The late summer sunshine continued over last weekend, ensuring Paul, Robert and I had great weather for our latest training walk in the Surrey Hills on Sunday.  

Having misdirected Robert more than once, we eventually parked at Holmwood Station and – after a minor detour involving a disappearing footpath – made our way to the top of Leith Hill, the highest point in Surrey.

At 294m, it would be dwarfed by Kilimanjaro but it offers beautiful views south across the Downs and north to London.

From Leith Hill, we continued northwards along the Greensand Way, picking up a link path at Westcott which took us up onto the North Downs Way from where we could look back across to Leith Hill (you can just about make out Leith Hill Tower in a break in the trees in the photo below) and ahead to Box Hill, our final destination (below right).

Heading across the Stepping Stones, we began the last ascent of the day – a short, sharp climb to the top of Box Hill, focused on the prize of an ice cream at the top. It is probably just as well I was too tired to throw a tantrum when our plans were thwarted – we arrived at the ice cream stand just as they closed the queue!  A cake provided some compensation before we headed back down the hill to pick up our cars.

Despite my disappointment at missing the ice cream, it was a lovely walk covering around 14 miles (including detour) and 500m of ascent, so good preparation for our Lake District challenge at the beginning of October. Looking forward to our next walk in a couple of weeks – and hoping that some of our other Ubuntu colleagues might be able to join us!