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Woldingham Circular via Titsey Place walk

Rural valleys, the North Downs and the Titsey Plantation.

Circular Surrey

History

This is a list of previous times this walk has been done by the club (since Jan 2010). For more recent events (since April 2015), full details are shown.

Date Option Post # Weather
Sun, 02-Jun-24 a Sunday Walk – Woldingham to Oxted via Titsey Place 10 hot sunny
Sun, 20-Aug-17 a Sunday Walk – Titsey Place on the North Downs 14 bright
Sat, 16-Apr-16 Saturday Third Walk – A strenuous North Downs walk 18 cloudy and unseasonably cold but with some very occasional sunny intervals in the afternoon
Sat, 16-May-15 Saturday Third Walk – A manor house by the M25
Sean
Extra Walk 244a – Woldingham to Oxted via Titsey Place

Length: 13¾ km (8.5 miles). Toughness: 4/10

10:21 East Grinstead train from Victoria (Clapham Jct 10:28, East Croydon 10:39), arriving Woldingham at 10:55. Buy a return to Oxted.

Trains back from Oxted are half-hourly at xx:29 & xx:59.

Titsey Place This walk goes through a mix of open valleys, woodland and parkland, with a fair bit of climbing packed into its short length. Its author has a well-deserved reputation for devising ‘motorway walks’ and this one ranks near the top of the list, with long stretches irritatingly close to the M25 (it will help if you're a bit deaf in the right ear).

The up-market Botley Hill Farmhouse is a popular pub / restaurant which will be busy but it does have a first-come first-served ‘Sheep Shed’ where you might be able to get a mini-roast for your Sunday lunch. The other option would be to skip the out-and-back climb to the pub and carry on to the Titsey Place Tea Room, which now offers light lunches as well as a tempting selection of cakes. The manor house itself is closed on Sundays but the gardens are open from 1-5pm (admission £7.50).

I've chosen the Short Walk option because it has a much better set of refreshment places later in the walk, with a pub and coffee shop in Limpsfield as well as several more places in Oxted itself. But if you're feeling energetic you could stick to the more strenuous Main Walk after Titsey Place and circle back to Woldingham.

You'll need to bring the directions from the L=swc.244.a page.

  • 01-Jun-24

    WARNING: At para 18, the left-hand higher path is currently blocked off for forestry operations. This seems to leave no choice but to take the lower path as I had to do today. After going downhill, it leveled out and continued for a long stretch through woodland, eventually coming to a T-junction with a 3-way signpost. This indicated that the path just traversed was on the NDW which then continued to the left. But having received advice from a dog-walker I turned right for another fair stretch which eventually passed through a metal field gate and shortly afterwards ended at a junction with Pitchfont Lodge on the left. Thus it turned out to be an unplanned shortcut and I proceeded with para 37, section J - incidentally the main route bridleway had muddy patches and puddles but was perfectly passable. I expect Sean has other suggestions for how to deal with the current path blockage.

  • 03-Jun-24

    Warnings of motorway noise didn't manage to put off 9 people on this hot sunny day, although 2 missed the train and arrived half an hour later.

    On reaching the Titsey Plantation, the path is taped off and a Forestry Commission sign indicates ongoing tree thinning works. We thought it unlikely that works were being done on a Sunday and decided to dice with death and enter and not long after, we passed other groups of walkers along the way.

    The benches in the Plantation made a lovely nice picnic spot with views across the valley and those who went for lunch at Botley Farmhouse were happy with the service and their substantial kiddies portions.

    Not much later along the route, Titsey Place itself made a very tempting tea stop with it's idylic setting and outside seating but, still full from lunch, we carried on to Limpsfield for refreshment at the Bull Inn.

    I thought it was a very nice walk, which deserves to be done more often.

  • 03-Jun-24

    Actually 10 because I did the walk in reverse. Involuntarily, the result of being distracted by an assiduous revenue officer and failing to realise that we had arrived at Woldingham. Just as he finished I suffered the frustration of seeing familiar faces glide past the window as the train accelerated away.

    I got out at Oxted and walked from there. The Tisley Place tea room had the biggest selection of cakes I have seen on any SWC walk, and they looked of high quality. But 1145 is a bit early for cake.

