Greensands Way

First trip of 2026

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After a very long break – it felt good to get back outdoors last weekend! Two days walking in the surrey hills, the first from Ockley northwards. We were aiming for Friday Street, but only got as far as Leith Hill, where we rewarded ourselves with a mug of tea with a view (purchased from the tower) and headed back south.

The second day we did a bit more of the Greensands Way. We started at Hurtwood Car Park no 1 and headed east towards Leith Hill. We didn’t go up this time, but then headed north over Abinger Common and then back round via Holmbury St Mary and through the Hurtwood. Here’s our route. The views from Holmbury Hill at the start are spectacular. However, car park no 1 is slightly terrifiying – the steep sandy entrance is severely rutted and I’ve no idea how poor Nessie made it up to the top!

In between the two walks, I did my first night in the van. A BritStop at Village Greens Farm Shop, Ockley. A bit of a trial run getting ready for the season ahead. Before I set out I refilled Nessie’s water tank and got the pump working, and one of the gas rings was working – but I could not get the other gas ring to stay alight nor can I get the heating to work!! That said, if I can do without heating this weekend when the temperatures was 1C overnight, then probably doesn’t matter (and I’ve got good at ignoring the light that’s been flashing for months!!). I just wore a lot of layers – 3 thermals and a jumper for sleeping, and had my hot water bottles and I wasn’t cold in the night (well only my nose when it poked out of my sleeping bag cacoon!). When I woke up in the morning and tried to look out the window, there was ice on the inside and outside of the van!

farm shop

Dinner was beef stroganoff (which it turns out is fairly straightforward to cook on one gas ring!) followed by shop-bought apple pie and some custard. Given that the days are still relatively short, I thought I’d have lots of time to kill and might do some sorting out of the various cupboards in the van, but I didn’t! What with cooking and an audiobook and a knitting project, the evening passed quickly and happily.

Looking forward to the next trip already!

L

Abbey ruins, a cave, a film set & an ancient oak

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Who would have thought a short walk in the Surrey countryside could take in so much, but we came across all this and more on the last section of the Greensands Way we walked.  Read about it here.

Confesssion… it was actually a little while ago we walked this section. We had hoped to camp at the coast this weekend, but the high winds meant this wasn’t sensible. Instead, we are walking the next part of the Greensands Way, which made us realise we are behind with the blogging!!

R & L

An intentional detour!

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As you will know, we are currently walking the Greensands Way. We’d only walked two sections and got as far as Thursley when we got confused – the Greensands Way appeared to go both west and east! As far as we can work out, there is an additional ‘spur’ of the path to Farnham, whilst the official route continues east.

Not wanting to miss out on anything, and curious to walk on Thursley Common which we had heard about but never visited, we thought we’d first walk this spur before continuing with the main path.

Turns out Thursley and Hankley Commons are both interesting environments to explore – read about our walk here.

R & L

In search of King Kong

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By the end of our 5 days walking in the Mendips, our bodies had got used to the increased activity and the walking and carrying got easier. We were keen to keep up the steps and so we’ve started our next challenge already, the Greensands Way. We’re going to do this route in circular day walks, the same approach as the Wayfarers. It’s pretty long, so it should keep us busy for a while!

We walked the first section last week… and went in search of King Kong!

Read about it here.

R & L