Looking forward to this walk. Hopefully, I'll see someone at the station at 11:04.

Take care, Igor

4 walkers on this varied walk with drizzle at first but then lovely sun after lunch. Lunch at the Forester Pub with children's roasts for 3 of us. Two walkers went ahead for earlier trains. Mud was not too bad.

4 drizzle then sunshine

Correction: I'm told that the group ate at The Windmill, not The Foresters. The only food offering that Sunday was a roast but the 'children's portions' were judged to be more than sufficient and good value.

Ten off the train met two arriving independently, so 12 set off in dry and partly sunny weather. Two or three wanting a pub lunch had been unable to get through to The Windmill so stopped off earlier at The Tweseldown. The others carried on to Ewshot and discovered that its slightly chaotic pub was in fact open and serving food, but just had their sandwiches in the churchyard and/or a quick drink. As luck would have it we all met up again and more or less stayed together until the Fox & Hounds, where half carried on and half stopped for a mid-afternoon refresher.

I expect most got home in good time but my little group of three dawdled along, aiming for the 17:32. We arrived at the station to see a much delayed 17:02 pulling away, then watched the indicator with wearisome resignation as ours went through the all-too-familiar stages of late, delayed and (a minute before it was due) cancelled. The next one was also late. Not for the first time I wondered why I hadn't come by car and got home before nightfall.

Apart from one overgrown footpath there were no problems with the walk and it was good to see plenty of locals taking advantage of public access to the MoD lands. Not unreasonably most of the group stuck to the main (GPS) route, but after neglecting this walk for a couple of years I was pleased to discover that most of my fiddly little ventures off piste still just about worked.

Buried away at the bottom of the Fox & Hound's web site is a message saying that the pub's closed from Mon 31 Jan to Sat 12 Feb. No reason given; perhaps they've been pinged by T&T. So unless you make a very early stop the Windmill is the only realistic choice for a pub lunch.

Thanks for the update, Sean.I have messaged the Windmill on Facebook and booked a table for eight for 12.45pm.

19 on this walk. The weather was sun through high cloud for the most part, which was rather nice.

An immediate problem presented itself in that the path along the top of Fleet Pond was closed for resurfacing or some such, which prevented us from using the route around it for BOTH the start and end of the walk. What made this extra annoying was that no obvious work was taking place and leaving 20 metres of the path open would have allowed us to use at least the outward route. A helpful notice suggested we “find another route”, without indicating any.

So we stumbled around an office park and onto suburban roads before eventually finding our way to the woods surrounding the ponds. A tree full of chattering siskins (a migratory bird) was a slightly consolation (to me anyway) for the disappointment of missing the nice walk around the pond.

We then had an easy and uneventful walk on almost totally dry paths to the Windmill pub, which is now serving food. I had booked a table for eight via Facebook and added four more via Messenger (social media has its uses!!), which was a good thing as otherwise this small and charming pub would have been overwhelmed by our mass arrival. The twelve of us filled almost the whole of their “restaurant”. The menu was simple pub grub, but nicely served. We could order at the bar (a blessed relief!). They apologised that some meals took a while to come. Maybe it was because I got mine first, but I think they did very well and were very friendly. Unusually for the SWC these days most people lunched and we all (more or less) waited for everyone to finish before setting off.

In the afternoon I heard the odd grumble that “this walk is OK but not that spectacular”. I confess I found the long canal section a bit dull, perhaps because unlike when I last did the walk it was not broken up by lunch in the late pub. I only saw snowdrops once, but there were some celandines at one point. There was some birdsong but not loads.

Back at Fleet Pond we went to a viewpoint to look at the ducks and then reversed our morning route, with minor variations. We had tea and puds in the Station Inn, and bought too much wine for the train. No change at Woking was needed, the National Rail app having remembered at the last minute that there was a direct train, albeit a stopper. It filled up dreadfully at Surbiton and I write this at a heaving Waterloo. What is this I read about trains being at only 55% of per-Covid passenger loadings?

To put Walker's mind at rest, the GPX is consistent with the description of the 'Main route' at all times. Anyone willing to go off piste and try the 'Alternative route' in two or three places will be rewarded with a more interesting walk, but you'll need to keep your wits about you to get back on track.

The long canalside section was very pleasant in summer when the mature trees provided welcome shade and to some extent screened the nearby houses. But leafless trees in winter might not be quite so effective in blotting out Fleet's suburban charms and the road noise.

Thank you kindly for putting on a walk of a good, honest length. Light for walking til 5 and beyond.

Yes. The 8milers need to be more ambitious. This is not a 'one hour lunch club' with some walking thrown in. Use two hiking poles to propel those limbs of yours through the mud. Thank you.

Anonymous at 16.39: how can you not talk about the essential tea stop at the end? shame about the bits of walking needed to get from lunch to tea, really

27 and two dogs on this walk, on a day that started cloudy but was sunny from late morning . Under such bright blue skies, and with the birds - robins, great tits, blue tits, nuthatches - chortling away, and with snowdrops, crocuses, and the occasional daffodil and celandine blooming, you could fool yourself that spring is round the corner.

Meantime, this made a great winter walk, being almost entirely dry underfoot. The start along Fleet Pond was very appealing, and while there was rather a lot of pine forest for the next three miles or so, the green fields near Ewshot provided a nice contrast. The long canal section still seemed very rural even in winter, with the trees bare but very stately, and increased birdsong through being in a residential area.

Earlier, we backmarkers had arrived eagerly at the Windmill in Ewshot to find it does not do food on Saturdays (and consequently was fairly empty). Lots responded to this news by pulling out sandwiches, leaving three of us to carry on for three more hungry miles to the Fox & Hounds (which we still reached by 1.30pm). There we found six faster walkers already dining, and were joined by one other, plus some sandwichistas for drinks. A top notch pub, this. Cheerful, efficient and the food super-delicious, the pumpkin gnocchi and vegetable chilli both getting highly commendeds on our table.

We left at 3pm for the last easy walk along the canal and pond to Fleet station, getting there at sunset. Around half the group repaired to The Station (inn) for drinks and puddings - again friendly and efficient. Most got the 5.54 train, but in absentia stargazeris (in the absence of Stargazer) I managed to inveigle two others into doing a further circle of the pond under a bright and sparkling full moon, which I found entrancing and to which they submitted with good grace. We finished in time to get the 7.10 “stopper” back to civilisation.

Oh, and one walker at Ewshot said he was walking to Farnham. What private griefs he had that made him do this, alas I know not: but on the map it looked like an interesting idea.

Thank you, Sean, for this excellent new walk. Amazing weather for a most varied stroll, with the highlights being the English Levada and a lovely canal side pub. I discovered a little known racecourse and found that Fleet Pond is actually a large lake.

I started 20 mins early, but saw no other walkers on my gentle passeggiata in heavenly early autumnal sunshine.

Thanks. My downbeat write-up and SWR's late change of timetable successfully kept the main group down to a cosy six, so with the early bird we can say 7 on a sunny day. I'd actually arranged to meet someone for a pre-walk meander around Fleet Pond so only met up with the others after 2pm at the Windmill. They were kind enough to wait for me so we were never likely to catch up with anyone who'd caught an earlier train.

Lunch at the Windmill was deemed OK but with hindsight an earlier start would have worked better, allowing for a later lunch at the Fox & Hounds at a more reasonable time. With a few minor revisions the walk will be on the site soon as #318.