty.
Walk 22: Falmer to Brighton
No 5. It’s a 3 armed footpath post not 4 armed.
Walk 23: Cookham Circular
No 6. After you descend the stairs you go through a gate – not a kissing gate.
No 7 & 11. The four armed footpath post is in fact a
three armed footpath post.
Walk 24: Harlington Circular
No 14. Replace with ‘In around 300m you arrive at a
footpath post where the path divides. Take the right fork. The path soon
divides again at field gates. Take the left fork sign posted Chilterns Way. ‘
No 19. Replace with this clearer instruction ‘At the left
end of the promontory follow the path round to the right and in a few meters
turn left down steep steps.’
No 21. The National Trust for Moleskin and Markham Hills
seems to have disappeared.
No 25 It’s actually ‘Halfway
along the field’ rather the end of the field. At the end of this direction you
don’t ignore the footpath turning on the right – referred to in the next point.
No 26. Replace with ‘At the next footpath sign, turn right
through the hedge and then left to walk uphill to the road.
Walk 25: Coulsdon South Circular – still all ok
Walk 26: Box Hill Circular
No 1. Pilgrim Cycles seems to have closed. Walk up the stairs
on the left (not the stairs to the footbridge over the railway line).
No 5. Replace second sentence with ‘You shortly join a lane,
continue downhill. When the lane bends sharply left, continue straight ahead on
the footpath (between hedges) downhill.
No 7. The first footpath post has disappeared, so turn right up the steps at the footpath sign up to the pub.
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ReplyDeleteWalk 24: Another great walk - especially on a frosty and sunny day. For once I had some difficulties following the guidance. I had to refer to my OS app more than usual. Specifically:
ReplyDeleteStep 5: After turning left, the footpath is being remade and resurfaced. The new path curves temptingly left. Walkers need to step right off the path where it sources and then immediately left over rough ground passing an uprooted kissing gate in order to keep in the right direction
Step 6: Worth pointing out that the right turn is just after a kissing gate.
Step 8: Making ‘your way up to the top of the downs’ was not so easy. On reaching the car park there seemed no way ahead through the field boundary or across the large field of stubble ahead. Nothing corresponding to the pink line on the map. Another time I would turn left along the John Bunyon Trail. Instead, I walked on paths beside the road until I could turn left son the footpath (well signed) where the road turns sharp right. Then I saw no sign of a route across the field ending at this path as your map shows.
Step 9: I only realised that I had missed the point where the route divides when I had passed it. I was expecting to ‘pass through a kissing gate and walk up steps’ but this never happened despite being on waymarked paths throughout and ending up in the woods as expected.
Step 18: I could not see any ‘low wire fence’ but there was no difficulty finding the right path.
Steep 19: The steps are indeed steep and they are now very uneven. The flight is unusually long. I needed my walking poles to get down safely.
Step 23: The grass along the verges was clumpy and uneven. Much easy to walk along the road given the absence of traffic.