Walk Report

East Grinstead to Oxted, Sunday 31st May 2009
17 walkers, 18 miles - leader Peter Buchwald
We left East Grinstead on a beautiful sunny day and walked through the town, up a high street, then a short path, and were soon into the countryside. After a cool wood, we were in a field and frightened some sheep and lambs in the distance, who ran from us into an adjacent field as we approached. Over some stiles, we met some inquisitive horses in the next field, who followed us across and looked at us wistfully as we walked away through some more woods. Then a succession of country paths, fields littered with millions of buttercups and healthy cooling woods. At one high point, we could see the North Downs on the horizon: just past where we were going to end. We reached the Wheatsheaf at 12:35 and we spent just over an hour having a good lunch, which for some of us meant lots of (albeit not exceptional) food, many beers and some delicious chocolate puddings with ice cream. We left the pub at 13:40 and continued past a church, keeping the River Eden to our right, eventually crossing it at a wooden bridge. At one point we were confronted with a pack of friendly mastiffs and muzzled bulldogs who followed us some way barking excitedly until either one of our number repulsed them or their owner called them back. We crossed the river again, then through a golf course and some fields, where the farmer seemed to have stretched a narrow string across all the footpaths. We found our way again after trying to avoid the string, and met some curious Llamas, one of which peered right into my camera lens (but the close-up photo I took of just two enormous front teeth was blurred and has been deleted). By this time, there was a nice cool breeze and we continued over a railway line, to a church, then another railway line and some very wealthy looking houses which some of us envied, and finally along the Greensand Way past an old watermill back to Oxted.

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