This leg of our journey was a bit longer than the previous two but we made an early start and paced ourselves accordingly. We picked up the path again on the western side of St Martha's Hill where the Downs Link Path peels off to the right, on its way down to connect the North Downs Way with the South Downs Way.
From there the path was a little bit downhill and a lot more uphill to Newlands Corner. It was still early morning and we were ahead of the hiking, mountain-biking, dog-walking, motorcycling, pushbike-pushing crowds that gather at this wonderfully picturesque twist of the A25.
From there the path was a little bit downhill and a lot more uphill to Newlands Corner. It was still early morning and we were ahead of the hiking, mountain-biking, dog-walking, motorcycling, pushbike-pushing crowds that gather at this wonderfully picturesque twist of the A25.
We didn’t pause and pressed on, over the road and now along the North Downs proper. We walked through woods and crossed fields; where the view was not obscured we looked south over the countryside and relished the sight of the fields and villages laid out below us.
We spotted deer in the woods on two separate occasions. They were just fleeting glimpses but we were only 20 yards away from them before we saw each other. It made me feel that we really had escaped to the countryside. Indeed, at one point we stopped to listen and it was wonderfully quiet with no man-made noise encroaching on the scene. But only for a moment, pretty soon an aeroplane rumbled far off and away. Nevertheless, we had left the sounds of road traffic behind us and we’d surprised those deer at walking pace not barreling down a lane in a fast car.
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| Looking south from Newlands Corner. |