    We've been teasing one of our number since he unaccountably failed to disembark from the train at Arundel some time ago and got swept on to Ford. Now it's my turn to be the group plonker.

Sean
Extra Walk 244a – Woldingham to Oxted via Titsey Place
Length: Up to 13¾ km (8.5 miles). Toughness: 4 or 5/10

10:53 East Grinstead train from Victoria (Clapham Jct 10:59, East Croydon 11:11), arriving Woldingham at 11:26. Buy a return to Oxted.

Trains back from Oxted are half-hourly, at 28 & 58 minutes past.

This walk goes through a mix of open valleys, woodland and parkland, with a fair bit of climbing packed into its short length. If you're familiar with this part of the North Downs you'll be able to work out that it will be slightly more rewarding if you're a bit deaf in the right ear, as there's an annoying stretch near the pesky M25.

The up-market lunch pub on this walk (the Botley Hill Farmhouse) is very popular at weekends so you might prefer to have a picnic lunch on one of the benches you'll find on the woodland path through the Titsey Plantation; this would also shorten the walk by 1½ km and cut out one of those hill climbs. Or you could treat this as an Afternoon Tea walk, as the Titsey Place Tea Room a little further on offers plenty of calories in the form of a tempting selection of cakes. The manor house itself is closed on Sundays but you could spend 45 minutes or so wandering around its attractive gardens (entry £4.50). And if by this time you've regretted skipping lunch the The Bull in Limpsfield is open to 4pm on Sundays, so you might be able to get a very late pub lunch after all.

You'll need to print the directions from the Woldingham Circular via Titsey Place Walk page. Unless you might want to do the longer ending back to Woldingham, click on Option a to hide the directions for the other options. T=swc.244.a
  • David
    21-Aug-17

    About 10 walkers set off from Woldingham on a bright warm and very pleasant day. I chose to do the circular walk, rather than end at Oxted, and also missed out on the lunchtime pub, opting instead for a bench close to Pitchfont Lane, from where there was an excellent view towards Titsey Place. The return leg passed Woldingham Viewpoint and then follows a rarely used, overgrown footpath through attractive countryside back towards the station. The tranquility of the afternoon was shattered by several flies past (is that the plural of fly past?) of Red Arrows from the nearby Biggin Hill airshow. I'll be reporting the overgrown footpath, and a dodgy stile, to Surrey County Council.

  • 21-Aug-17

    As David noted there aren't many incidents which can drown out the constant grumbling of the nearby M25, but a squadron of Red Arrows skimming low over the tree-tops is certainly one of them. We were also treated to a (replica) Spitfire and a group of British and German WWI triplanes, a nice display of the different ages of aviation in the 20thC.

    I also skipped the lunch pub but others reported that the "Sheep Shed" cabin in its grounds (though called a Tea Shop on its website) caters for drop-in visitors with light lunches and even mini-roasts on a Sunday, a welcome change from the "book a week in advance for lunch" trend. The Titsey Place tearoom was also serving a few savoury dishes in addition to its advertised cakes and cream teas, though they struggled to cope with the number of visitors to the garden event taking place. After a nice slow day a fair number caught the 16:28 train back from Oxted.

    I counted 14 at Woldingham station and another two on the train said they were going to start from Oxted and do the short circular walk from there.

    PS. Thanks to David for reporting the footpath/stile problems.

Sean
Extra Walk 244 – Woldingham Circular via Titsey Place
Length: 17¾ km (11.0 miles), with optional extension (see below). Toughness: 7/10

09:53 East Grinstead train from Victoria (Clapham Jct 09:59, East Croydon 10:10), arriving Woldingham at 10:26.

Trains back from Woldingham are half-hourly, at 29 & 59 minutes past.

This fairly strenuous walk starts along the same valley as the Woldingham-Oxted walk, but turns off in the opposite direction when it reaches the North Downs escarpment. The thick blue line stretching across the Walk Map reveals that you'll have to put up with the [redacted] in this part of the walk, but it's less obtrusive once you move from the open downland into the wooded Titsey Plantation. You'll feel that you've earned a refreshment stop as you have to climb all the way back up the escarpment to get to the lunchtime pub at the top, the Botley Hill Farmhouse.

