...yesterday the 13 mile hike from Guildford to Dorking on the North Downs way. I'm sure there were more than a few moments when Ed would have liked nothing better than to poke me with a stick for having planned such an activity on a lazy warm Sunday. But there was enough beautiful secenery to make it worth while, and we did have to burn off some of the food we ate on Saturday.
The day could be divided into 4 mini challenges:
1. Find coffee. Failed miserably. Starbucks on Northcote Rd opened at 8 and our train was at 8:02. Starbucks in Guidlford opened at 10:30 (those crazy country folks!). We finally settled on what looked like the one open restaurant in Guildford which had some not very nice coffee. So Ed went the whole day without a proper coffee and beware of the Ed who has not had coffee!
2. Survive till the ham sandwich. The first "half" (I use half loosely since there were no indications along the trail of how far you'd gone or how much more you had to go) of the trail was more challenging physically with a vartiety of hills to climb and changing topography. 3-hours into the hike we found a felled log that conveniently served as a bench and tucked into the ham sandwiches I'd made that morning.
3. Survive till Denbies wine estate. The second "half" of the hike was more flat topography wise but there were a few times where we were under the canopy of the trees for what seemed like ages wondering when we would see the light of day again. The thought of sipping some sparkling wine kept us going. We finally came out into the light (woohoo!) on a hill coincidentally named Denbies Hill and new we were close. After about a mile or 2 more of navigating through poor signs (increasingly desperate for the hike to be over), we finally found the vineyard wine shop. 3 small samples each and 2 bottles tucked into the backpack later we started our journey home.
4. Dinner and train home. With feet in pain and the added weight of 2 wine bottles, we trduegd along the last mile of the hike to Dorking in search of Sunday roast. The first and only pub we found stopped serving food at 3 (it was about 18:30 by this time) so we quickly changed plans to a beer for the road before catching a train home. On the slow torturous walk (aching legs/feet) from the train station to the flat, we settled on a nice big plate of steaming spaghetti at an Italian restaurant along the way.
Below are some pics of the hike (for complete pics of our walk, please visit our website)
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