The full afternoon route goes down through the plantation, past Titsey Place and back over the North Downs to the hilltop village of Woldingham before descending to the station. There are more up-and-down stretches to enjoy but you could reduce them by cutting out the section past the manor house and its gardens, since they're not open this month. This shortcut would also increase your chances of getting to the Dene Coffee Shop (the only refreshment place at the end of the walk) before it starts putting up the shutters at around 4.30pm.

Optional Extension: This walk's 500m of ascent should be more than enough for ordinary mortals, but any Übermenschen craving an extra 7-11 km could tack on Extra Walk 2a (the Short Walk version of Woldingham-Oxted). This would take you on a slightly different route up the valley and then steeply downhill into the village of Old Oxted, where four pubs will be competing for your custom at the end of these efforts. [Buy a return to Oxted if you plan to do this.]

You'll need to print the directions from the Extra Walk 244 page. T=swc.244
  • Anonymous
    17-Apr-16

    Thanks in part to Walker for this report - I was too lazy to write my own so I just adjusted his to fit

    18 on this walk

    This walk had an ill-starred beginning, first with all Southern trains out of Victoria and London Bridge being held up by a problem at East Croydon (though in the end we were only 20 minutes late) and then with someone ringing the only lunch pub,Botley Hill Farmhouse, and being told they would not accommodate us as they were fully booked but luckily the cafe next door, also belonging to the pub were able to serve us soup and panninis which staved off the hunger pangs for a while.

    We all got very spread out after lunch, so the rest of this account describes my experience. Weather much better than the grim wintry conditions forecast - cloudy and unseasonably cold but with some very occasional sunny intervals in the afternoon . Whilst we all got throughly splattered in mud, the low-lying fields on much of this walk were also nothing like as waterlogged as I expected after yesterday's deluge but it was a slip fest with one walker slipping over three times even though they had poles.

    The other bit of good news was there were very few bluebells on this walk - how refreshing.

    Some of us stopped for tea and cake in the Dene tearoom - joy of joy the tea, cakes, ambiance, seating and staff were all very very very exceeedingly excellent.

    Next time we have to book the lunch pub the Botley Hill Farmhouse 4 or more days ahead

Sean
New Walk – Woldingham Circular, via Titsey Place
Length: 17½ km (10.9 miles). Toughness: 7/10

09:53 East Grinstead train from Victoria (Clapham Jct 09:59, East Croydon 10:11), arriving Woldingham at 10:27. Buy a day return to Woldingham, or (for an extra 40p) a return to Oxted if you might want to take the shorter ending (see below).

Trains back from Woldingham are essentially half-hourly, at 30 & 59 minutes past. If you finish at Oxted these Victoria trains leave at xx:24 & xx:53, and there's also a fast hourly service to London Bridge at xx:20.

This walk has been specially devised for the British Deaf Association, and I can confidently predict that your enjoyment of it will be greatly enhanced if you're deaf in the right ear (or bring a wad of cotton wool). A glance at the Walk Map will show a 1 km stretch within spitting distance of the M25, where you'll be obliged to practice your sign language or lapse into silent contemplation. At any rate there's no point getting your ears syringed the day before.

If you can blot out this intrusion you might enjoy a short woodland stretch in Marden Park Woods and some longer ones through the wooded hillside of the Titsey Plantation, part of the large estate surrounding Titsey Place. In theory you can stop off to visit this manor house and its gardens but a last-minute notice on its website apologising that they're unable to offer light lunches in its Tea Room has made this rather inconvenient.

Assuming that you leave a visit to a day when they've got their kitchen sorted out, a steep climb back up the North Downs will bring you in a further half-hour to the lunch pub, the Botley Hill Farmhouse. If your GPS device is accurate you'll observe that you can eat in either the western or the eastern hemisphere. There are yet more hills in the afternoon (hence the walk's 7/10 rating) but eventually you descend to the Dene Coffee Shop, ten minutes before Woldingham station.

Shorter ending: If you want to relax in a pub at the end of the walk I suggest following the Short Walk directions in the afternoon to finish in Oxted: Woldingham has nothing to offer beside its tearoom.

You'll need to print the directions from this New Walk page.
T=swc.244